Quick on the Draw

The end of August means two things in football these days. One, the transfer window is going to close shortly, so you might see some last minute comings and goings at your club. Always seems weird to me that this happens when the season is well underway, but what do I know.

The second thing it means though is that we’re into the week that the European qualifiers come to an end and we find out what the group stages will look like for all the clubs still in contention.

For Scottish sides, we’ll have interest in at least two of the draws and possibly all three. The Champions League qualifiers will be finished by Wednesday night, and so the 36 teams taking part in the Champions League draw on Thursday morning will be watching something new take place.

UEFA do like to draw out these things (pun intended) so it’ll be interesting to see how they adapt to a draw that is pretty much all done by computer now. In fact, even having a draw seems a bit odd at this point given how it will work.

All 36 teams will be part of one big group, in what they call the Swiss model of competition. Basically, the 36 teams are split into four pots of nine teams each, but where the previous setup meant you faced one team from each of the other three pots both home and away, that’s now changed.

There will still be home and away games against teams from each of the three other pots, but they opponents will be two different teams. There will also be two more games against teams from the same pot. So with Celtic in pot 3 (this was guaranteed prior to the final qualifiers being completed) they could having one game each against the likes of Feyenoord and Sporting Lisbon who are also pot 3.

That is of course on top of games against the likes of Real Madrid and Manchester City in pot 1, Juventus and AC Milan in pot 2, and Aston Villa and Stuttgart in pot 4. Yes, that is possible because the rule against facing teams from the same league is slightly reduced to the point you can face up to two teams from the same country – but you still can’t face a team from the same country as yourselves. That part is not relevant to Celtic though.

The draw itself is apparently going to be conducted by pulling one ball at a time out of the hat, starting with pot 1, and then announcing what eight teams that team will face. They’ll then work their way through the rest of pot 1, then pot 2, then pot 3 and finally pot 4. Of course, when you get to that point, you’ll already have a fair idea of the teams from the higher pots that you’ll be facing.

Basically if you’re Celtic in pot 3, pay attention from the start because you’re going to see your name when the pot 1 teams are pulled out. The computer will do this, and later on it will also decide who faces whom home and away and when those dates will be because… yeah, TV will want to pick the big games in a well spaced out way and they don’t want clashes with teams in the same city.

It’ll probably make more sense once you’ve seen it happen, and if you’re Rangers or Hearts or even hopefully Kilmarnock then you’ll want to pay attention because the same setup is going to be used in the other two draws as well when they take place on Friday.

The Europa League draw, which Rangers are definitely in and Hearts will also hope to be in, will be exactly the same with 36 teams having 8 games with two against each of the four pots, whereas the Conference League for reasons known only to UEFA had to be different. There is actually a chance that Rangers and Hearts could be drawn together here, but I suspect the UEFA computer will save the same country pairings for the bigger countries and will avoid it altogether where possible.

In the Conference League, a draw Kilmarnock will hope to be in and Hearts will hope not to be in but hey at least they have the fallback, there are six pots of six teams. Yeah, 36 teams like the other two competitions, so why be different? Match scheduling is the answer since some weeks have one competition but not the other. Good luck keeping up with that one (yes I’m saying that to myself as much as anyone!)

The Conference League draw will see each team paired with one team from each of the six pots, with the pots paired this time in such a way that you get one home game and one away game against each pair. So if you’re at home to your pot 1 team, you’ll be away to the pot 2 team. Same with pots 3 and 4, and same again with pots 5 and 6.

It’s 12pm oor time on Friday for the Europa League draw, and 1.30pm oor time for the Conference League draw.

But before we get there, there’s two more games to focus on as Hearts and Kilmarnock both look to overturn deficits from away legs that got worse late on for both.

We’ll start at Rugby Park where Kilmarnock will host Copenhagen at 7pm hoping to turn around the 2-0 defeat they suffered in Denmark last week. Copenhagen were by far and away the better team so this will be a big ask, even if they can rightly feel aggrieved about the penalty decision late on. The 96th minute second goal is the one that really makes this difficult though.

As noted last week, this is the first time Kilmarnock have faced Danish opposition so there’s no previous trips to Rugby Park for any of them. However, Copenhagen have been to Scotland three times previously. Their first tip came in the 2006/07 Champions League group stage and as like everyone else back then they lost at Celtic Park. In this instance, 1-0 thanks to a Kenny Miller penalty.

Their other trip to Celtic Park in the 2019/20 Europa League round of 32 game was far better for them as they beat Celtic 3-1 to win 4-2 on aggregate. Odsonne Edouard with a Celtic penalty to equalise on the night and in the tie to briefly give hope they wouldn’t blow a decent chance to progress before they were picked off with two late goals anyway.

