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Champions League knockouts explained as Aston Villa aim to progress

Emiliano Martinez talks to Villa team-mate Diego Carlos during the UEFA Champions League match against Juventus at Villa Park.
-Credit: (Image: Reach Publishing Services Limited)


Aston Villa look set to progress to the next stage of the Champions League after Wednesday night's stalemate against Italian giants Juventus.

Unai Emery's side have won three, drawn one, and lost one in Europe's most elite competition so far, conceding just one goal in the process and arguably should have turned one point into three against the Old Lady if it were not for a controversial late VAR intervention.

With victories over Bayern Munich, Bologna and Young Boys, Villa have put themselves right into contention for automatic progression through to the round of 16.

The top eight teams in the group phase go through automatically, whilst positions nine to 24 play against each other to see who will progress to the round of 16. Teams that finish between 25th and 36th are completely eliminated, but it is very unlikely the Lions will find themselves in that predicament as they currently sit just out of the automatic places in ninth.

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This season is the first of the Champions League's new format, and with that comes some new specific details in how teams are drawn against each other in the first knockout round.

Teams that finish ninth to 16th are seeded whereas 17th to 24th are unseeded, keeping the best-performing teams from playing each other early on in the tournament.

UEFA then create pairs with the teams - ninth and 10th, 11th and 12th, and so forth through to 23rd and 24th. The teams that are ninth and 10th will then play one of the teams that finished 23rd or 24th, with 11th and 12th playing a team that finished either 21st or 22nd and so on. A draw is made to discover which of the two teams each club will play.

As a rule, the seeded teams (ninth to 16th) will play the second leg of the round at home.

All the new rulings mean that it is entirely possible for a side to play a team from the same nation in the first knockout round.

If the group stage were to end now, Villa would finish ninth and participate in the knockout round, playing either Dinamo Zagreb or current holders and 15-time winners Real Madrid.

For the following round, the round of 16, the teams that finished first to eighth in the league phase and qualified automatically go into it seeded, whereas the winners of the first knockout round will be unseeded.

There is still every chance that the Villans could be one of the teams that automatically progresses which would be an astounding feat for the club whose last appearance in the competition came in 1983.

Emery's boys still have RB Leipzig, Monaco and Celtic to play in their remaining three league phase games.

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