Europa League Draw: Best and worst case scenarios for Spurs - Cartilage Free Captain (blog)

The final qualification stage of the UEFA Europa League has come to a conclusion, which means that we now know what teams will occupy which pots in the gigantic mess that is the Group Stages. As we already knew, Tottenham Hotspur got to avoid the qualification rounds and jump straight into the draw, occupying a spot in Pot 1 along with some fairly strong clubs, including Schalke 04, Basel, Napoli, Villarreal, Sporting CP, Marseille,... While that's a lot of clubs because Europa League's Group Stage is 12 groups instead of eight in the Champions League, we really just need to focus on the teams that Spurs can be drawn against. By rule, Spurs cannot be drawn against another team from the Premier League, so this eliminates Liverpool in Pot 2. After that, there are no restrictions other than having to deal with only one club per league. Because Europa League matches are on Thursdays and can require some lengthy air travel, there are a couple of ways that can be seen as beneficial: Either matches against very weak clubs or matches against geographically close teams. Luckily for everyone in the Europa League, Astera managed to qualify for the Champions League, which means that there is no possibility of a nine hour flight to Kazakhstan. Celtic looked completely mystified in their away leg against Malmo FF and, thus, found themselves out of the Champions League before even reaching the group stage. That drops The Hoops into Europa and, with their coefficient of only 39, into the second pot. Source: cartilagefreecaptain.sbnation.com