Tottenham are alone among the four Premier League clubs in having a Champions League group they can really savour

The leading English clubs would be aghast at any suggestion of adventure in the group phase of the Champions League. With Manchester United, Chelsea and Arsenal among the top seeds, none of their managers was ever likely to be stifling a gasp of anxiety at the draw.

Tottenham Hotspur, who last savoured the competition 48 years ago in its European Cup incarnation, would have been alone in feeling the pulse quicken though it accelerated further when they were pitted against the holders, Internazionale. The Serie A side also landed a domestic Double.

They were so effective under José Mourinho, before he left for Real Madrid, that there seldom seemed to be a instant when one trophy or another was not being cradled. The sort of acceleration that sweeps Tottenham towards such an encounter is hair-raising but also welcome since nobody can be jaded at the thought of Inter, now managed by Rafael Benítez, coming to White Hart Lane.

Their squad is so remarkable that it is virtually a caricature of excellence. At the draw in Monaco, the club continued to gorge itself on honours, with the prizes for goalkeeper, defender, midfielder and forward of the year going, respectively, to Júlio César, Maicon, Wesley Sneijder and Diego Milito. Benítez has a little less scope to introduce new blood since Mario Balotelli, who did not get off the bench in the 2010 final, has gone to Manchester City.

The greater comfort for Tottenham lies in the fact any club might be compelled to proclaim the excitement of such fixtures while shrugging ruefully in private. When Harry Redknapp does tear his gaze from Inter, he will not be especially pleased to see one of the other adversaries in the group. Werder Bremen eliminated Sampdoria in the qualifiers.

Twente Enschede, however, may have peaked by taking their first Eredivisie title and with Steve McClaren having then moved on to Wolfsburg, the side is now under the command of Michel Preud’homme. It is at least feasible that Tottenham can go through to the last 16 as runners-up in their group.

Once thoughts have been wrenched away from Inter, the mood may be sunnier at White Hart Lane since the remainder of the fixtures are less daunting. An even more marked contentment will have been felt elsewhere, with Manchester United seeing Group C as a routine assignment.

There would be normally be wincing at the prospect of La Liga foes, but Valencia have transferred both David Villa and David Silva. Ferguson might have to endure nothing more exacting than demands that he recall his time at Rangers once more. The people of Manchester could be anxious since few will forget rioting in the city at the time of the Scottish club’s Uefa Cup final there with Zenit St Petersburg in 2008.

Rangers have had severe financial worries since then but they have eased enough for transfer fees to be paid this summer and Walter Smith’s side has been resilient enough to take the last two League titles in Scotland. That success, all the same, will not concern Ferguson and nor should meetings with the Turkish club Bursaspor.

Chelsea’s group has a ring to it since they are pitted against former winners of the tournament in Marseille. The French club seized the Champions League in 1993 but there had been no subsequent trophies of note until the team managed by Didier Deschamps completed a domestic Double last season.

That in itself will give Carlo Ancelotti pause for thought at Stamford Bridge and Spartak Moscow can also present problems. Group G is completed by the Slovak club MSK Zilina. Arsenal, too, will head east, but the trips to take on Shakhtar Donetsk and Partizan Belgrade will be regarded automatically as awkward engagements.

Currently, though, it is Braga who are really to be feared. The Portuguese club’s elimination of Celtic was not particularly surprising but in the next qualifier they did disrupt the natural order. Braga defeated Sevilla 1-0 at home and 4-3 in Spain. There is a capacity, as Celtic also saw, for both obduracy and goal scoring.

For the moment, the glamour of the Champions League is felt only weakly by the British clubs. It exists forcefully elsewhere, in Group C’s combination of Milan, José Mourinho’s Real Madrid and those other former winners, Martin Jol’s Ajax. Auxerre will do well not to be awestruck.

While England is the sole country to have four representatives, it should be borne in mind that no Premier League team made it beyond the quarter- finals last season.

Despite the apparent standing, these are clubs that must prove their worth all over again.

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The Stamford Bridge ‘legend’ returns to fight his old team and keep Albion in the top flight

Roberto Di Matteo can be forgiven for refusing to get carried away with all the talk of an emotional return to Chelsea. The West Bromwich Albion manager spent six years at Stamford Bridge and will always have a special place in the hearts of the Chelsea supporters, but the challenge of taking a promoted club to the home of the champions on the opening day of the season means this is no time to take a journey down memory lane.

Whether that mindset changes when Di Matteo stands on the touchline tomorrow evening and receives a reception befitting a player who scored goals in three Wembley finals and was a key figure behind Chelsea’s renaissance through the late 1990s remains to seen. The word “legend” is banded about far too readily in football but Di Matteo’s name can be found under that heading on the Chelsea website and few of the supporters who watched him would argue that he does not deserve that status.

“There is a lot of warmth from Chelsea fans,” Di Matteo says. “They think a lot of me and it is very generous to be named as one of their legends. There were many more players greater than me, but I had a great connection with [the supporters] from day one and with the club. I have great memories of the time I spent at Stamford Bridge but I am going back there as West Brom’s manager so I will have my club and my team on my mind because I have a job to do.”

A Chelsea career that included a goal on his home debut – which led to that memorable celebration, when Di Matteo and several of his team-mates posed for the cameras lying on the turf – had many seminal moments. There was the goal after 43 seconds in the 1997 FA Cup final against Middlesbrough, another goal against Boro in the League Cup final 12 months later and the winner against Aston Villa in the 2000 FA Cup final.

With two European trophies to add to the collection, it is little wonder he struggles to pick out his fondest memory. “It is really difficult to say,” says the 40-year-old, who was Chelsea’s club-record signing when he joined from Lazio for £4.9m in 1996. “I had such a lot of great times there. The trophies we won, like the Cup-Winners’ Cup, and the European Super Cup against Real Madrid was a great experience, too.”

Di Matteo might well have won several more medals but his career was cut short when he broke his leg in a Uefa Cup tie at the start of the 2000-01 season. Eighteen months later he was forced to announce his retirement at the age of 31, denying him the opportunity to be part of the Roman Abramovich era that catapulted Chelsea into the big time.

After a break from the game, during which he started a property company, enrolled at the London School of Economics and worked as a pundit, Di Matteo accepted a chance to return as manager at MK Dons in 2008. In doing so, he followed in the footsteps of many of his former team-mates, including Gianfranco Zola, Mark Hughes, Dan Petrescu, Dennis Wise, Gus Poyet and Gianluca Vialli, all of whom have managed at one time or another.

Everything that Di Matteo has done so far suggests he is cut out for the job but Albion’s return to the Premier League will present the most severe test yet as he seeks to succeed where his predecessors have failed. “We want to get rid of this reputation of being a yo-yo club,” Di