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?
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
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.
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.