Arsenal Champions League hopes dealt a crushing blow, but Gunners ‘escape’ UEFA punishment

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Football365

·9 September 2026

Arsenal Champions League hopes dealt a crushing blow, but Gunners ‘escape’ UEFA punishment

Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester City and Aston Villa have all been dealt crushing and very real Champions League blows by our old friend the Supercomputer.

But there’s some better news for the Gunners, who have escaped punishment from UEFA via the crafty ruse of… not breaking any rules.

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Erling Haaland, meanwhile, is absolutely furious.

OK, Supercomputer We are absolutely delighted to reveal that supercomputers are still very much a thing in big 2026/27. And even better, that they are still incredibly janky.

And also that, yes, in our head when we hear ‘supercomputer’ we still think of a huge room full of huge cabinet-sized bit of computing equipment with all knobs and lights and buttons on them and things whirring and whirling about as serious men in white coats with clipboards wander around with emotionless expressions studying dot-matrix printouts that come spewing out of one of the cabinets that say things like ‘DUNNO, MATE, ARSENAL MAYBE?’

And also that there is a Bertha-style large piece of industrial machinery in the room for some reason.

We know that’s not what a supercomputer actually is. Just as The Sun know that you don’t actually need anything that could be deemed a ‘supercomputer’ in the year of someone’s lord 2026 to chuck the 36 Champions League teams into a semi-coherent finishing order.

What’s most exciting about this latest effort is that it hasn’t even bothered with the semi-coherent part.

Real Madrid finish top of the pile and you know what? Fair enough. But we reckon we could genuinely give you 20 guesses for the unbeaten side that finishes second before you landed on Galatasaray, for it is they. Real Betis are fourth.

The highest-ranked English team, and only one to make it straight through to the last 16 (bearing in mind five English teams including f*cking Spurs did that last season)? Manchester United.

Arsenal? Ninth. Liverpool are 13th. Manchester City and Aston Villa scrape into the play-off round in 21st and 22nd.

The Sun, instead of dismissing this out of hand, have instead got very excited indeed. ALL CAPS excited.

A simulation of the new-look league phase run by British Gambler has the Gunners MISSING OUT on automatic qualification.

How long can we call it the ‘new-look league phase’, by the way? It’s on it’s third season now. It’s lasted longer than most Prime Ministers.

It’s predicted the North Londoners will finish NINTH in the table and miss out on automatic qualification by a single point. The supercomputer stunningly has Manchester United finishing ABOVE Arsenal in sixth place. That’s despite the Red Devils not having played in Europe’s elite club competition in THREE SEASONS. The supercomputer’s prediction of Arsenal finishing in the play-off spots is truly stunning given that Mikel Arteta‘s side won ALL EIGHT of their league phase games last season.

Is it stunning? Is it truly stunning? Or is it maybe a load of old BOLLOCKS? Have you thought about perhaps turning the supercomputer OFF and ON again?

Five consecutive paras featuring ALL CAPS revelations would be a bit much even for a story real things that had happened, lads, instead of MADE-UP ones that HAVEN’T.

You wouldn’t like me when I’m angry Textbook work from the Daily Mirror here.

Headline:

Erling Haaland angry with Ayyoub Bouaddi as he sends clear message to Man City chairman

Erling Haaland praised new Manchester City signing Ayyoub Bouaddi after the victory over Porto, and jokingly claimed that he was ‘angry’ with his new team-mate.

Clear message to Man City chairman:

“I think he [Bouaddi] had a really good game,” Haaland told Amazon Prime after City’s win in Portugal. “The last couple of weeks in training, I just told the chairman, he’s been amazing in training and everything.”

Why is trust in the media at an all-time low? Verily, tis a mystery of our age.

Escape velocity It’s not top of our list of bugbears, but it’s definitely on there: using the word ‘escape’ to imply a club has been dealt with leniently or differently in a situation where all that’s actually happened is clear rules being followed fairly and correctly.

Arsenal escape UEFA fine after being forced to cancel Champions League press conference

No, the Mirror, they didn’t ‘escape’ a UEFA fine; they were never going to be fined because it’s not their fault they’ve been caught up in the ait-traffic travel chaos that has gripped the UK.

We know you know this, because you say it right there in the story.

Many sides often receive a financial penalty if their conference is delayed by at least an hour. However, UEFA rules do state pre-match plans can be changed if circumstances beyond their control force them to do so. Their official rules state: “Clubs may only change their MD-1 plans on account of force majeure and with the agreement of UEFA.”

So situations exactly like this one, then. Still, bet other teams wouldn’t have got away with it, would they? Special treatment for the Gunners, is it? Again, you know it’s not because you tell us so.

Last season, Liverpool found themselves in a similar scenario when their travel plans were disrupted. Before their group-stage clash against Eintracht Frankfurt, a flight delay caused by “technical issues with the aircraft” resulted in the Merseysiders arriving in Germany later than expected. Despite the fact they had to miss their conference, they were not fined.

Of course they weren’t. Because that would’ve been mental.

There’s a perfectly valid story here about the fact Arsenal’s preparations for the game have been impacted by disrupted travel plans – while we imagine fans travelling to Naples from London have also had a sub-optimal time.

But let’s not pretend they’ve somehow wriggled out of a punishment they were never getting for a rule they haven’t broken.