Arsenal To Find Out Their Champions League Opponents Today

The draw for the group stages of the Champions league takes place this afternoon and Arsenal are one of four English clubs in that draw.

Along with "Manure," there are three London clubs as champions Chelsea, our local rivals the Spuds, and of course Arsenal make up the foursome. Arsenal are in Pot A as one of the eight seeds as are Chelsea and "Manure." The Spuds find themselves in Pot C as they have no European pedigree in recent years.

Pot A is made up of Inter Milan, Barcelona, Bayern Munich, Chelsea, "Manure," Arsenal, Lyon, and AC Milan.

Pot B consists of Werder Bremen, Panathinaikos, Shaktar Donetsk, Real Madrid, Valencia, Marsaille, Roma and Benfica.

Pot C consists of The Spuds, Braga, Rangers, Ajax, Schalke, Basel, Spartak Moscow and Copenhagen.

Finally in Pot D you have Auxerre, Hapoel Tel Aviv, Twente Enschede, Rubin Kazan, Cluj, Partizan Belgrade, Buraspor and Zilina.

As Arsenal can't be drawn against other English teams, it means we can't play the Spuds but there are a few teams in Pots B,C and D that could cause a few problems. In particular, Braga have looked impressive and Auxerre are surely too good to be in Pot D in my opinion. Of course Real Madrid under Mourinho are the team to be avoided most of all in Pot B, but I'm not sure I would like to play Shaktar either, although it would mean we would get to say goodbye to Eduardo.

I don't think I would fancy trips to Spartak Moscow or Rubin Kazan on a cold winter's night either, and Arsenal have a poor record in that part of the world.

With our tough schedule of league games after our Champions league games, the last thing we would want would be a trip to Russia on a Wednesday night followed by a trip to "Manure," Chelsea, or Man City in the league on the following weekend. I'll be watching the draw very closely and of course I'll be keeping an eye on what teams get the easy passage of drawing the Spuds.

The reserves kicked off their league campaign last night with a 5-0 win away to a Bolton who had a few experienced first team players on show. The goals came from JET(2), Aneke(2), and Barazite and, by all accounts, JET was the star of the show. He's a very talented player and any team that gets him on loan this season will be very lucky indeed.

There's still no word on how the world's longest medical has gone as the club still hasn't announced the signing of Squillaci. I can only assume that he passed the medical as we would surely have heard by now if he hadn't and that the reason we haven't had an announcement is that he is still in negotiations with the club over the terms of his contract.

How long can it take for a player and his agent to agree terms with a club he wants to join when that club must be making him a reasonable offer?

Any hopes we had of signing any of the Ajax players disappeared last night when they managed a 2-1 home win over Dynamo Kiev to progress to the knockout stages of the Champions league.

From what I saw, Stekelenburg played very well and, from what the commentators were saying, we were sniffing around him recently with a view to buying him. Maybe that's why our progress in buying a new keeper has been so slow as the boss hoped to take advantage of Ajax's lack of funds if they didn't qualify.

The transfer window will be closed very soon and Arsenal will have to pick a 25-man squad for their league campaign. I would assume that there will only be three keepers in that squad and, if we sign a new one, then Almunia and Fabianski will make up the other two whether I agree with that or not.

That would leave Szczesny to go out on loan and maybe Mannone to stay and play with the reserves as he did last night.

Then again our third choice from the first team squad would probably like to get some games with the reserves as well and it all points to too many keepers at the club to me. I think that we will have to dispose of two keepers on loan or by transfers if we sign a new keeper.

That's it for today but I'll be back tomorrow to run through our Champions league group and the fixtures that go with it.

Here's a look at our home 6-2 win against Blackburn last season.

See You Tomorrow.