Harry had the right idea during Champions League draw

Group B is the 'Group of Hell'? Very hard to pick two from 4 in Group F, and some great away trips for Celtic fans in Group H.

Chelsea will probably be the happiest of the top seeds (and it can't help having Samuel Eto'o joining on a free transfer), but there are some great games to look forward to - as there always are in the Champions League, you just have to put up with the long, drawn-out process that accompanies the draw. Surely there must be an easier way? It just makes legends of the game look stupid for not being able to unscrew a little plastic ball !

Seems Harry Redknapp had the right idea during the marathon event (although I'm sure he's busy preparing for games against Yeovil and Doncaster)....

Here's the full draw:

Group A: Manchester United, Shakhtar Donetsk, Bayer Leverkusen, Real Sociedad

Group B: Real Madrid, Juventus, Galatasaray, Copenhagen

Group C: Benfica, Paris St-Germain, Olympiakos, Anderlecht

Group D: Bayern Munich, CSKA Moscow, Manchester City, Viktoria Plzen

Group E: Chelsea, Schalke, Basel, Steaua Bucharest

Group F: Arsenal, Marseille, Borussia Dortmund, Napoli

Group G: Porto, Atletico Madrid, Zenit St Petersburg, Austria Vienna

Group H: Barcelona, AC Milan, Ajax, Celtic

Who will escape the Championship?

Forest are my pick, but QPR could go the way of Wolves

Season starts this weekend as teams vie to get into the Premier League

Picking a winner of the Championship is a little like picking a needle out of a haystack (something I can't imagine anyone has ever done, and if they did, it must have been a really slow week).

The season starts Saturday, and runs until May 3, 2014. It's a brutal 46 game slog, and is a really tough test to get into the Premier League.

The teams that went down (QPR, Wigan and Reading) all have a good chance of going back up, but who knows what players Harry Redknapp will have at QPR, and how long his patience will last. He always says he's not a wheeler-dealer, but he'll have to be to get Rangers to bounce straight back - or I could see them going the way of Portsmouth.

Leeds, Sheffield Wednesday, Derby, Bolton, Blackburn and Birmingham are all reminders of how easy it is not only to fall into England's second tier, but how hard it is to get out. Look at Wolves, they are now in the third tier after successive relegations, and Portsmouth are realizing that just finding players is harder than discovering   

My pick is for Nottingham Forest to contend this year. They seem a little more stable than they were, and have made a couple of good signings for the Championship level. 

But then I know about as much as Tony Fernandes about football. He will fit in perfectly with fans of the Championship, as none of them have any idea if their team will be top or bottom.