Former Real Madrid legend, Fernando Hierro picks Manchester City’s name out of the pot at a Champions League draw

Manchester City have received some brilliant news this week after it was all but confirmed that they were to be seeded in Pot 2 of the UEFA Champions League Group Stage draw for the upcoming season. This news comes as Napoli were sent crashing out of the UEFA Europa League by Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk. How on Earth could these two supposedly separate incidents have a bearing on one another you ask? Well, read on to understand the situation better.

City crashed out of Europe after losing against Barcelona in the Champions League’s Round of 16

Before we begin, let us give you a small introduction into how UEFA seeds the teams that play in the continent’s premier club competitions, the UEFA Champions League and the UEFA Europa League. European football’s governing body has a neat coefficient based ranking system that ranks teams based on their performance in European competitions over the last five seasons. Along with this, the coefficient of the club’s national association is also taken into account. Thanks to this method, Manchester City found themselves in an unfavourable group every single time they made it to the Champions League.

This happened because they did not have too many coefficient points from previous seasons to bank on after they made it to the Champions League for the first time in 2011. This time though, City are in a much better state in terms of the UEFA coefficient ranking because they have enough points. Napoli though could have leapfrogged City in these rankings had they won the UEFA Europa League, but their Semi-Final loss to Dnipro rules out any possibility of that happening.

The four representatives of the English F.A. are all likely to be in the top two pots. Chelsea are obviously through to Pot 1 after winning the Premier League. They will be joined by seven other national league winners from Europe’s top leagues. Arsenal, Manchester United and Manchester City are going to occupy places in Pot 2 although one of these teams will have to take part in the Playoff round before they are guaranteed a place in the main tournament.

City are almost guaranteed a spot in Pot 2 of the Champions League Group Stage Draw

As things stand right now, Manchester United look likely to be the team that has to play the qualifier but with the way things are changing around near the top of the table, it is really hard to predict which team will finally end up in the fourth spot. As far as City are concerned, we have every reason to go into our last two games of the season with all guns blazing. Not only do we need to finish within the top three, but we need to make an attempt to finish as high up the table as possible. Another year in the Champions League is definitely a huge success but what is most important is that for the first time, we get a good shot of making it through to the knockout stages with relatively lesser fuss as we are sure to avoid teams like Real Madrid, Atletico Madrid, F.C. Porto and Bayer Leverkusen.