The Champions League draw takes place at 17:00 BST on Thursday in Istanbul - so what do you need to know?

The group stage will be played over nine midweeks this season so the World Cup can be accommodated.

So who is in it, who is going to win it, how does it work and how has the Russian invasion of Ukraine affected things?

How does the draw work?

The Champions League takes the same format as always. Four English teams - Manchester City, Liverpool, Chelsea and Tottenham - went straight into the group stage along with Scottish champions Celtic, while Rangers booked their place by beating PSV Eindhoven in a qualifier.

One team from each pot goes into each group, but teams from the same country cannot be drawn together.

Uefa has to fit the Champions League group stage into a smaller period of time because of the Qatar World Cup.

The group stage starts on 6 September and runs to 2 November - a period of nine weeks (compared to 12 weeks normally).

Usually it runs until the second week of December - but the World Cup kicks off on 20 November.

There will only be three weeks without Champions League games between the groups starting and ending. Two of those land during the September international break - and the other in mid-October has a full round of midweek Premier League games.

The knockout stages will be later than usual. The last-16 ties will be played over a month from 14 February to 15 March. The quarter-finals are in April and the semis in May.

The final is at Istanbul's Ataturk Olympic Stadium on 10 June 2023. It was initially meant to be the venue for the 2020 final, and then the 2021 showpiece, but both finals were moved to Portugal because of Covid restrictions.

Strikers on the move

Several of the Champions League's top goalscorers of recent years have been on the move this summer.

Robert Lewandowski, the third top scorer in the tournament's history with 86, has moved from Bayern Munich to Barcelona.

Sadio Mane, who netted 10 Champions League goals in 2017-18, has in effect replaced him after making the move from Liverpool.

Darwin Nunez, who scored six goals last season, has in turn moved from Benfica to replace Mane at Anfield.

Erling Haaland, who won the Champions League golden boot in 2020-21, has joined Manchester City from Borussia Dortmund. He has scored 23 goals in only 19 games in the tournament.

Sebastien Haller, last season's third top scorer with 11 goals for Ajax, took Haaland's place at Dortmund - though he is having chemotherapy for a testicular tumour and will be out for a few months.

Meanwhile, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, who is in the top 10 Champions League scorers ever, is back in the tournament for the first time since 2017 with AC Milan.

Can an English team win this year?

Despite a widely held view that the Premier League is the top league in the world, only two of the previous 10 Champions Leagues have been won by English teams.

On both occasions they were all-English finals, with Liverpool beating Tottenham in 2019 and Chelsea defeating Manchester City in 2021.

Liverpool have lost two of the past five finals to Real Madrid, including last season at the Stade de France.

Manchester City will hope the addition of Haaland, who averages a Champions League goal every 64 minutes, will get them over the line this season.

Jurgen Klopp's Liverpool are hoping for a fourth final in six years, while Chelsea are bidding to become only the third English team (after Liverpool and Manchester United) to win three European Cups.

Tottenham, finalists in 2019, were guided back into the Champions League last season by Antonio Conte and will hope that the Italian - winner of one Premier League and four Serie A titles as a manager - can lead them to silverware.

Anything else?

There will be no Russian teams in this season's Champions League as part of the Uefa punishment because of the country's ongoing invasion of Ukraine.

Ukrainian side Shakhtar Donetsk will play their group games at Legia Warsaw's Stadion Wojska Polskiego in Poland, almost 1,000 miles from Donetsk.

That will be Shakhtar's fourth different Champions League home ground away from their city since Donetsk was captured by pro-Russian separatists in 2014.

Dynamo Kyiv, who lost to Benfica in the play-offs, also played their qualifiers in Poland, at the LKS Municipal Stadium in Lodz.

Who is going to win the Champions League? (BBC: Text, excluding headline)

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