News: 2010-2011 Champions League groups stage draw

See you guys soon. Going to be awesome.

 

Damn the group is gonna be pretty nasty, Ben will have no easy ride in his first year!

Nice to see our players dominated everything!

 

Well man I don't share your enthusiasm all 3 teams are bad as they can get when they play at home. Probably the only group stronger than ours is the one with Real and Milan. We will need to sweat over this one no easy games IMO.

 

yup..Compared to last year , INTER got an easy group this year...

 

i talked to a few inter fans, for some odd reason they think this group is hard... bremen isnt all that strong anymore, tottenham is just gareth bale , who maicon will not allow to do anything and aside from that they arent all that good. and twente wont be too hard. its a really really simple group.

 

Ehhhh, about the only thing I'll give you is out of the 4th seeded teams, Twente is probably the 2nd best. That's about it.

Werder Bremen got thrashed by Hoffenheim this past weekend and didn't do so well at Sampdooria in the return leg for the qualifying stages.

Tottenham, meh.

 

F****n hell can we ever get a bit of luck with these things?? Barca and Arsenal again get very soft groups.... Spurs will be tough and last time we were grouped with Werder we struggled. Still we the champions of Europe Rafa needs to guide us top spot in the group or serious quesitons are going to be asked about him.

By the way out of curiousity anybody know Rafas record against Spurs??

 

Sorry to burst your bubble, but we will definately give you a run for your money, escpecially at home. This is easily the best Spurs team in quiet some time. We beat Liverpool, Arse and Chelsea at home last year. To call us a one man team suggests you don't watch us play very often. Anyway good luck, we are looking forward to these nights finally returning to the Lane (long overdue).

 

how many goals has gareth bale scored compared to the leading striker in the past 5 games including preseason? sorry to burst your bubble too.

 

Well guys I hope your right. I expect us to qualify as winners no doubt about it but I'm aware what kind of this teams are. They will push us hard and I believe a good start is a must + home games need to be won.

I watch Spurs from time to time since 3 Croats play for them and when they are at home nobody can say that they will beat them, very solid team with a few real quality individuals.

Same goes for Werder, if they had a bad game with Samp doesn't mean we will just ran over them. They are traditionally doing very well in CL in recent few years and have a pretty talented squad. By the way Samp scalped us last year in Seria A real good.

Twente is a mystery for me much like Kazan last year but they won the Dutch league so they shod be respected since not many teams can outran Ajax and PSV as proven over the years.

Group might be easier than last year but still very balanced with lots of potential problems.

 

WTF. Preseason? Striker comparison to a midfielder/defender? You don't make sense. You just said it all, what does preseason have to do with anything other than promoting each club's brand and a few muck around games? I suppose every forum has one over the top poster, the rest of you guys seem pretty level headed.

Really, really simple group? Concensus says it is the second toughest. Either a lot of people are wrong or you are the best analyst in the world. hmmm.....

 

Inter obviously the overwhelming favourites in this group, no doubt about it. Sneijder can expect a lot of abuse in the Twente stadium hehehe.

On the subject of stadiums, we're loving that the Inter stadium will probably not interest the local fans one bit. It would be cool if Twente fans were to outnumber home support.

 

Ah I forgot Twente won the Dutch league last season, just great definitely can't rule them out either...

Seeing this group only does more to reinforce my belief we need at least 1 more quality forward and midfielder before the window closes, come on make it happen Branca!!

 

oh stop whining because you know its true. tottenham is a semi decent half tolerable team. i wanna kill people when i watch their boring games. simple group for inter. done.

 

Wow. Well we will see how boring we are when we meet. Mourinho is a proven champion at many levels and he was the reason for much success. Still Inter are quite possibly one of the most stacked teams around. To say what you say though it is quite obivious you have no idea what we have been doing in the past two years. We are possibly the most entertaining team in the prem. Our defending at times is a ?, but our attacking and midfield is quite good. Our wingers will trouble you and they get quality balls in the box. Still going to be really tough to break you all down, but still don't say silly things man.

 

The only thing in my mind that prevented this group from being the toughest is that we didn't draw Real Madrid from the second pot.

I believe we are still favorites to win this group, but on a good day at home any one of these teams can beat us.

Werder Bremen is still finding their feet without Ozil, and I expect this to continue. While they weren't good against Sampdoria, they still got the job done. And that is all that matters really. I remember facing Bremen in the group stage 2 years ago and even though we still had Mourinho and a completely different squad it was a tough match-up.

We drew them at home, and lost 2-1 away. While I believe we are considerably better than that team, we can't take anything for granted.

As for Tottenham, well they were the worst team we could have drawn from Pot 3. I am still unsure of their consistency away from home, and how good they will be in Europe. One thing is pretty clear however, and that is they are very good at home. They were last season as Hauler pointed out, and they have begun this season fairly well.

Their midfield is one I admire, with Modric, Lennon, Bale, and Krajncar providing the offensive threat. While not every player mentioned there will be playing, they do have their threats. I think we can hope to expose Tottenham in the middle as I don't see Palacios and Huddlestone being able to cope with Sneijder and Cambiasso.

The one area where they are very good is the forward line with Roman Pavlychenko and Jermain Defoe. They offer a lot of pace and I believe can expose our defense if the timing is right. Having said that though, it will be really difficult for them because Maicon will be constantly going at Bale thus he won't be getting as forward as he usually does. The only interesting place where I would potentially think they are better than us is the right hand side where Lennon could expose Chivu. Then again the Romanian handled his duty last year against Barcelona in that DM role, thus he knows what is at stake.

Lastly I believe that the biggest weakness Spurs have is their defense. While it has improved considerably when compared to the last 5 seasons (when players such as Woodgate and Ricardo Rocha played), the creativity of Milito coupled with the pure pace of Eto'o could spell trouble for Dawson, King, Corluka, and Assou-Ekoto.

As for Twente... I can't pretend and say that I know they are a good team. I was hoping their regular posters would give us a little bit more info on the team. A whole lot has changed since they won the title.. Mclaren left for Wolfsburg, and Stoch left for Fenerbahce. Those are the two main things I know. And Bryan Ruiz is one of their main offensive threats as he had his best season last year when Twente won the title by one point over AFC Ajax Amsterdam.

Thus while I expect us to go through, each one of these teams on their day knows how to play good football and win, especially if the home fans get behind them.

 

If you have a bit of class you show respect for your opponents whoever they are. Rule number one in the football manual.

 

Twente beat Ajax to a CL qualifying spot even before McClaren came in. The club has been on the way up for a while now through three manager changes. As McClaren himself said: the secret of my success is that I didn't change anything.

Our two star players are staying (Bryan Ruiz and Brazilian central defender Douglas Teixeira). Stoch was on loan and while he was great in the first half of last season, he was pretty mediocre at best in the second half. I guess the fact that he was on-loan from Chelsea gave him stature, but anyone who regularly watched Twente knows that he was hardly our most important player.

That said up front quite a lot has changed with a new number 10, a new right winger, and a new striker. They're taking time to gel but they're showing plenty of potential. Our defence is rock solid. We haven't conceded a single goal in six competitive games now and that's including the Dutch supercup v Ajax away and no matter how little you think of Ajax these days they do have a class attack.

All of that said I completely expect to lose to Inter both home and away. I don't think you'll thrash us though. Our defence is too wel organised for a thrashing even on this level. And as fairly recent wins over Schalke, Werder Bremen, Fenerbahce, and Olympique Marseille prove, we're no push-overs.