Champions League - 2017/18

Ours to lose...

 

Given that we've only lost three league games all season, and need just one more point to be in the group stages of the CL again, this is pretty much a formality.

A great achievement. Back to back CL campaigns. It's the way to underline our status as a major force. It'll keep our players happy, and I think the two seasons in the group stages equates to roughly £50m in TV cash. For a club building a new stadium and on a budget, that's massive.

Just hope we get some more glamorous fixtures next season. Barca, Madrid, or Bayern would be great.

 

Think we'll do better in the CL next season. Annoying that Alli will miss 3 matches though.

 

If we win the title, we'll be in Pot 1. But if we can't catch Chelsea, then will 2nd get us Pot 2 this time?

 

Shows how far we've come. All those years of dreaming and looking at last few fixtures hoping for a miracle. The years of messing it up and when we had that mad week when we beat Chelsea, Arsenal and City. And we've pretty much qualified for the group stage with 4 games left and gas in the tank.

Can see us getting to the quarter finals next year. Let's show Europe how great this young team is.

 

I believe it's only the top spot that gets you in a 'pot' per se, the rest of the teams are split by European ranking - so probably pot 3 again

 

fingers crossed playing our league home games at Wembley will stand us in good stead for better Champions League results.

 

Perspective. Qualifying 2 years in a row is a massive step forward for our club. We've come a long way since Alan sugar thought we should be "Wimbledon with fans"

 

Yes, this page is a good source for the pots. It gets updated daily as teams qualify https://kassiesa.home.xs4all.nl/bert/uefa/seedcl2017.html

 

Qualifying 3 times in 7 years sounds a lot better than our one-off in 2010...

 

I want the Title plus FA cup.

Get through to Group stage then go out to a Barca/RM.

The team deserves the title.

Domestic honours first

 

4 times if we weren't robbed by a
silly rule / freak occurrence.

 

Can we please get a top drawer club from pot 1 but weaker opponenets from pots 2 and 4 then, assuming we're in pot 3?

Monaco were pot 4 last season. Freak occurence.

 

On the flip side though, CSKA were pot 1. We really should still have qualified!

 

Just get the pitch painters ready to make Wembley a tad smaller.

 

It was the third best team in England from the previous season versus the third best team in Germany. Hardly some massive upset that we went out.

 

Likely Pot 3, slight chance Pot 2 (same as this time last year).

Next season we're going to be ranked as the 20th best team in Europe. Unfortunately, Spartak Moscow and in all likelihood Monaco are going to leapfrog us into Pot 1 despite having worse coefficients by winning their domestic leagues and/or the Champions League. That means to get into Pot 2, we need 6 of the teams above us not to make the group stage. Two of them - Schalke and Bayer Leverkusen - definitely won't. However, 4 other teams missing out is unlikely. The ones who might not make it are:

Atletico Madrid/Sevilla
Bourussia Dortmund
Arsenal*
Manchester United*
Manchester City*
Napoli
Zenit St. Petersberg*

The teams with asteriks (*) are the ones who might feasibly fail to qualify at all: the rest will, at worst, be in a qualifying round we'd have to hope they'd lose, noting that they'll all be seeded for it too. The two Spanish teams share a slot because one of them will finished 3rd and the other 4th, it's just a matter of which way round. So our best hope is:

Zenit fail to qualify (currently 1 point behind CSKA Moscow with a game in hand) or loses playoff
Liverpool finish 4th or, preferably, 3rd
Man Utd don't win the Europa League from 5th or 6th position
One other team unexpectedly messes up the playoff

Of course you can still get lucky/unlucky when it comes to the draw, and some would rather play the biggest teams anyway, but unless we win the league we should expect a slightly harder group than last year.

 

Spartak being on course to win the Russian league is particularly annoying: they have a worse coefficient than Wigan Athletic.

 

The new pot one ruling is really annoying. I get why they did it but when you get teams like Spartak and Leicester in pot 1 ....