United and Arsenal among top seeds in Champions League draw

MANCHESTER UNITED and Arsenal will be among the top seeds in next season’s Champions League.

UEFA yesterday released the club coefficients which determine the sides to be ranked among the top eight and, as last season, the Barclaycard Premiership’s top two are in the elite set.

It means they will avoid holders AC Milan, Juventus and Lazio, Real Madrid and Deportivo La Coruna from Spain plus German champions Bayern Munich.

If they qualify, Chelsea would be among a strong set of second seeds including Inter Milan, Celta Vigo, Borussia Dortmund and UEFA Cup winners Porto.

Celtic, Newcastle and Rangers would be among the set of third seeds if they secure qualification for the group stage.

UEFA will only finally confirm the seedings before the draw for the group stage in August but have always used the coefficient system in the past, which is based on a combination of an individual club’s record in Europe and the performance of each country’s clubs overall.

The draw for the Champions League will split the 32 clubs into eight groups of four, with each group having one top-seeded club, one second seed, a third seed and a fourth seed.

The draw for the first two qualifying rounds of the Champions League takes place at UEFA’s headquarters in Nyon, Switzerland, on Friday.

UEFA coefficient ranking, (*denotes not yet qualified for the group stage):

Top group: 1 AC Milan (Ita, holders, 97.155), 2 Real Madrid (Spa, 151.769), 3 Manchester United (Eng, 136.170), 4 Bayern Munich (Ger, 124.566), 5 Lazio* (Ita, 106.155), 6 Arsenal (Eng, 105.170), 7 Juventus (Ita, 100.155), 8 Deportivo La Coruna* (Spa, 98.769).

Second group: 9 Inter Milan (Ita, 93.155), 10 Porto (Por, 86.791), 11 Celta Vigo* (Spa, 86.769), 12 Galatasaray* (Tur, 78.495), 13 Lyon (Fra, 76.734), 14 Panathinaikos (Gre, 72.391), 15 Borussia Dortmund* (Ger, 70.566), 16 Chelsea* (Eng, 70.170).

Third group: 17 PSV Eindhoven (Hol, 60.749), 18 Celtic* (Sco, 57.187), 19 AEK Athens* (Gre, 56.391), 20 Dynamo Kiev (Ukr, 55291), 21 Ajax Amsterdam * (Hol, 54.749), 22 Olympiakos (Gre, 54.391), 23 Newcastle* (Eng, 51.170), 24 Rangers* (Sco, 50.187)

Fourth group: 25 Sparta Prague* (Cze, 49.975), 26 Olympique Marseille* (Fra, 49.734), 27 Stuttgart (Ger, 49.566), 28 Locomotive Moscow* (Rus, 49.520), 29 Slavia Prague* (Cze, 48.975), 30 Real Sociedad (Spa, 47.769), 31 Monaco (Fra, 45.73