Arsenal's road in the Champions League is known, it is tough

A bit on the Champions League draw and the magnitude of the weekends fixtures for the Premier League title.

Arsenal now know their path to a potential first ever Champions League title and it is a tough road.

In the Champions League draw Arsenal were going to get either Feyenoord or PSV Eindhoven with fairly big implications for the quarterfinal path and ended up being drawn against the Dutch Champions.

PSV are certainly the tougher of the two and Arsenal will meet them for the second season in a row after facing them in the group stage last year.

In the Eredivisie this season, PSV haven’t matched their title winning points tally (they are two points back of Ajax but have played a match more), but they have remained the strongest team in the division for the overall performance. They are sporting the strongest attack in the Eredivisie, backed by the third best (but close to the top and stingy) defense.

Arsenal avoided some of the harder traditional teams when both of the Italian teams that they could have faced (Juve and Milan) were knocked out in the playoff but PSV will not be a team that should be overlooked, especially if Arsenal are still without Bukayo Saka and Gabriel Martinelli for these matches.

We will have a deeper look at the match gets closer but here is a quick look for the teams in the Champions League so far this season.

In attack PSV have a bit of an edge, their extra volume of shots has seen them score more goals, from more xG.

On the defensive side of the ball, Arsenal have the advantage and we already knew this, but if they want to advance in this tournament the defense is likely going to be the catalyst that carries them.

Arsenal get the advantage of having the second match at home and should feel pretty good about the odds of advancing even if this is still not a gimmie matchup.

The road to Munich will be tough

Once you get past the round of 16 there really aren’t “easy” matches in the Champions League. You can get surprise upsets that can allow it to happen but realistically in the Quarter-Final stage and beyond you expect to get one of the best teams in the World and that is what makes this a tough test for a team.

All of that given, that doesn’t mean that there aren’t more favorable paths to the final and in this draw Arsenal didn’t get that.

IF they get past PSV, the Quarter-Final would be a matchup against one of the Madrid teams. The little extra salt in the wound would be that even though Arsenal would be the higher seed then both, they would have the second leg in Madrid.

They also ended up on the same side of the bracket as Liverpool (who drew a very tough PSG) but not like it would have really been that much different to be on the Barcelona side of the tournament.

I don’t think Opta’s simulation model is particularly good but they do one and I don’t so credit to them there. They updated the simulation after the draw and it does show that this was something that hurt Arsenal the most of all the teams.

The betting odds see it like this and I think this is a bit closer to my view. I think it might be overrating Real Madrid a bit (they also have a tough road) but Arsenal at 4th feels more realistic (even if still a bit overrated) compared to 3rd.

A big weekend in the Premier League title picture

It is still a long shot for Arsenal with Liverpool currently sitting atop the table with an 8-point gap. That paints a bit of a rosier picture with Liverpool having played a game more after their match against Aston Villa on Wednesday.

If Arsenal are going to get back into this, this weekend plus the midweek will be something that really sheds light on where things stand if the tiny hope that Arsenal have becomes a bit more than that.

Liverpool away at Manchester City has not been a kind fixture for the reds. They have just two wins at the Etihad Stadium in the last 15 years. Since 2017, Liverpool have won just once (in the Champions League Quarter-Final 2018) and are 1-4-5 overall in that span.

Manchester City are in a run of uneven form but maybe that will go out the window in this matchup. It’s not very statsy of me, but maybe there is some sort of block for Liverpool playing away against Manchester City.

In the best-case scenario of two Arsenal wins, matched with two Liverpool losses the title odds for Arsenal go from the current 14% in my model to 43%.

This isn’t likely but IF it happened, I would absolutely be back on board believing again that Arsenal have a chance here for the Premier League title.

Arsenal will need to take care of business against West Ham in what will still be a tricky matchup for them and then they can start doing some scoreboard watching on Sunday.