Thursday afternoon’s Champions League draw at the picturesque principality of Monaco revealed a tricky set of opening round of matches for English side Arsenal. Having comprehensively seen off Steve Maclaren’s Dutch side FC Twente the previous night, Arsene Wenger’s side was one of the eight top seeded teams going into the draw for Europe’s biggest club competition. As it turned out, the draw for the Gunners could easily be termed as tricky which involves strenuous criss-crossing across the continent.

Pooled in group G along with Portugal’s Porto, Dynamo Kiev of the Ukraine and Turkish giants Fenerbahce, Arsenal need to overcome long journeys and hostile surroundings to book a place in the knockout stage. The road to Rome’s Olympic Stadium come May 27, 2009 certainly looks awkward for the North London club. Arsenal fans desperately hope for silverwares this season and the time has arrived for this massively entertaining club to repay them with a season full of success. With a mediocre start to the Premier League that included a poor loss at the hands of Fulham last weekend, the Gunners still have high hopes of launching two-fold assaults at the domestic and European levels. The hunt for the coveted European glory begins in earnest in Kiev when Wenger’s boys visit the fortress like Valeri Lobanovskiy stadium in the Ukrainian capital on September 17.

Following the draw, Arsenal’s director Danny Fiszman has already come out and admitted that the club is aware of the threats posed by Porto, Dynamo Kiev and Fenerbahce. Fiszman was quoted as saying that “It is not the worst draw we could have had. Arsene Wenger's main issue will be the travel. Porto is not too bad but Kiev and Fenerbahce [Istanbul] are long trips. That is the real issue for us. I don't think we have got it easy or we have a hard draw either. It is in the middle, with the problem of the distance of course.” Although Arsene Wenger sounds confident of the team’s progress to next stage, it remains to be seen how the youngsters cope with the journey and the pressure of performing in the middle of a hectic season. One certainly feels the need for Mr.Wenger to sign one or two tough experienced heads with enough skills to handle pressures of playing three massively difficult away games (Blackburn, Dynamo Kiev and Bolton) in the space of a week.

Looking separately at the three Champions League opponents for William Gallas and company, Porto, Kiev and Fenerbahce are uniquely difficult sides to deal with. Porto have already tasted Champions League success in 2004 under Jose Mourinho and the Portuguese giants have tremendous European pedigree, particularly when it comes to playing against British oppositions. Fenerbahce, with a passionate and hostile support, has the ability to cause upsets in the tournament after a fine display in last year’s edition which included a quarter-final first leg victory against eventual runners-up Chelsea. As far as Arsenal is concerned, the only unknown commodity is Dynamo Kiev. The Ukrainian side looked a shadow of their proud past last season but with a former Arsenal player in the form of Oleg Luzhny acting as assistant to Yuri Semin, this could be the season when the club from the capital Kiev look to steal the show and the signs were there when they packed off Spartak Moscow comprehensively in the Champions League qualifying round.

Arsenal need to watch out this group which won’t involve fancy, entertaining football all the time. The Emirates should be a factor and Arsene Wenger must ensure that his team do not lose unnecessary points at home matches while trips to Porto, Kiev and Fenerbahce would require dogged performances laced with enormous guts and will to come through a massively tricky group stage.

ALL THE BEST ARSENAL!