Alistair Bruce-Ball told BBC Radio 5 Live Breakfast that he believed the new format for this season’s Champions League – replacing the group stages with a new extended league phase – would provide more competitive games and guarantees lower-ranked sides, like Aston Villa, the chance to play more of the competition’s more established sides.

He said: “My issue with the older format [of the Champions League], I often felt that you’d get to the last two group games and groups could very easily have been decided by then. Manchester City, for example, winning the first four and then the last two wouldn’t mean very much. That in effect could still happen.

“But you are going to get those teams that finish between 9th and 24th that are then going to be in jeopardy because they’re going to go into a two-legged knockout play-off to get through to the last 16.

“For Aston Villa, back at this level of football for 40 years, Young Boys today then Bayern Munich at home, I bet the Villa fans cannot wait.”