The 2022/23 UEFA Europa League round of 16 draw will take place in Nyon, Switzerland on Friday lunchtime, and Arsenal will find out who they will face as they attempt to win the trophy for the first time.
We would hope to have an easy tie to start off, but we could face a very difficult game if we don’t get the luck of the draw. The seeded teams that we can’t face in the last 16 are Real Betis, Fenerbahce, Ferencvaros, Feyenoord, Freiburg, Real Sociedad or Union Saint-Gilliose, and to be honest I wouldn’t be too worried if we got one of them!
But we can’t can’t get any of them unless we get to the Quarter finals, but the teams we could get will be one of the winners of these play offs – Ajax/Union Berlin, Juventus/Nantes, Bayer Leverkusen/Monaco, Salzburg/Roma, Sevilla/ PSV Eindhoven, Shakhtar/ Rennes and Sporting CP/Midtjylland.
But the big elephant in the room is that we could draw the Spanish giants Barcelona IF they manage to beat Man United at Old Trafford on Thursday, so we hope Ten Hag’s side knock them out as we can’t face another English team at this stage.
One team that are surely going to be in the hat is Sevilla, who won the first leg 3-0 against PSV, but all the other games could go either way on Thursday, so we will be watching the scores closely.
Arsenal are currently the favourites to win the competition, but if we carry on playing the excellent football we’ve seen this season, there is no reason we can’t beat all comers and finally get the Europa League trophy in our cabinet.
Personally I can’t wait!
