Arsène Wenger has seen it coming before and at 10.30am on Thursday he will steel himself once again for what part of him has come to consider as the brutally inevitable. Barcelona lurk in the Champions League last-16 draw and being paired them would represent the ultimate sanction for his Arsenal team's failure to get through as group winners.
A quickening heartbeat, though, will hardly be Wenger's sole preserve. With Chelsea and Manchester City strewn by the wayside after disastrous group-stage campaigns, Manchester United are the Premier League's only other surviving representative in Europe's elite competition and Sir Alex Ferguson might find that his team's seeded status counts for nothing.
United made amends for last season's group-stage failure by wrapping up top spot in Group H after four ties, yet dangerous fish circle in the bowl of unseeded runners-up, most notably Real Madrid. A pairing with the Spanish champions would mean a return to United for Cristiano Ronaldo while it would pit Ferguson against José Mourinho and evoke, perhaps, memories of the Portuguese manager's celebratory dash along the Old Trafford touchline in 2004, during his time at Porto.
Real would be an unlucky draw for United but Milan or Shakhtar Donetsk, the Ukrainian club who helped to make Chelsea the first holders to exit at the group phase, would also lead to cursing at Old Trafford. Ferguson's percentages at the draw in Nyon, though, look slightly better than those of Wenger. It is easy to imagine that United would take Porto, Valencia or Celtic, whose fairytale qualification was memorably embossed by the home win over Barcelona which featured joy, bedlam and a rock star's tears.
If a third knockout-stage meeting with Barcelona in four seasons is the nightmare scenario for Arsenal, then Bayern Munich or Borussia Dortmund, who were arguably the team of the group phase, would also be testing on an intimidating scale. Dortmund's unbeaten advance on top of a group that contained the champions of Spain, the Netherlands and England was marked by eye-catching football.
Arsenal's other possibilities are the money-flushed Paris St-Germain, who have spent roughly €250m in fees alone over the past three transfer windows; Juventus, the Serie A invincibles of last season and Malága, the tournament debutants who won so many admirers in Group C when they finished above Milan (taking four points off them) and saw off Zenit St Petersburg. Santi Cazorla, Arsenal's summer signing from Malága, would relish a return to his former club. Arsenal cannot face United in the last 16 due to the country-protection rule and no team can meet an opponent from the same group phase.
There is a sense of foreboding about the draw from these shores. In the recent past there was a confident presumption of the mass progression of English clubs in the last 16 and which was related to opinions about the strength of the Premier League, but attitudes and trends have changed. There are no guarantees. William Hill lists Barcelona, Real, Bayern and Dortmund as the tournament favourites. In that order.
The pool of talent is wider. Shakhtar, for example, have players who would get into most Premier League teams (Willian, Alex Teixeira, Fernandinho) while PSG's emergence, on the back of their wealthy Qatari backers, has altered the landscape.
Wenger noted recently how the Bundesliga had "come up" to rival the English and Spanish leagues for quality and it spoke volumes for the competitiveness of the Champions League that Real and Milan, two giants of the European game, could only qualify as runners-up in their groups.
There has been a glorious unpredictability to the competition so far. Neil Lennon described his Celtic team's progress as akin to a "miracle" while Galatasaray's passage, helped by Burak Yilmaz's goals, has fired passions in parts of Turkey. Few people could have foreseen BATE Borisov beating Bayern in Belarus or Cluj's win at Old Trafford either, even if that tie was largely irrelevant to United.
Wenger has worries about the predictability of the draw. His team had lost to a Lionel Messi-inspired Barcelona in the 2009-10 quarter-final when he looked ahead, conspiratorially, to the last-16 draw in 2010-11. "I know who we will get," Wenger said. "At this level, you need connections." Arsenal were duly paired with Barça and they exited in controversial fashion.
Thursday will also determine the ties for the last 32 and final 16 of the Europa League and England is represented in the shape of Chelsea and Liverpool (seeded); Tottenham Hotspur and Newcastle United (unseeded). The Premier League clubs cannot meet in the last 32. The Champions League draw, however, promises the drama.
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