Robert Rowan, former SFA scout, assesses five teams that could make a big impression on this season's competition.
Red Bull Salzburg Few teams press as aggressively and as high up the pitch as the Austrians. Salzburg performed very well in last season's competition beating Ajax comfortably over two legs and winning the Austrian Bundesliga with ease. Under new management this season, but still top of the league. John Collins should be fully prepared for what Salzburg can do. John and I analysed them intensively last season to understand why they are so successful.
Rio Ave The Portuguese side are competing for the first time in European competion thanks to a fantatic season last year under the watch of Nuno Espirito and Ian Cathro, the former Dundee United and Scottish Football Association youth coach. Three games into the Primeira Liga, they sit top of the table having scored 11 times scored and conceded just once. Remarkably for a small club that has just lost its coaching team to Valencia, they look better than they did last season. They have the good fortune to find themselves drawn in one of the easier groups and I think they can possibly progress to the next stage.
Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk The wealthy Ukrainians have got to the last 16 twice in a row and although they have a tough group containing Inter Milan I fancy them to repeat the triumph. Yevhen Konoplyanka is their undoubted talisman and he has drawn covetous glances from a number of suitors in the Premier League including Tottenham Hotspur, Liverpool and West Ham). They are very aggressive and well organised under Myron Markevych who has stuck to the playing style implemented by Juande Ramos, the former Spurs and Sevilla head coach, who insisted on making the side difficult to break down.
Torino The Italians surprised many people by finishing 7th in Serie A last season which rubber-stamped their qualification for the Europa League. Alessio Cerci and Ciro Immobile struck 35 league goals between them last season but both have now left the club, for Atletico Madrid and Borussia Dortmund respectively. The 30m euro transfer income generated from those sales has been reinvested wisely, however, with some notable new arrivals in the shape of former Italian national team forward, Fabio Quagliarella, from Juventus, the Italian-Brazilian centre-forward Amauri and the second striker Josef Martinez from Young Boys Berne. They could be one of dark horses in the competition this year.
Borussia Monchengladbach Progressed comfortably through the qualifying rounds after an excellent season in the. Lucien Favre has returned Monchengladbach to the upper echelons of German football forging a very disciplined side sprinkled with classy creative players in the shape of Thorgan Hazard (the brother of Chelsea attacker Eden). They should progress from their group with relative ease with Villarreal the only serious threat.
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