The Champions League Draw - Start guessing!

The Draw is set for 1800 CET Noon Eastern 0900 Pacific

Update 8/24 11a Pacific : Lyon have qualified and are placed in Pot-2
Update 8/24 1230p Pacific : Fenerbahçe replaced to Trabzonspor for match fixing. BATE goes to pot-3 if the hold result today & Trabzonspor goes to pot-4
Update 8/24 130p Pacific:Benfica have qualified and are placed in Pot-2
Update 8/24 130p Pacific: Benfica have qualified and are placed in Pot-2
Update 8/24 130p Pacific: Arsenal have qualified and are placed in Pot-1 and this means Milan will be placed in Pot-2
Update 8/24 130p Pacific: BATE Borisov have qualified and are placed in Pot-3 as well as Viktoria Plzen

First of all let me congratulate all the fans of the Yellow submarine Villarreal. They came out fighting and even when they failed to score before HT, they kept the pressure up and got the result. Some great goals.

This means, Spain has 4 teams in Europe's premier competition again. We have 27 of 32 teams are set. The remaining 5 will be decided tomorrow. The next major event is the draw for the group phases. In this post we will see who are the likely opponents of all the 4 Spanish teams.

The Process

All the 32 teams are divided into 4 pots Pot-1, Pot-2, Pot-3, Pot-4 based on their UEFA co-efficient.
The UEFA co-efficient is determined by the performance of the team in the European competitions (UEFA Champions League and UEFA Europa League) over the past 5 years.
Each of the 8 groups A through H will constitute one team from each of the 4 pots.
No two teams from the same domestic league will be in the same group. This means all the 4 teams of Spain will be in 4 different groups.

The Pots

Real Madrid & Barcelona are in Pot-1
Valencia & Villarreal are in Pot-2

The good news is that both Valencia and Villarreal will in theory have at least two teams of lesser pedigree in European competitions over the past 5 years. But this is not always good news. For example, the impressive reigning Champions of Bundesliga Borussia Dortmund are in Pot-4. And the the hugely talented squad of Manchester City is in Pot-3

Here is how the Pots look as of August-23 8:30 PM Pacific

Pot-1	Pot-2	Pot-3	Pot-4
Barcelona	Shakhtar	Olympiacos	B.Dortmund
Man United	Villarreal	BATE	Trabzonspor
Chelsea	Valencia	Manchester City	Genk
FC Bayern	CSKA Moscow	Lille	Napoli
Real Madrid	Marseille	Zenit	D.Zagreb
Porto	Milan	Ajax	APOEL
Inter	Lyon	Leverkusen	O.Galati
Arsenal	Benfica	Basel	Viktoria Plzen

All teams in italics & red are based on provisional results in 1st legs. I will update this table after the 2nd leg results tomorrow.

So looking at the pots you may see the problem. It is possible we could have at least 2 group of deaths. For example: Barcelona, Milan, Manchester City and Borussia Dortmund is quite possibly the hardest group. I am sure most of the teams in Pot-1 and Pot-2 will be hoping to avoid Napoli & Dortmund from Pot-4 & Manchester City from Pot-3.

My predictions for the Spanish teams. Predicting some tough draws there. Hoping for the best!

POT-1	Real Madrid	Barcelona	Porto	Man United
POT-2	Shakhtar	Lyon	Villarreal	Valencia
POT-3	Lille	BATE	Manchester City	Zenit
POT-4	B.Dortmund	Napoli	APOEL	Genk