Manchester United get another tough test as farcical Champions League draw is redone

Following the confusion which led to United being erroneously drawn to face Villarreal, and then left out of the potential opponents to face Atletico Madrid, UEFA declared the draw void and said it would be repeated later in the day.

Three hours after the first draw took place, officials tried again in Nyon, with UEFA deputy general secretary Giorgio Marchetti opening with an apology for the earlier mistakes.

“As many of you will have noticed there were some errors made in the original draw caused by a malfunction of the software which went through an outside provider to tell us which teams are eligible to be drawn against each other,” he said.

“After the draw the external independent auditor couldn’t guarantee the problem with the IT did not exist from the start and as a result the full draw needs to be redone.”

Manchester City will take on Sporting Lisbon, while Liverpool will head to Inter Milan.

Defending champions Chelsea will face Lille – the only fixture to be a repeat of one drawn earlier on Monday before that result was declared void due to software errors.