By Martyn Osmond
December 17 2004

The full UEFA Cup draw, made today. Stand out ties are Dynamo Kiev vs Villareal and Ajax vs Auxerre. The quality in the competition starts to show a bit more now, with the rubbish teams filtered out and the Champions League teams making it even stronger.

1. Grazer AK v Middlesbrough
2. Heerenveen v Newcastle United
3. Basel v Lille
4. Parma v VfB Stuttgart
5. Sporting Lisbon v Feyenoord
6. Alemannia Aachen v AZ Alkmaar
7. Austria Vienna v Athletic Bilbao
8. Partizan Belgrade v Dnipro
9. Valencia v Steaua Bucharest
10. Ajax v Auxerre
11. CSKA Moscow v Benfica
12. Fenerbahce v Real Zaragoza
13. Panathinaikos v Sevilla
14. Shakhtar Donetsk v Schalke
15. Olympiakos v Sochaux
16. Dinamo Kiev v Villarreal

Last 16 Draw
Winners match 1 v Winners match 5
Winners match 13 v Winners match 4
Winners match 9 v Winners match 16
Winners match 3 v Winners match 10
Winners match 15 v Winners match 2
Winners match 14 v Winners match 6
Winners match 8 v Winners match 11
Winners match 7 v Winners match 12

The draw for the last 16 means that, if we progress, we'll face either Olympiakos or Sochaux AGAIN! Would be ridiculous to have to go back there so soon but the lads would be confident seeing as they've already beaten them 4 nowt there once this season.

Olympiakos might be tougher with Rivaldo and a few members of the Euro 2004 winning side in their ranks, they beat Liverpool in Greece and gave them a game at Anfield and were unlucky to go out, after picking up the 10 points normally guaranteed to book you a place in the last 16 of the CL.

All in all though, a decent draw for us. When you look at some of the teams in there we're lucky to have a relatively easy path through to the quarter-finals. A lot of the tough Eastern European teams from really cold places are playing against Spanish or Portugese teams from nice sunny places, so here's hoping the Spaniards win and we get a quarter final against Seville or Bilbao or something and a canny warm Easter trip. By the time we reach that stage it'll be pretty good teams left in, but it's a similar standard of team as last year and we should've at least made the final were it not for injuries last season.

Having said all that, we'll probably crash out to Heerenveen.