Champions League nightmare to put Rangers and Celtic to SLEEP as UEFA make major draw admission

Celtic and Rangers are being warned to stay alert after UEFA announced it would take "three or four hours" to organise next season's Champions League group stage draw manually due to changes in the competition's format.

UEFA is rolling out fresh looks for all three of its men's club competitions starting from next season, replacing the 32-team Champions League group phase with a larger one featuring 36 teams that has been going on since the 1999-2000 campaign. In the upcoming league phase every team will compete against eight different opponents in order to cut down on any pointless games, pit top teams against each other much earlier than before, and make the knockout draw much more significant based on their final league position.

As it stands, the winners of the Scottish Premiership will directly qualify for the group stage next season, with the side that finishes in second going into the third qualifying round for the Champions League. With nine games remaining, Rangers command a two-point lead over bitter rivals Celtic at the top, with the teams due to face off against each other twice before the campaign draws to a close.

Teams are usually selected manually from seeded pots, but UEFA's deputy general secretary Giorgio Marchetti confessed that it won't be possible to have a fully manual draw, predicting that the Champions League draw alone may take up "three or four hours" and involve nearly 900 balls if they decide not change the current procedure.

Although the exact format for the draw is still getting final touches, UEFA has confirmed that it will be a "hybrid" event - some manual drawing of balls combined with some automatic processes. UEFA clarified that any computerised elements will still be checked