In between those two matches though, Aberdeen smashed Copenhagen 4-0 in the 2007/08 UEFA Cup group stage. Two goals from Jamie Smith, an own goal, and a goal from Richie Foster giving one of the best nights Pittodrie had seen in many years, and leading to another as they got Bayern Munich in the next round. In fact, this win over Copenhagen was the main reason Scotland had three teams in Europe after Christmas that season for the first time since 1970, and also the last time it has happened to date.

The bad news for Kilmarnock is that they’ve never come back from a two goal deficit in the away leg to win the tie. The 1966/67 Inter-Cities Fairs Cup semi final against Leeds United saw Kilmarnock lose 4-2 at Elland Road and draw 0-0 at home. The 1997/98 Cup Winners Cup first round tie against Nice saw Kilmarnock lose 3-1 in France and draw 1-1 at home. The 1998/99 UEFA Cup second qualifying round tie against Sigma Olomouc saw Kilmarnock lose 2-0 in both legs.

However, Kilmarnock’s very first European tie was in the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup in 1964/65 where Kilmarnock lost 3-0 away to Eintracht Frankfurt in the first round, only to bring them back to Rugby Park and hammer them 5-1. Two goals from Ronnie Hamilton, and one each from Brien McIlroy, Jim McFadzean and Jackie McInally. So they have turned around a three goal deficit once before!

Copenhagen lost 3-2 away to Nordsjaelland on Sunday, their first defeat in six games in the Danish league. They now sit fifth, four points behind leaders Silkeborg. They’ll host Brondby on Sunday.

Kilmarnock are bottom of the Scottish Premiership after three games with no points. On Sunday they lost 2-0 away to Aberdeen. This Sunday they host Hibernian.

The 96th minute last week was a bit of a killer. Not only did Copenhagen get their second at that time, but Hearts also conceded an own goal in that same minute in Czechia to lose 1-0 to Viktoria Plzen. The game wasn’t quite as one-sided as the game in Copenhagen though, so Hearts will fancy their chances of turning it around at Tynecastle in the 7.45pm kick off that is live on the BBC Scotland channel.

As mentioned last week, Hearts have faced Czech opposition three times in the past, and you’ll get pretty much every permutation out of those! We’ll get extra time tonight if Hearts match their 1986/87 UEFA Cup first round win over Dukla Prague, a game that finished 3-2. The Hearts goals coming from Wayne Foster, Sandy Clark and John Robertson. Back then it wasn’t enough as away goals counted after the second leg in Czechoslovakia, but they don’t any more so no concern there.

The best outcome would be the one Hearts got against Slavia Prague in the 1992/93 UEFA Cup first round, where they won 4-2. Goals from Gary Mackay, Ian Baird, Craig Levein and Glynn Snodin were enough to see Hearts through to the second round.

The worst outcome would be the most recent. A 2-0 defeat in the 2006/07 UEFA Cup first round to Sparta Prague at Murrayfield.

Curiously, Hearts have only lost 1-0 in the away leg four times in the past, and two of them were to the Czechs mentioned last week! The other two were to Standard Liege in the round right after Slavia Prague, and Hearts also lost the home leg, and to Stuttgart in the 2000/01 UEFA Cup first round. That was, unfortunately, another one where Hearts went out on away goals as they won the home leg 3-2. Again, that can’t happen tonight as away goals no longer count.

Perhaps a far more recent example of overturning a single goal deficit when away goals don’t count would be last season’s Conference League third qualifying round where Hearts came back from Norway with a 2-1 defeat to Rosenborg, only to win the second leg at home 3-1 and therefore the tie 4-3 on aggregate. Laurence Shankland and two from Cammy Devlin, all after conceding an early goal to go 3-1 down in the tie.

Plzen are currently second on the Czech league, three points behind leaders Sparta Prague due to having played a game less. Yep, they got their game against Sigma Olomouc postponed to help them out this week. This coming Sunday they’ll travel to Slovan Liberec.

Unfortunately, Hearts will need to do something they haven’t managed this season yet and actually win a game. Out of the League Cup to Falkirk and with only one point from three league matches, they’re currently tenth in the Premiership having lost 3-1 at Motherwell on Sunday. They’ll host Dundee United this coming Sunday.

The throwbacks will turn to the women’s Champions League next week with both Celtic and Rangers in qualifying action, as well as the start of the Nations League campaign as Steve Clarke’s men look to lift themselves after the Euro disappointment.

But for now, good luck to both Kilmarnock and Hearts tonight! Would be nice to have three teams in the draw tomorrow, with two of them in the Europa League!