Europa League Draw: Favourites Spurs start in Cyprus

Tottenham head this season's Europa League winner betting

Tottenham's status as Europa League frontrunners might be dubious, but they should comfortably survive the play-off round...

The Europa League winner market is always slightly strange at the start of the season because you know that 18 Champions League sides are yet to parachute in (ten post-qualifiers and eight post-group), a few of whom usually dart straight to the top of the market.

Even accounting for that knowledge, it is a slight surprise to find Tottenham stepping into the role of initial 14.013/1 favourites having assumed similar billing in each of the last three campaigns and never gone beyond the quarter-finals.

The other early protagonists are judged to be Everton 15.014/1, Fiorentina 17.016/1, Inter 18.017/1 and Sevilla 19.018/1 - all of whom bar Inter don't enter until the group stage.

None of the contenders who start in the play-off round like Tottenham and Inter though should encounter too much difficulty because the coefficient system left very few genuine threats unseeded.

Spurs were drawn to face Cypriot club AEL Limassol, who finished last in their group with four points as Champions League qualifying phase dropouts on their last Europa League participation in 2012/13.

However, the other Premier League participants, FA Cup finalists Hull 60.059/1, would be wise not to underestimate their foes Lokeren, given both the Tigers' struggle in the last round against unfancied Trencin and the way another Belgian team Zulte-Waregem took four points off Wigan last term.

The other intriguing element of the draw was the presence of Legia Warsaw, who arrived in Nyon expecting to be involved in the Champions League set-up, only to be booted out for fielding an ineligible player in their thrashing of Celtic.

So instead of being two games away from the Champions League group stage, the Polish capital club are off to Kazakhstan to face Aktobe.

Selected Europa League Play-off Round Ties:
Sarajevo v Borussia Monchengladbach
Astana v Villarreal
Lyon v Astra
AEL Limassol v Tottenham
Aktobe v Legia Warsaw
Lokeren v Hull
PSV v Shakhtyor
Stjarnan v Inter
Feyenoord v Zorya
Real Sociedad v Krasnodar