Barcelona looking forward to “attractive” Arsenal clash

Premier League rivals Chelsea, who have had a tough start to the season, were also handed a hard assignment as they were paired with Paris Saint-Germain for the third year in succession.

In that time, they have twice bought Arsenal’s captain and best player – Thierry Henry and Cesc Fabregas – and they have twice eliminated the London club from the competition, in the quarter-finals of 2010 and in the first knockout round the following year.

Barcelona said they are also expecting a hard tie.

“Putting aside these two, all the others we could play in equal conditions and have a clear opportunity to advance to the quarter-finals”. With the likes of Ozil, Sanchez and Giroud in form, they could well harm Barcelona in greater ways than expected. They are growing in the competition and it will be a big challenge but we hope to be ready.

“We’re in a rich vein of form at the moment, we’re sitting top of the Premier League and come February and March we’ll have some of our top players back from injury hopefully, so it’ll be great to take them on with our full strength side if we could”.

“I think it is an attractive draw. Against Monaco we didn’t respect them at all”, he added, recalling Arsenal’s disappointing loss to the Ligue 1 side on away goals last season.

PSG overcame Chelsea at the same stage last season before suffering a 5-1 aggregate loss to Barcelona.

Paris Saint-Germain will play Chelsea; Eindhoven will face Atletico Madrid, Dynamo Kiev will play Manchester City, Gent will face Wolfsburg and finally Benfica will play Zenit St. Petersburg.

Meanwhile Manchester City is rewarded as they will face Dynamo Kiev when they’ll try to reach the last-eight.

The first legs will be played on February 16-17 and 23-24 with the return matches scheduled to take place on March 8-9 and 15-16. Holders Sevilla, who also exited the Champions League last week, play Norwegians Molde. “We lacked in those departments last season, so we want to avoid repeating those mistakes”.

Liverpool face Augsburg, another club in their maiden European campaign, while Sevilla, bidding for a hat-trick of Europa Leag-ue titles, meet Norwegian team Molde.

Laurent Blanc, PSG manager: “The Champions League is in two stages which are quite different”.