Newcastle Europa League Draw: Magpies Get Atromitos FC

Newcastle United will face Greek side Atromitos FC in their Fourth Qualifying Round ties for this season's Europa League draw. As I said in my preview of the draw earlier today, on paper the Greek side probably look like the most attractive team of the possible opponents, thanks to the promise of a little bit of midweek sun, and a more pleasant travelling time than Romania, Azerbaijan or particularly Russia. The Athens based side, who play at the 10,000 capacity Persisteri Stadium in the city's Western suburbs have some vaguely familiar faces in amongst their squad, including former Liverpool goalkeeper Charles Itandje, ex-Gunner Stathis Tavlaridis and Njazi Kuqi, younger brother of brief ex-Mag Shefki. Atromitos came fourth in the Greek Super League last season, and will be the second team from the region to face Newcastle in European competition after the Magpies trips to face both Panionis and Olympiakos in the UEFA Cup campaign of 2004/05. The Magpies were drawn in Group 1 of the draw, meaning they could have faced FC Vaslui (Romania), Anzhi Makhachkala (Russia), Tromsø IL (Norway) or Neftçi PFK (Azerbaijan) if the Greek's hadn't come out of the opponent ball. The dates for the fixtures will be set in concrete at around 3.30pm today when officials from the clubs will meet up to discuss any fixture changes - which will surely be high on Newcastle's agenda with a fixture against Chelsea on the Saturday after the mid-week fixture, and Alan Pardew probably keen to give his side as much time as possible to prepare for the Champions League winners The rest of the draw, which includes an eye-catching trip to Hearts for Liverpool is as follows: Anzhi Makhachkala v AZ APOEL v Neftchi Baku Atromitos v Newcastle United Tromsø v Partizan Vaslui v Internazionale Heart of Midlothian v Liverpool Athletic Bilbao v HJK Marítimo v Winner of Match 29 Debrecen v Club Brugge Molde v Heerenveen Sheriff Tiraspol v Marseille Trabzonspor v Videoton Midtjylland v Young Boys Dinamo Bucure™ti v Metalist Kharkiv šl…sk Wroc‚aw v Hannover 96 Horsens v Sporting CP Hapoel Tel Aviv v F91 Dudelange Feyenoord v Sparta Prague Red Star Belgrade v Bordeaux Motherwell v Levante Lokeren v Viktoria Plzeˆ Lazio v Mura 05 AIK v CSKA Moscow Bursaspor v Twente Legia Warsaw v Rosenborg Steaua Bucure™ti v Ekranas Slovan Liberec v Dnipro Dnipropetrovsk Stuttgart v Dynamo Moscow PAOK v Rapid Wien Luzern v Genk Zeta v PSV Eindhoven