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Red Devils prepare for European Cup draw

MUFC - defending champs
By Chris, August 28 2008
The draw for the group stages of the Champions League is made on Thursday at 5pm. As hundreds of Uefa suits and officials descend on Monaco for a weekend of expensive folly, United will nervously await who they will face in the competition as the defence of our third European Cup gets underway. MUFC, along with the three other English clubs, have been selected as top seeds.

Liverpool will join United in the ‘Pot One' hat after they, once again, proved they're the luckiest football club on the face of the Earth.

The Scousers were outplayed by hardworking Belgian champions Standard Liege - but finally broke the deadlock in the 119th-minute in extra-time at Anfield.

That follows last-gasp and undeserved wins against Sunderland and Middlesbrough which has taken the luck-filled Reds to the top of the Premier League.

Unlucky Liege - you deserved to quality, and ManUtdWeb hope to see you do well in the Uefa Cup. In Europe, it so often appears, you need divine intervention to beat the lucky Scousers.

Arsenal and Chelsea also join United as first seeds as we prepare for the exciting, but usually heavily prolonged, European Cup group-stage draw.

Glasgow Celtic are also in the hat; but there is no place for Rangers following their shock second preliminary round exit at the hand of Kaunas. Slavia Prague, Galatasary and Dinamo Zagreb were amongst the names knocked-out in the third and final qualifying round.

A shout out must go to Danish champions Aalborg, Cypriots Anorthosis Famagusta and Belarus' surprise package BATE Borisov who all upset the odds to qualify for the group stages. They're all unseeded alongside Atletico Madrid - the fourth-pot club who everyone wants to avoid.

The seedings for the draw are shown below, with a summary of our potential best and worst draws underneath:

Top Seeds

Second Seeds

MANCHESTER UNITED
Chelsea
Liverpool
Barcelona 
Arsenal
Lyon
Inter Milan
Real Madrid

Bayern Munich
PSV Eindhoven 
Villarreal
AS Roma
FC Porto
Werder Bremen
Sporting Lisbon
Juventus

Third Seeds

Bottom Seeds

Marseille 
Zenit St Petersburg 
Steaua Bucharest
Panathinaikos
Bordeaux 
Glasgow Celtic
Basel 
Fenerbahce

Shakhtar Donetsk
Fiorentina 
Atletico Madrid
Dynamo Kiev
CFR Cluj
Aalborg 
Anorthosis Famagusta 
Bate Borisov

Best outcome for United: Manchester United, Sporting Lisbon, Basel, Bate Borisov.

Worst outcome for United: Manchester United, Bayern Munich, Marseille, Atletico Madrid.

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