Champions League draw

Manchester Utd, Arsenal pull short straws by drawing Real Madrid, Bayern Munich 

English clubs Manchester United and Arsenal have mountains to climb to get past the key knockout round in football's richest competition, the European Champions League. Manchester United had the worst possible draw being pitted against the world's biggest club, Real Madrid of Spain. Arsenal avoided a nightmare clash with FC Barcelona, but ended with a task almost as tough when drawing Bayern Munich. 

The draw was be made at midday today at UEFA headquarters in Switzerland. The rules decree that at this stage of the competition, clubs cannot be drawn against others from the same country. That kept the English giants apart, but wasn't able to spare them incredibly difficult opponents.The English teams have the added incentive of overcoming their hurdles as the final will be held at London's Wembley Stadium on May 25th. 

The post-draw adjusted bookmakers' odds emphasise the difficult road now faced by the Premier League teams. Manchester United is easy to back at 15/1 to win the cup. Its opponents in the round of 16, Real Madrid, are at a tighter price of 6/1. Arsenal is now rated as a huge outsider with odds of 33/1 on the side winning the trophy. Bayern Munich is third favourite after the two Spanish giants, at 7/1. FC Barcelona remains favourite to win at odds of 3/1.   

The full draw for the home and away stage for the surviving 16 teams (winner on aggregrate qualifies for the quarter final) is:

Real Madrid (Spain) v Manchester United (England)

Arsenal (England) v Bayern Munich (Germany)

Celtic (Scotland) v Juventus (Italy)

AC Milan (Italy) v Barcelona (Spain)

Valencia (Spain) v Paris St Germain (France)

Shakhtar Donetsk (Ukraine) v Borussia Dortmund (Germany)

FC Porto (Portugal) v Malaga (Spain)

Galatasaray (Turkey) v FC Schalke 04 (Germany)

The Deloitte Football Money League, which ranks football clubs by their annual generation of revenue, provides an excellent guide to the relative strengths of the last 16. Of the eight teams which won their mini leagues at the group stage ("seeded" clubs), six are among the 20 biggest football clubs in the world. These are the teams that managers in the second pool hoped to avoid (unseeded because they were runners up in the mini leagues). Only four of the eight unseeded clubs are among the world's Top 20 – global leader Real Madrid and number five Arsenal among them. 

The table above inversely ranks teams according to their global ranking. On the basis of money being a great guide, the ideal draw for a "seeded" club like Manchester United would have been Turkey's Galatasaray but as they've already met in the group stages they were kept apart at this stage. So Man Utd's best option would have been FC Porto. For Arsenal, the best possible outcome would have been drawing Malaga or Paris St Germain.

Instead, Sir Alex Ferguson's team got the worst possible outcome by drawing Real Madrid. The one aspect in Man Utd's favour, though, is that as one of the seeded teams it gets to play the home game second.  Arsenal's Arsene Wenger would be pleased to have avoided Barcelona but he'd surely have preferred any of the other options ahead of last year's beaten finalists Bayern Munich.

Scotland's Celtic did rather better, its progression past the group stages being rewarded with a draw against Italy's Juventus. 

Although money isn't everything, football is a business like any other so advantage is usually enjoyed by taking on opponents with less resources. Deloitte's data, compiled for its Money League Table which is republished below, offers insight into how the world's top 20 clubs stack up. All of the Top 20 are based in Europe with the nearest challengers from elsewhere being the Brazilian duo of Corinthians and Sao Paulo which would need to boost revenues by at least 50% to break into this elite group.