Issue 8 - Fixtures And Fittings

Fixtures hot off the press, pressure building up.
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Fixture Release Date

Wednesday saw the release of the 2025/26 Premier League fixtures and I am not sure what is more depressing; the people who get excited about this annual event or the people who make up fake fixture list before the embargo gets released.

As like every season, each of the 20 Premier League outfits will be playing 38 games and not only that but they will be playing their 19 opponents both Home AND Away - I know, it is absolute madness.

In fairness, I am being flippant with the announcement of the new schedule and like every football fan, I have made the necessary checks:

The two games against the nearest rivals

The opening day and the final day

The Xmas fixtures

Everything in place and how it should be - even if there is no Boxing Day schedule this year. No, this is not another thing that has fallen to ‘woke’, the simple reason is that the 26th is a Friday and the demand of playing on that day and an actual Saturday are bordering on the ludicrous.

(Yes I know they used to this back in the old days)

In that place, people are already looking at each club’s first five fixtures and seeing who has the toughest start to the campaign. Admittedly, this is not a perfect science, but it does at least offer some form of indication as to potential pitfalls.

Pitfalls that are explained by this Sky Sports graphic

A graphic that I did have the data for myself and was going to create a far more unpolished version before Sky thankfully beat me to the punch and saved me a whole lot of time on the hottest day of the year so far.

A graphic that bodes a tricky picture for both Arsenal and Manchester United at the start of the season if you look at the opponents of their first five games of next season - as they both have an average rating of 8.67.

How is that rating generated?

The opponents that they come up against are all given a ranking which is based on last season’s Premier League finish (or ranking in the English football pyramid if they are Leeds, Burnley or Sunderland) and then an average is taken.

With that in mind, you can see by this metric that both the Gunners and the Red Devils have an average opponent of 8.67 for ther first five games and this already puts Mikel Arteta and Ruben Amorim further under the looking glass.

Arteta because of once again being the Premier League nearly man. Amorim because any new manager boost has obviously gone AWOL at the Theatre of Dreams and after the nightmare which was the Europa League final, credit in his bank is already low.

Does that mean either man is the first name on the managerial chopping block? No.

Does that mean that these two men are arguably the most under pressure at the start of the season? Yes.

I think as football fans or those who love to talk about in great detail, we can get pressure sometimes conflated as the sack race. Of course, one can eventually lead to another, but there is a slightly different measure.

Take Pep Guardiola and his City tenure during last season. Was he under pressure when the Etihad outfit were misfiring? Yes. But that pressure comes because of such a high barrier that has been set.

That same pressure does not then mean the former Barcelona and Bayern Munich was going to be ushered out of the Etihad exit door at the next available opportunity, but it was a commodity that saw a surplus being created.

Thankfully for Pep, a new season means some pressure cookers can be reset to zero or at least closer to it. His dial is definitely would back after securing a return to the Champions League and bringing in the likes of Rayan Ait-Nouri and Rayan Chekri to continue the evolution in the blue half of Manchester.

Under Pressure

Which begs the question, who else is under pressure before a ball has been kicked?

If Ange Postecoglou was still manager of Tottenham, there absolutely no doubt he would be feeling the pressure. Fortunately or unfortunately, his exit has relieved him of being under the magnifying glass and that Premier League pressure goes elsewhere.

Does it go to those who earned promotion from the Championship? At the start of the season, arguably no. Because of what is now the chasm between the first and second tier, there can be little expectation of them.

If anything, their collective case is not the pressure that will mount but more a case of when rather than if they are shown the exit door. Do not be surprised if one of Parker, Farke or Le Bris are gone by October.

You could make a case for Graham Potter to be under pressure after a largely flat start to his time at West Ham. With what was an elongated pre-season for all intents and purposes, he will be expected to hit the ground running this time around.

A perceived easy start according to the index should allow him to do so but at the same time the index, can also be misleading. Why is that you ask?

Previous performances to not lead to future results.

Just because this are the league placing of last season, there is nothing to say that indentical form will be taken into the first five weeks of the new campaign. This index does not take into account any transfers ins our outs over the summer.

