Champions League round-up – Mainly predictable outcomes in the end

No real surprises here as Roma and Chelsea qualify for the next stage and Bordeaux move on to the Uefa Cup. That would have been an odds on bet before a ball was kicked in the tournament. Having said that, the fourth placed team, Cluj, did themselves proud and looked far from out of their depth in this sort of company.

Last night saw Chelsea scrape past Cluj 2-1 in another less than impressive performance and Roma take the all important top spot with a 2-0 win over Bordeaux. In keeping with the predictable nature of this group, Drogba was a scorer for Chelsea and Totti bagged one for Roma.

This group was not as predictable as Group A. In the end, the Cypriot side Anorthosis Famagusta did finish fourth and leave European competition altogether, but they gave a great account of themselves and came very close. Werder Bremen came good too late leaving the unimpressive Inter to qualify in second place behind Panathinaikos.

In last night’s games Werder Bremen saw off the ‘Special one’s’ Inter 2-1 and qualify for the Uefa Cup and Panathinaikos broke Anorthosis hearts with a single goal victory.

The two favourites in this group made fairly straight forward progress to the knockout stages. Barcelona won the group despite losing their impressive unbeaten record and Sporting Lisbon joined them in the hat after an impressive group stage.

Last night, Barcelona fielded a much weakened side in their 3-2 defeat at home to Uefa Cup bound Shakhtar Donetsk. The deeply disappointing Basle side went down 1-0 at Sporting to end the competition with just one point.

This group ended with Liverpool on top, Atletico Madrid second and Marseille claiming the Uefa Cup spot despite only picking up four points. PSV will be conducting some sort of enquiry to try to establish what went wrong. Fifth place in their domestic league and out of Europe is not good enough for this once proud club.

In the final group games last night Liverpool needed to do better than Atletico in order to finish top. They duly comfortably beat the poor PSV side 3-1, despite resting the likes of Steve Gerrard, Alonso and Reina, whilst Atletico could only manage a 0-0 draw in Marseille.