UEFA Champions League Draw Preview For Manchester United

On Thursday (5:45pm CET, 4:45pm BST, 11:45am EST), this season's UEFA Champions League group stage draw will occur and now that we know all of the participants, we can begin to anticipate on who Manchester United might clash with in Europe. Quite obviously, last season was hugely disappointing when Sir Alex Ferguson's side failed to advance from the group stages. Prior to that, the club had reached three finals in a four season span. Just as it was in May of 2011, the location of this season's final is at Wembley again. The 32 teams are divided into four pots and because United are in Pot One, they should avoid most of Europe's elite. However, there are certainly some sides we will hope to avoid. Here are the pots:

Pot Two: We can't draw another English team so we don't have to worry about Manchester City. All of these sides are strong enough to threaten us but I'm thinking we want to avoid Benfica -- who we saw last season in the group stage -- and Valencia.

Pot Three: I want no part of Juventus and Paris Saint-Germain. Yes, the latter is struggling in Ligue 1 but they have enormous talent and it likely won't be long until they improve.

Pot Four: We definitely want to avoid Shinji Kagawa's friends at Borussia Dortmund. Celtic could be fun.

It would be awesome if City drew either Barcelona or Real Madrid, Juve or PSG, and BVD.

Who do you want to see United avoid? Who would you like United to draw? Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section below.