There is so much additional context missing from this - no weight for home or away games either in that run that this should only be taken as a guide, if taken at all and the fact that Sky Sports need to create the index shows how dry things are in the summer.

What it does mean though is that I will building my own form of pressure rankings - loosely on the criteria above. A fluid concept that as I say does not necessarily mean a manager is for the high jump, but it will give a greater idea as to who is toiling in the “best league in the world”.

Bournemouth Are The New Southampton

Remember when Liverpool’s scouts could only travel as far as Southampton and they came back with talents such as Adam Lallana, Rickie Lambert and some bloke called Virgil van Dijk.

Well now it seems as if Bournemouth are next team to fly to close to the sun in terms of performance only for the vultures of the football hierarchy to then pluck them off. Southampton have suffered it, Brighton have been pillaged, it was only a matter of time before a move further down the coast.

A move that sees Milos Kerkez look set to make his move from the Vitality Stadium to Anfield and with the defending champions ready to continue their evolution to the tune of £40m, it looks like a move that may hasten Andy Robertson’s move away from Merseyside.

As referenced last week in the arrival of Wirtz and his Bayer Leverkusen teammate Jeremie Frimpong, the addition of Kerkez will allow manager Arne Slot to change shape if desired but even with a flat back as before, it shows that the Dutchman is not preparing to rest on his laurels between now and the opening weekend when Liverpool welcome….

Yes, you guessed it. Bournemouth on the very first night of the campaign.

Bournemouth might not be Brighton 2.0 just yet — but the vultures have definitely found a new favourite coastal spot

The Filter Five

Five more digital football pints to get down your neck.

Wilder On The Loose

After missing out on Premier League promotion in agonising fashion, Sheffield United have decided to part company with Chris Wilder. Not only that, but they have wasted no time in drafting in Ruben Selles.

Maybe harsh on Wilder, who in his second stint as Blades boss picked up 90 Championship points after finishing third in the table and although he is synonymous with Bramall Lane, he flattered to decieve at both Middlesbrough and Watford.

For those reasons, it will be interesting to see if he can be a success somewhere else that is not Sheffield United.

Staying In Sheffield

All change at Bramall Lane. Wish there was change at Hillsborough. Sheffield Wednesday slapped with a transfer embargo. Players still not getting paid. Weirdly, this is the one ‘crisis club’ that nobody is really talking about.

A new season is always important, it feels even more so for the blue and white half of Sheffield.

Heat Stops Play

Much has been made of the empty seats at the Club World Cup, even more so of the ‘adverse weather’ conditions that keep halting the group stage matches these past few days.

What are these ‘adverse weather’ conditions? Just a bit of heat. Yep, who would have thought it was hot on the Eastern Seaboard of the United States at this time of year?

House Martin

Another man who will be under severe pressure from day one is Rangers boss Russell Martin. You could argue he has fallen upwards after his Southampton sacking but with such little margin for error north of the border, you wonder if this appointment is going to be genuis or ludicrous.

Can someone be too ‘nice’ for the tinderbox which is Rangers vs Celtic and even Rangers vs themselves? I guess we will soon find out.

All About Textor

The Crystal Palace in Europe pendulum may be swinging back to good news and that is after John Textor is reportedly selling his stake in the South London club for a cool £190m.

Textor who also is part of the Botafogo ownership - a Brazilian club that has only just beaten PSG in the FIFA Club World Cup looks set to make this move as a parting gift to the Palace support and if New York Jets owner Woody Johnson pays up, then its all systems go out of Gatwick Airport for Oliver Glasner’s side.

Admin

Right, that’s the end of issue 8. Big thanks to everyone who not only subscribes but more importantly reads the newsletter. I have an open rate of nearly 60% which is really good for a new project such as this.

Also, feedback is certainly going to help drive this forward. If you want to take the time to tell me what you liked, what you didn’t like and/or what you want to see.

Consider these summer issues as a ‘soft launch’ - the concepts and ideas will be free-flowing when the season starts, I promise you there’s more to come as we get out of this difficult June period.

My email for correspondence is

[email protected]

Issue 9 will be out on Tuesday June 24th

Thanks for reading

Dan