Potential hard groups for city would be: Barca/Real Shaktar/AC Milan City Napoli/Dortmund Ideal group for Arsenal: Arsenal Marseille Basle And any of: Genk, Plzen, Otelui Galati Either way i would expect all 4 EPL teams to make it past the group stages - even spurs did it last season. It'll be interesting to see how the English teams do this year - expect to see some all english fixtures in this seasons CL.
Hopefuly the CL money will help the champions of other smaller nations to build stronger teams and therefor be more competitive in the future. It really would be nice to have some more variety of teams who make it into the latter rounds.
Chavs and City need to make the most of the CL, as when the FFP rules kick in they may not get a place. Also Barca and RM may fail them as well
Not very well, because Wenger took the mick against Braga away. My first comment was not meant to be saying its easy for us, more a laugh at the thought of Wenger wanting to win the group. He thinks that it does not matter if we come first or second in the group stage.
I would be more than happy if United got Marseille, Basle and Genk. I would prefer to avoid teams like Dortmund, Napoli and AC Milan. Dortmund will be a difficult team for anyone to play and AC Milan should be considered serious contenders this season.
That was my point as well - maybe Wenger will finally work out that coming second in the group does matter quite a lot. Unless he wants Barca in the second round again...
Rubbish. Take out United, Liverpool and to a lesser extent Everton then Northern clubs pale in comparison to Southern and Midlands clubs There are only 4 or 5 genuine big clubs (at best) in the North
The FA Chairman supports City, Bolton and United chairmen sit on the FA Board FA don't appoint any southern based referees
So now it's all a conspiracy? How on earth did Chelsea conquer evil then? They must be some sort of super team to win the league and cup double when they weren't meant to... Last desperate call of a football fan that to use **** like that.
Unfortunately it has a bad effect on their league. It helps to create monopolies and so no other clubs have a chance of competing fairly unless a sugar daddy takes them over. For Example Linfield in Northern Ireland have won their 50th league title in 120 years. A large part of this is the huge amount of money (comparatively) they get in relation to other clubs because they get 15% of the gate receipts of home international matches (Which are always sold out). This would be even worse if Linfield managed to get into the group stages of the champions league (It's still a bit unlikely but they got to the 2nd qualifying round this year and Shamrock Rovers from the RoI got to the 3rd)
Who said anything about a conspiracy? I was responding to a claim that the FA are supposedly London biased
Rubbish, there are no clubs in England better supported than Arsenal, Chelsea and to a lesser extent Spurs, that is a fact