Arsene Wenger plays down Arsenal’ Euro hopes

Arsenal manager Arsene Wenger Champions League

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Arsene Wenger admits that Arsenal are not among the favourites to win this season’s Champions League but wants his side to go as far as possible.

The Gunners have never won Europe’s elite club competition, with defeat to Barcelona in the 2006 final their best showing to date.

They kicked off this season’s campaign with a disappointing 2-0 away defeat to Borussia Dortmund and face Turkish giants Galatasaray at the Emirates Stadium on Wednesday night as they look to get back on track in Group D.

It is a match they need to win, with a double-header against Belgian side Anderlecht to follow before the Germans arrive in north London in late November, and they can be backed at 1.55 to secure the win, with the Turks on offer at 6.46.

Getting out of the group stage has been Arsenal’s limit in recent seasons and they have not looked like winning the event, and Wenger feels that the competition has become somewhat predictable with few shocks any more.

“If you make a poll tomorrow and say to people ‘give me four clubs who will win the Champions League’, then 80 or 90 per cent of people will say ‘there are these four clubs’.”

And, while the French tactician was honest enough not to include his charges in the elite quartet, he wants his men to give it a real go and try to ruffle a few feathers along the way.

“I don’t think that we are one of the four who will be favourites to win it, but football is strange – and not always predictable,” he added. “So let’s first qualify from the group stage and then we will see.”

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