Champions League Draw: Arsenal Face Tricky Test Against Besiktas

The draw for the Champions League play offs has been conducted this morning and Arsenal have been handed a tricky test against Turkish outfit Besiktas. 

A fourth placed finish in the Premier League last season means we’ve got to navigate a two legged play-off to earn a place in the Champions League group stages, but thankfully we were a seeded team in today’s draw along with FC Porto, Bayer Leverkusen, Napoli and Zenit St Petersburg.

While we avoided a tough draw against Athletic Bilbao, Besiktas isn’t going to be an easy task by any stretch of the imagination as Turkey is never an easy place to go and we can be sure of a hostile atmosphere.

Not the easiest draw we could have got as Copenhagen and Standard Liege would have been a much simpler task, but I’m still confident we can beat the Turkish side over two legs and book our place in the group stages of the Champions League.

The first leg will be played away from home at the Vodafone Arena on either the 19/20 August which will come sandwiched in between the Crystal Palace and Everton games, while we’ll welcome them to the Emirates the following week for the decisive second leg.