Tottenham will be in Pot 2 for the 2022-23 Champions League draw

Hey y’all, were you aware that Tottenham Hotspur is back in the Champions League? Hooray, dilly-ding dilly dong! And thanks to a bunch of stat-heads that track these sorts of things, we also now have an idea of the kind of teams Spurs could draw in the group stage.

As automatic qualifiers by virtue of finishing fourth in the Premier League this season and based on their coefficient, Spurs will be placed in Pot 2 for the group stage draw. There’s still a fair amount that’s yet to be decided with regards to which exact teams will be participating and where, but here’s where the pots stand now.

Spurs will be joined in Pot 2 by either Liverpool or Ajax. Should Liverpool win the Champions League this weekend, they’ll automatically be placed in Pot 1 as Champions League winners. (That’s also how Frankfurt ended there — as winners of this year’s Europa League.) However, should they lose to Real Madrid, the final spot in Pot 1 would fall to Ajax, the winner of the Eredivisie, with Liverpool falling to Pot 2.

After that it gets murky in Pots 3 & 4. Italicized names are club teams that qualify for the group stage via the playoff rounds, either via the League Path or the Champions Path. These clubs may or may not actually make the group stages barring upsets, but are listed as the de facto placeholders for now as the clubs with the biggest coefficients.

For Spurs, it means (as expected) a pretty wide range of potential outcomes. Worst case scenario is a situation where Spurs get drawn in a group with clubs like PSG, Dortmund, and Marseille, or perhaps Bayern Munich, Inter Milan, and Red Star Belgrade. Best case is something like Porto, Shakhtar, and Celtic, or perhaps Frankfurt, Sporting, and a low coefficient club that sneaks into Pot 4.

We’ll know more in time, but for now it’s just fun to see Tottenham’s name in that pot list instead of, y’know, Arsenal and Manchester United.