Tough Champions League draw for both Arsenal and Chelsea

For the three English clubs left in the Champions League there must be a sense of deja vu about the draw for the last 16 but not a great deal of satisfaction.

Arsenal’s supporters could be forgiven for thinking the worst after drawing Barcelona, with the prospect of going out at this stage for the sixth year in a row.

Manchester City, for the second season in succession, will not be allowed to take fans to a Champions League tie because of the racism of others and the bad news for travellers on the Paris Métro is that Chelsea are on their way back to the French capital.

Okay, perhaps that is unfair given the way most Chelsea fans felt when the teams played last season and the footage of a black Parisian being racially abused was shown around the world and became a discussion point in the House of Commons.

Yet the draw with Paris Saint-Germain is not a tie Chelsea wanted, bearing in mind PSG are the team who knocked them out last time, the raised security concerns and everything that happened to make the previous occasion such an infamous event.

Chelsea will certainly share Arsenal’s dismay that the draw has been as unkind as they can possibly have dared imagine.

Only the most optimistic Arsenal supporter could see Arsène Wenger’s team outdoing Barcelona over two legs.

For Chelsea, last season’s memories are still vivid of PSG putting them out of the competition despite Zlatan Ibrahimovic being sent off 31 minutes into the game at Stamford Bridge.

And that, of course, was when Chelsea were actually playing well.

More daunting

It seemed like a defining night for Laurent Blanc’s team and they have turned Ligue 1 into a procession this season.

After 18 games they have won 15 and drawn three, scoring 45 times and conceding only nine – enough to establish a 17-point lead over second-placed Angers even before the halfway point of the season.

For Arsenal, it is even more daunting given the way their opponents bewitched everyone to win the competition last season, as well as La Liga and the Spanish Cup, shimmering with so much menace it would not have been ludicrous for Lionel Messi, Neymar and Luis Suárez to make up the shortlist for the Ballon d'Or.

Barcelona took the sport to new heights in that treble-winning year but offer the impression they still want to go higher and though Arsenal can take encouragement from the fact they beat Bayern Munich in a one-off occasion in the group stages, this game will be over two legs.

Wenger’s team have just qualified for the knockout stages for the 16th consecutive year but this round of the competition has become their cul-de-sac and it will need one of the great Arsenal performances. Two of them, in fact.

City will certainly be much happier to have drawn Dynamo Kyiv.

The downside for City is none of their supporters will be allowed to travel to Ukraine because their opponents have been ordered to play their next two European games behind closed doors as punishment for several incidents when they played Chelsea in October, most notably when four black fans inside the ground were attacked.

Harder line

Uefa has been taking a harder line with repeat offenders recently but that plainly has implications for City’s supporters, just like last season when they were not given any tickets for the group-stage tie against

CSKA Moscow

for similar reasons.

On that occasion, City wrote to Uefa to complain when around 300 Russians were allowed to watch the match.

Uefa should expect even more pronounced jeering of its anthem at the Manchester leg but, overall, it is a reasonable draw for Manuel Pellegrini’s team and one that demonstrates the importance of finishing as group winners.

City will certainly feel a lot more confident than in the past couple of seasons, when they have come up against Barcelona twice and discovered on both occasions they are still a long way short of worrying teams at that level.

Juventus, meanwhile, have to face Bayern Munich after losing their position at the top of City's group during the last round of matches.

Chelsea have not been so fortunate after winning their group but it is Arsenal who must feel their luck is really out.

In one respect, it is the most attractive draw of them all. In another, Barcelona are the team everyone wants to avoid and it is a shuddering reality check after the euphoria of making it to this stage by beating Olympiakos 3-0 in Athens last week.

Chelsea’s success over Bayern Munich in 2012 is the only time a London club have won this competition and, if that is to change this season, it will have to be done the hard way. Guardian Service