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24th Aug 2017

The Champions League draw delighted plenty of Arsenal supporters on Thursday afternoon

A reason to be happy...

Simon Lloyd

FA Cup win aside, it’s not been a great few months for supporters of Arsenal Football Club, bless ’em.

After spending the second half of last season bickering amongst themselves over whether or not Arsene Wenger’s time as manager should come to an end, the club finished their Premier League campaign in fifth – missing out on Champions League qualification for the first time in over two decades.

Worse still, Tottenham’s second place finish meant the Gunners had finished beneath their North London rivals for the first time since 1994/1995.

With Arsenal not set to learn their Europa League opponents until Friday, representatives from Spurs were in Monaco on Thursday afternoon to discover which clubs they would face in their Champions League group.

Mauricio Pochettino’s men failed to make it beyond the group stage of the competition last year with Monaco and Bayer Leverkusen qualifying for the knockout stages at their expense. With this in mind, their hopes of making this season’s last 16 were dealt a considerable blow when they were drawn with reigning champions Real Madrid and Borussia Dortmund.

Understandably, many Spurs fans will have been left disappointed by the draw. This, however, was not the case with some Arsenal supporters, who saw it as a reason to be happy.

With APOEL also drawn in Group H, many were tipping Spurs for a third place finish – enough to see them drop out of the Champions League and into the Europa League.

The response was predictable…