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Man City, Liverpool, Chelsea, Tottenham in UCL draw: Who could EPL sides face?

  /  autty

Four English teams will be in the draw for the Champions League group stages. Who could they face and when is it held?

The annual draw for the group stages, which can play a major part in a club's fortunes in Europe, will take place this week after the final round of qualifiers are decided on Tuesday and Wednesday.

Already, 26 of the 32 teams in the group stages have been confirmed, with six teams progressing to join them through qualifying, potentially including 2018/19 semi-finalists Ajax.

So what can the four English teams, Manchester City, holders Liverpool, Chelsea and Tottenham expect?

When is the draw?

This season's group-stage draw will be held in its usual location of the Grimaldi Forum in Monaco on Thursday, at 5pm BST.

How does it work?

As you'll probably know, there are four teams in each group, one from each 'pot', which theoretically stops the strongest teams from knocking one another out too early.

The top pot, Pot 1, includes last season's Champions League winners Liverpool and Europa League winners Chelsea, as well as Manchester City and the other domestic champions of the top-six performing leagues across Europe.

The rest of the pots, 2-4, are decided in rank order of the remaining 24 clubs' European co-efficient - which is a calculation of their performance in the Champions League and Europa League over the last five years.

No two teams from the same association can be drawn together at this stage - so there'll be no English derbies in Europe just yet.

So which pots should we look out for?

All of the clubs in Pot 1 have already been decided. The six league champions - Man City, Barcelona, Juventus, Bayern Munich, Zenit St Petersburg, and Paris Saint-Germain - will all be seeded top of their respective groups, along with Liverpool and Chelsea.

Certain other clubs also know what pot they will be in already, but with six teams yet to be decided, there are some whose fate is still to be decided, depending on who makes it through.

Real Madrid, Atletico Madrid and Tottenham will definitely be in Pot 2; Antonio Conte's Inter Milan will be in Pot 3 and could be drawn against his former club Chelsea; while teams with limited recent success in European competitions, like Galatasary, Atalanta and Lille, will be in the final pot, Pot 4.

What about a full list of qualified teams?

Sure. Here's the teams who have definitely qualified for this year's group stages and where they could end up:

Pot 1: Liverpool, Chelsea, Manchester City, Barcelona, Juventus, Bayern Munich, Zenit St Petersburg, Paris Saint-Germain.

Pot 2: Real Madrid, Atletico Madrid, Borussia Dortmund, Napoli, Shakhtar, Tottenham, Benfica.

Pot 2 or 3: Lyon.

Pot 3: Bayer Leverkusen, RB Salzburg, Valencia, Inter.

Pot 3 or 4: Lokomotiv Moskow, Genk.

Pot 4: Galatasaray, RB Leipzig, Atalanta, Lille.

Who else could join them?

As we mentioned, there are six teams yet to qualify, and to be honest it's a bit messy depending on what happens in the second legs this week.

Here are the second legs - home teams listed first - and how the playoff ties are balanced so far:

Let's keep it as simple as possible. Of the 12 remaining teams, Ajax are the only ones who would get into Pot 2 if they make it through. The rest will all drop into Pot 3 or Pot 4.