Shakhtar Donetsk, perennial Ukrainian runners-up to Dynamo Kiev, are one of the surprise qualifiers from the pre-group knockout stage. They were a goal down from the home leg against Slavia Prague but dominated the away leg on Tuesday and won with 2 very late goals.

Shakhtar are currently 3rd in the Ukrainian League with a game or two in hand on the first and second (second being Dynamo). They're scoring pretty freely in that league this year, with a massive +14 goal difference after those 5 games. But we have to assume that our defence is better than that of Metalist Kharkiv, 8-0 whipping boys in Shakhtar's last game.

See our new Shakhtar page for links to the official site, unofficial site, and a site about the city and region.

Our hearts go out to Leeds fans everywhere. Not, of course, for their having got the hard draw of Barcelona and Milan. Rather for the fact that the fourth team in their group, Besiktas, means a trip to Turkey. Difficult for all sorts of reasons. Good luck Spider.

The other United's group is about as hard as we could hope for, and it'll be interesting to see how PSV striker van Nistelrooy fares against them.

See also Arsenal in Europe page for more Champs League stuff including links to Lazio and Sparta pages.