ARSENAL could face a nightmarish draw in the next round of the Champions League despite being on course to finish in the top four of the revamped competition stage.
The Gunners have looked strong in the Champions League this season and all but guaranteed their place in the top eight with a 3-0 win over Dinamo Zagreb on Wednesday.
The new competition phase means that the teams finishing in the top eight will not have to play in a play-off match to reach the Last-16, in which teams placed between ninth and 24th will compete.
Arsenal should finish in the top eight barring disaster and are expected to finish in third or fourth place after beating Spanish side Girona in their final match of the league stage next week.
However, they may not be rewarded as much as they would like for their efforts.
A supercomputer has predicted where each team will finish in the league stage and things are bleak for the Gunners when it comes to their seeded opponent in the next round.
Despite being on course for a nice break from European football by avoiding the play-offs, Arsenal are set to face one of the four European giants in the last 16.
A third or fourth place finish would see them face one of the teams finishing 13th, 14th, 19th or 20th in the league stage when they play their last 16 matches.
According to the Football Rankings supercomputer, these four teams are most likely Sporting Lisbon, Real Madrid, Paris Saint-Germain and Juventus.
Two of the four European heavyweights will have to battle each other in a play-off to secure their place against the Gunners.
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But should the league phase end as predicted, Arsenal would be left with a very difficult draw.
According to the projection, Sporting and PSG would each face Real Madrid and Juventus in the play-off round.
Afterwards, each winner would face Arsenal or Inter Milan in the last 16 stages, under the complicated new system.
That said, Arsenal will take confidence from the fact that they have already achieved victory over both PSG (2-0) and Sporting (5-1) in the league stages this season.
Juventus and Real Madrid would be a different story for Mikel Arteta's side as the Gunners have not faced either club since their 2006 Champions League season.
Of course, this is all hypothetical and depends on the results that actually come about when all 36 Champions League teams face each other at the same time next Wednesday.
But Arteta will be confident his team are in a good position to give any opponent a game, having won five of seven games in the Champions League this season and not conceding a single goal from open play in the competition.
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