Europa League 25/26

[wassy04]

It dawned on me yesterday that we had been drawn to play 5 of the current top 8. With hindsight it was clearly a tough draw

Yeah and we drew away at Betis (if only we'd held on) and beat Porto so we've shown we can match these teams.

Not beating Sturm hurt us a lot too.

As said above, the positive of the tough draw is at least we can affect the outcomes for Braga and Ferencvaros. Braga are currently 5th in Portugal and 15 points behind Porto (what a win that was). They've also had a ridiculously easy draw, yet to play anyone above 16th (partly because they beat them) and got to play Rangers and Celtic! In fact looking at that, we should be beating Braga.

In fact, its a similar story for Ferencvaros, largely played weaker teams, maybe a marginally harder schedule but still I'd fancy us to win at the City Ground, particularly if they are already qualified.

I am more confident now after looking at this, lets just hope the festive period doesn't burn us out before the Braga game. We have Arsenal at home at the CG the weekend before which is not ideal! 

On the plus side, how exciting to have two meaningful competitive European matches in January and even if we don't win both, we'll still likely make the next round anyway and we saw what PSG did in the CL from that position. We've matched the best teams in this competition, if we can get some form going over christmas, we could make a dent in this!