The full draw for the UEFA Europa League Play Off Round with the ties being played on 19th and 26th of August:-
(Teams will be added below as drawn after 12.30pm – you will need to refresh the page to see the latest)
You can also watch the draw live here. Teams on the left will play at home in the first leg.
Aston Villa have been drawn against Rapid Vienna Again!!
1
Paris Saint-Germain FC (FRA)
vs
Maccabi Tel-Aviv FC (ISR)
2
Bayer 04 Leverkusen (GER)
vs
SC Tavriya Simferopol
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Following on from the preview yesterday, UEFA have now divided the 74 teams into 7 pots and Rapid Vienna have been placed in Group 6 along with Aston Villa, so there’s now a 1 in 6 chance of a rematch.
The 6 unseeded sides that we can be drawn against in Group 6 are:-
SK Rapid Wien (AUT)
FC Sibir Novosibirsk (RUS)
CS Marítimo (POR)
ŠK Slovan Bratislava (SVK)
HJK Helsinki (FIN)
The New Saints FC (WAL)
The 7 Pots in full:-
Seeded
Unseeded
Group 1
PFC CSKA Moskva (RUS)
Anorthosis Famagusta FC
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Almost all of the final Europa League 3rd qualifying round games are coming to a close and by the end of the night we’ll know the 35 teams joining us in tomorrow’s draw for the play-off round ahead of the group stage.
A few ties have been decided already, among them Rapid Vienna, who beat PFC Beroe Stara Zagora from Bulgaria 4-1 on aggregate. So, is it possible that we could get a rematch against our opponents from the same
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I spotted this wonderful post by OutByEaster? on Villa Talk late last night and re-tweeted a link to it, but as most of you would have missed that and it’s so good, I thought it worth dropping a quick post here to draw your attention to it.
It’s a long article, but it’s most definitely worth your time, but I’d suggest one or two minor caveats. The following paragraph is a little misleading, but it’s extremely timely since it follows
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Ian posted an interesting comparison between the 2008/09 Aston Villa and Tottenham employee costs at Aston Villa News & Views recently and noticed an intriguing difference in the number of people employed by the clubs given their apparent similarities.
Tottenham’s wage bill has been a popular curiosity for Villa fans since they were evidently able to get through 2008/09 spending £10m less than we did on employees.
I share Ian’s confusion about how Tottenham can apparently run their operation with considerably less
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When Martin O’Neill says that you can often learn more from a defeat than a victory, as cliched as it’s become, he’s not wrong. Feyenoord put out a young side, we should of beaten them, we did. Benfica were a much tougher prospect and given the circumstances, they should probably have had the beating of us. They did. Comfortably. But did we learn anything?
Well, firstly, some perspective. Benfica are an extremely good team, they
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Ironic really, given our embarrassment of riches at centre half, but it appears that we may be on the edge of a minor injury crisis. If that’s not an oxymoron. I play it down and describe it as ‘minor’ since there’s a couple of weeks until the curtain opener and these things always seem to be blown out of proportion initially, but we are running a bit thin on the ground at this moment.
Firstly, as you’ll know, James
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Video of each of the goals in last night’s 4-1 loss to Benfica in the Guadiana Cup. (One video for each goal)
10′ David Luiz’s pile driver takes a wicked deflection to beat Brad Friedel.
36′ Franco Jara hits another big shot from distance, Friedel parries, but Saviola is smartly following up.
43′ Óscar Cardozo sticks an unstoppable free kick into the top corner.
49′ Franco Jara drags the ball back at the byline, beating Curtis Davies and cuts it back to Saviola to
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Schooled.
Perhaps a little worse than I feared, but Benfica are a very good side and I figured they’d expose our weaknesses. Starting four forwards and a centre half with the ability to get forward like David Luiz, it was always going to be tough in the Algarve heat.
No excuses, we looked short on ideas, movement, quality, you name it. However, there aren’t too many sides in England that you could draw parallels to Benfica. Sure, we should
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