European and Domestic Cups Discussion 2016/2017

EFL Cup 4th round draw:

West Ham vs Chelsea
Manchester United vs Manchester City
Arsenal vs Reading
Liverpool vs Tottenham
Bristol City vs Hull
Leeds vs Norwich
Newcastle vs Preston
Southampton vs Sunderland

Fantastic draw. Another good outing for our kids n fringe players

3 PL sides will be out as well for the 5th round

Yeah, great draw for us. Tough games for our rivals and a much easier home game (in theory) for us. Can play the likes of Niles, Jeff and Akpom again without too much worry.

I'll be shocked if there's a stream though

6 of next 7 games are at Emirates

Yea but it feels safe to be at home imo

Nope.

Arsenal-Southampton for 5th round of EFL Cup


Not bad.

It would be a better test for our youth.

Let's be honest, none of take this 'cup' seriously enough. Might as well have good games which provide fitness and sharpness to our fringe and youth players.

From that PoV, I quite like the Soton draw.

FA Cup 3rd round draw tonight at 7 (UK time).

As usual, it's an open draw, where you're just as likely to draw Chelsea away than you are Barrow at home.

Preston vs Arsenal

The CL draw is not until Monday but I thought I'd get this discussion rolling early since we already know most of the group winners and runner-ups.

Winners

Arsenal, Napoli, Barcelona, Atletico Madrid, Monaco, Borrusia Dortmund/Real Madrid, Juventus*, Leicester

* Juventus are very unlikely to drop points at home to Zagreb, so they're practically group winners already

Runner-ups

PSG, Benfica, Manchester City, Bayern Munich, Bayer Leverkusen, Real Madrid/Borussia Dortmund, Sevilla/Lyon, Porto/Copenhagen

We can't draw the teams in bold.

Obviously, we'd want to avoid Bayern, Madrid and Dortmund. I'd want us to avoid Leverkusen as well because I think their high intensity way of playing would makes thing very difficult for us.

So that'd leave Benfica, Sevilla/Lyon and Porto/Copenhagen. Sevilla, Lyon, and Benfica would give a tricky away leg but I'd fancy our chances against them at the Emirates. Porto aren't are strong as they used to be.

What do you think? I'd day that Porto or Benfica would be the best draw.

I watched both Napoli-Benfica games (6-3 agg) and I have no doubt that Arsenal would beat them. Porto was terrible in the Roma tie, they only went through cause roma self destructed since they had no backline. Every moment of 11 vs 11 play Porto were embarrassed. They would need to have improved a lot to be a challenge for almost any group winner they can get.

Bring on Dortmund, will smash them as usual.

And I might be able to go to the game

Confirmed pots for the L16:

Winners: Arsenal, Napoli, Barcelona, Atletico Madrid, Monaco, Borrusia Dortmund, Juventus, Leicester

Runner-ups: PSG, Benfica, Manchester City, Bayern Munich, Bayer Leverkusen, Real Madrid, Sevilla, Porto

So we'll get one of Benfica, Bayern, Leverkusen, Madrid, Sevilla or Porto. 1/3 chance of a very tough draw.

Easiest to hardest

Porto
Benfica
Leverkusen
Sevilla
Bayern
Madrid

How do they generate those numbers btw?

Run a simulation of the draw and tally the results. It not an even distribution since there are restrictions of the teams each can face, and once a team is chosen it reduces the pool for the next ones.

Sounds like advanced BS

Do we play Bayern away for the first leg?

yep

rincon wrote:Run a simulation of the draw and tally the results. It not an even distribution since there are restrictions of the teams each can face, and once a team is chosen it reduces the pool for the next ones.

Not only that, then there's this BS with certain teams from big nations having to play on different match days due to the TV stations, which often grossly distorts the so called draw.