Let's look at the seeds for this year.
Pot 1: Chelsea, Barca, United, Bayern, Madrid (Same seed as us you see, not higher), Arsenal, Porto, Milan.
Pot 2: Valencia, Benfica, Shakhtar, Zenit, Schalke, City, Braga, Dynamo.
Pot 3: Olympiakos, Ajax, Anderlecht, Juventus, Spartak, PSG, Lille, Galatasaraay.
Pot 4: Celtic, Dortmund, BATE, Dinamo, Cluj, Malaga, Montpellier, Nordsjaelland.
So, from pot 2, I would call Valencia, Shakhtar, Schalke and City as teams you'd want to avoid. We can't draw City, and so we only had a 3/7 chance of drawing a 'good' team from pot 2, rather than the usual 1/2 chance when City weren't in the CL. 50% odds generally backup what happens, in that you usually draw a 'good' team from pot 2.
From pot 3, I'd call Juve and PSG as teams you wouldn't want to draw, giving a 25% chance of drawing a difficult team from pot 3. From pot 4, Dortmund and Malaga, 25% again. So, the odds for United drawing a group of death is equal to 0.027, and yet you're convinced it's a conspiracy?