City land PSG AND Barcelona while Liverpool dodge the lot in UCL draw

Spare a thought for whoever runs Manchester City’s travel budget. In a Champions League draw where thirty-six clubs were spread across the continent by a supercomputer — one touch of a button, UEFA proudly tells us — the machine looked at City, considered the two teams on Earth you’d least want to draw, and handed them both.

PSG at home. Barcelona away. The reigning nightmare and the reigning artists, in the same eight games. If the algorithm has a sense of humour, this was the punchline.

Contrast that with Anfield, where they’ll be quietly delighted. Liverpool’s eight? Atlético Madrid and Porto and Villarreal and Lens at home; Inter, Club Brugge, Fenerbahçe and LASK away. Serious nights, no soft touches — but scan that list for a genuine European heavyweight and you’ll be scanning a while. No PSG. No Real Madrid. No Barcelona. The Reds drew the scenic route while everyone around them got the motorway pile-up.

And everyone around them really did. Arsenal, still nursing the memory of losing last season’s final to PSG, pulled Real Madrid at home and Bayern Munich away — a bracket that reads like a punishment rather than a draw. City got the two superclubs. Liverpool got a European city break. Same competition, wildly different envelopes.

The bit UEFA won’t put in the press release is what this actually does to the table. The new league phase rewards teams that rack up wins against beatable opposition, and Liverpool’s slate is quietly perfect for exactly that: eight games, a top-eight finish, and a bye past the knockout play-off round all look very achievable when your toughest away day is the San Siro rather than the Parc des Princes. City, meanwhile, could play beautifully across all eight and still limp into the play-off places, because PSG and Barcelona don’t hand out mercy points.

So the pundits calling this “the group of death” for City aren’t wrong, even if the format technically abolished groups. You can abolish the word. You can’t abolish PSG away, Barcelona away — sorry, at Barcelona — and a supercomputer that clearly holds a grudge.

Liverpool got the kindest draw of the English clubs and a clear run at the top eight. City got a fixture list that belongs in a horror anthology. And somewhere in Nyon, a computer pressed one button and ruined Pep’s autumn.

Reject-all on that particular cookie, lads.