The eagerly awaited draw for the last 16 of the Champions League and the last 32 of the Europa League was made yesterday. I think that both of the two big English clubs have tough draws based on the teams that they could have drawn.
With all due respect to some of other teams in the draw, Man Utd and Chelsea have both drawn teams who are more than capable of putting them out of the competition and when you consider some of the teams who they could have been drawn against then that is mighty unlucky and the latest football betting reveals that.
It does throw up two great ties though in Inter Milan vs Chelsea and AC Milan vs Manchester United. Returns for both Jose Mourinho to Stamford Bridge and David Beckham to Old Trafford will get the world of football buzzing over the next few weeks.
Both Barcelona and Real Madrid have good ties against Stuttgart and Lyon and while Lyon qualified at the expense of Liverpool, I still don’t rate them. Liverpool basically knocked themselves out of the competition with some poor displays and late goals conceded.
Arsenal have an interesting tie away to Porto but I expect them to make the last eight. My prediction is for Arsenal to make it and one of the other two English teams to be knocked out just based on the law of averages.
I keep hearing that the quality of Italian football isn’t what it used to be and that is true but these two ties are close to call although out of the two, I expect Chelsea to have too much firepower for Inter but Mourinho is a top coach and he knows Chelsea very well and that will be a problem for the blues.
But having said that, Ancelotti knows Inter Milan very well also but I expect Chelsea to progress…..just. Manchester United are the worry as they are not performing at the level of previous seasons. Four league defeats by December is not the norm at Old Trafford and the new signings have not filled in those gaps.
see you soon
Carl
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