As we explained last week (an article also containing other champs league info and comment about next season), our fate was in the hands of Barcelona.

Now, since losing their last match (a home loss to Oviedo), Barcelona are still in 5th place in the Spanish League. They need to finish 4th to get into the champions league, and with 2 games to go the only team they can catch is Valencia (they can draw level on points with Real Mallorca, but in Spain positions are decided by the results between the teams, before overall goal difference etc, and Mallorca got 4 points off of Barca this year). With one of Barca and Valenica not making the champions league, there now look to be only 7 qualifying teams in it next year with higher rankings than Arsenal.

See here for current rankings list. Arsenal are 12th (level with Chelsea) but of the 11 teams above us, Inter, Atletico Madrid, Monaco, and one of Barca & Valencia will fail to qualfiy.

Of course, seedings aren't everything. Last season we got through the first group despite being one of the 8 second seeds. Leeds got through 2 difficult groups despite being at a disadvantage seedings-wise. But perhaps if the early stage is a little easier, it'll help us avoid having such a bad start to the Premiership campaign next year.

And why one might imagine that "all the teams are good", "there are no easy draws". There are good teams and there are good teams. The 7 we'd be avoiding having to play in the first stage are: Real Madrid, Man Utd, Bayern, Lazio, Juve, Parma, Valencia (or Barca). And of course we would also avoid Liverpool. Unless they change the system of course, and we'd put nothing past UEFA.