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How Europa League draw reflects Manchester United and Arsenal’s opposite outlooks

For United this competition is an inconvenience reflected in the marathon trips they now face while Arsenal will firmly believe their draw can help them win it

Miguel Delaney
Monaco
Friday 30 August 2019 14:15 BST
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Very much Europe’s second-tier competition in terms of feeling as much as status, the Europa League is at this point pretty much what you make it, so it is quite the coincidence that the group stage draw conforms to how the British clubs see it.

For Manchester United, it seems an inconvenience, especially after winning it two years ago, and that’s certainly the way to describe a trip to Astana. For Arsenal, it still feels a trophy to be won and a route back into the Champions League for the first time in three seasons, and their group looks like a proper challenge in that regard. For Wolves, it’s a grand adventure, which is again exactly what trips to Braga, Besiktas and Slovan Bratislava represent. There’s a pleasing variety to that, too, going to very different football corners of Europe.

For Celtic, it is still about modern European respectability and a chance to mark themselves apart from the domestic championship they always in - and any scalp of Lazio, Rennes or CFR Cluj would prove that. The same applies to Rangers, if on a different scale, with Porto, Young Boys and Feyenoord.

The competition is of course so long-winded that there’s little point in reading anything much into group-stage form as regards who might win it, other than determining whether they will get past this stage.

That doesn’t feel quite as guaranteed as it does with the English clubs in the Champions League, though.

United’s group isn’t just awkward in terms of travel but also in terms of challenge. They’re all in that lot-to-lose mid tier where the team would get no credit for beating any of the sides - given they should - but would be fiercely criticised for any defeat to teams in Astana, Partizan and AZ that can be tough. Partizan also evoke history given they were the team that eliminated United from the European Cup in 1965-66 and left a devastated Matt Busby feeling he would never win the competition he saw as a Holy Grail. This is a long way from that for the current United, but the hope is it might sharpen them in the same way.

Arsenal feel like they’ll be battling it out for first with Eintracht Frankfurt, although both Standard Liege and Vitoria de Guimaraes are - similarly - far from walkovers.

It will certainly be a creditable achievement if Wolves get through, given their lack of recent experience but it is well within their capacity. They might even be the best team of their group.

As regards who will end up the best in the Europa League in May, that bears almost no relation to what happens here. The competition ends up becoming what you make it, and that often only really happens after Christmas.

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