Harry Kane and Arsenal earn easy pathways, but PSG face a gauntlet: Winners and losers from the Champions League league-phase draw

Is this season that the Harry Kane curse is finally broken? Clearly, winning the Bundesliga represents an easier assignment for a Bayern Munich side that has been significantly strengthened during their summer transfer window, but the Bavarians will also be quietly confident of challenging for the Champions League again.

Last year's semi-finalists have drawn a couple of powerhouses in Paris Saint-Germain and Barcelona, the latter of whom are coached by former boss Hansi Flick, and a trip to Aston Villa is fraught with danger, but Bayern's Pot Two teams (Benfica and Shakhtar Donetsk) are hardly intimidating.

Vincent Kompany's side look a good bet to progress directly to the last 16, and Kane should score plenty of goals against the likes of Dinamo Zagreb and Slovan Bratislava along the way.

Paris Saint-Germain couldn't win the Champions League with Kylian Mbappe. So, what chance do they have of finally conquering Europe after being given a dreadful draw in Monte Carlo?!

Things really couldn't have gone much worse for the French champions, who ended up being paired with the two strongest sides in nearly every pot. Drawing Manchester City and Bayern was bad enough, but getting Atletico Madrid and Arsenal from Pot Two was particularly cruel, and it's not as if their Pot Three teams, PSV and Red Bull Salzburg, will be any pushovers either.

PSG have recruited some exciting young players during the summer, chief among them Joao Neves, but Luis Enrique's men might struggle to finish in the top eight in the league phase, which would mean dropping into the very unappealing play-off round.

Celtic's recent record in the Champions League is pretty atrocious, so they certainly won't be getting ahead of themselves after Thursday's draw. But Brendan Rodgers probably can't believe his luck right now, as the Bhoys have managed to avoid any of the really big boys.

Their two Pot One teams are RB Leipzig and Borussia Dortmund, while they pulled Club Brugge out of Pot Two. As Pot Four teams go, Aston Villa away is as tough as it comes, but Celtic unquestionably have a real shot at getting into the play-offs for the last 16, with home games to come against Leipzig, Brugge, Young Boys and Slovan Bratislava. The Scottish champions are capable of putting all four of those sides under real pressure in the cauldron that is Celtic Park.

Arne Slot really could have done without being immediately measured against the man most Liverpool fans wanted to replace Jurgen Klopp as manager. However, Xabi Alonso is on his way back to Anfield with his brilliant, double-winning Bayer Leverkusen side, which went within one Europa League win of completing an undefeated treble last season.

Liverpool are undeniably lucky to have RB Leipzig as one of their Pot One opponents, but they don't have many happy memories of facing Real Madrid, while trips to Milan and Eindhoven will be nothing if not tricky.

The Reds definitely have the firepower to progress, but a top-eight finish looks far from straightforward for Slot in his first season on Merseyside, particularly for a squad that still looks a little short on cover in certain areas.

Arsenal let themselves down in last season's Champions League. It may have been their first appearance in the competition since 2017, but they failed dismally to take advantage of a Bayern Munich in turmoil under Thomas Tuchel and bowed out surprisingly meekly in the quarter-finals.

Mikel Arteta's young side will have learned a lot from that experience and you can be sure that they'll be looking forward to tackling Paris Saint-Germain and Inter in the coming campaign.

Arsenal have another couple of testing fixtures on paper - they face both Atalanta and Sporting CP away - but the Gunners will rightly be targeting a top-eight finish, which would mean two less games by avoiding the play-offs - a very attractive proposition for teams also expecting to challenge for domestic titles this season.

Talk about too much information! UEFA essentially went from one extreme to another in terms of the draw. Whereas once the process itself took far too long and very little happened for ages, here, we were inundated with fixtures - and with very little time to take it all in.

The new format has certainly thrown up some fascinating fixtures, for everyone involved, from Real Madrid to Brest. But while the draw was swift, it felt rushed and, thus, utterly overwhelming. Worse still, it'll be two more days before we actually know when these games will be played.

So, while the draw was very different, the resulting sense of frustration was very familiar. No wonder special guest star Cristiano Ronaldo looked so utterly disinterested by the end!