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Greetings all, and welcome to a nice, cheery preseason topic – the very worst opening fixture runs of 26/27!
In fairness, this enormous wave of negativity is balancing out the nice, positive best fixture runs piece which James already wrote. I – Joe – am clearly the Yin to his Yang, to embarrassingly borrow a very tired old cliche.
In this piece, we’ll look at the worst opening FPL fixture runs across both the first 5 and 10 games. We’ll break it down according to the teams we actually care about, and I’ll analyse each one to work out whether it’s really as doom and gloom as it seems.
All these runs are taken from our fancy new updated fixture ticker. You can play around with that right here, and sort it however you please.
Onwards!
Right, let’s start off by looking at the first few gameweeks.
If you’re planning an early wildcard, like James (and probably me too), this is the period that actually matters most. You’re more or less only worrying about these fixtures for now, then looking to swap everyone out around Gameweek 6 anyway.
For the record, I’ve got this set on our interactive fixture ticker for the first 5 gameweeks, top 10 teams, and overall ratings (i.e. attack and defence).
With all due respect (not really), we don’t care about:
Unless!
Planner that he is, James is already intending to use his bench boost really early, in Gameweek 2.
Why Gameweek 2? Glance up, dear reader, and you’ll see that Coventry have Hull at home right then. Coventry’s players also happen to be super cheap, so you can have a really good starting team, pack your bench with them, BB in GW 2 and cross your fingers for points, then wildcard out of it all pretty soon afterwards.
(Equally, you could go for McBurnie on your BB for this same fixture, but I’d err towards the home team… admittedly having seen precisely zero minutes of either Coventry or Hull).
Yes, triple Coventry isn’t the sexiest proposition in the world to start your season. But James is usually right about these things, as I’ve learnt to my cost, so I’ll probably just listen to him.
Oh, and we might care about Fulham eventually, if only for wonderniño Gonzalo Garcia at 6.0 But we’re not gambling on him with this horrendous opening run.
The teams we might care about here, at least for a player or two:
Frankly, if you’re looking short-term, I think City away, Newcastle away, and Liverpool would put me off them completely. Everton and Brentford at home aren’t exactly easy fixtures either. Combined with a new manager coming in, I’d just wait and see.
The first couple of fixtures are fine. Brentford away isn’t great. Then they play (probably) the two best teams in the league. Eek.
James and I are considering Le Fee and Xhaka mostly as DefCon merchants with some attacking upside. They’re cheap enough that I still don’t mind that, and just benching them after the first couple of weeks if possible
Not the worst fixtures, but Brentford, Brighton, and Newcastle are probably mid to upper-mid table teams, who the hell knows about Forest away, and Palace at home is fine.
Overall, I’d call these slightly below neutral… if that’s a thing, and these aren’t bad enough to put me off DCL, for example.
God, what a mixed bag. Villa could be good, but at least it’s at home. Chelsea away is nasty. Then two nice fixtures. Then Arsenal at home.
Verbruggen is obviously a popular keeper pick, and you could at least hope for a clean in three of these games – though not the other two, admittedly. If you’re bench boosting in GW2, as noted above, then at least you get a shot at a clean with your other keeper while Verbruggen has to deal with Chelsea.
We mostly care about Everton’s defence, and I don’t think these are the worst defensive fixtures. Any of Palace home, Spurs away (who knows), and Ipswich home could conceivably be cleans. This little run wouldn’t put me off James’s beloved Tarko, for example.
Ah, and then we come to Chelsea – who will presumably feature several of the most highly-owned players in FPL this season, but also have the 6th-worst all-round opening fixtures.
Hull at home is obviously brilliant… and that’s about it.
Arsenal away is one of the worst fixtures in the league. Fulham away could be a tricky opening, Brighton had one of the best defences in the league last season, and Brentford away isn’t pleasant (assuming they’re still last season’s Brentford).
From a defensive perspective, I don’t actually mind these at all (Chelsea’s defence was a bit crap last season, but maybe it’s better now). I’m actually quite tempted to start the season with Reece James, then curse myself when he does his hamstring after twenty minutes.
Given how popular Palmer, Roger’s, and James’s despised JP will undoubtedly be as picks, however, I would at least offer some caution here before you follow the crowds!
Right, time for a longer-term view.
This will obviously be more relevant if you’re not planning an early wildcard, as I never used to… until James dragged me over to the dark side.
(Again, apart from the early bench boost possibility.)
Sorry, Coventry and Ipswich fans. You’re going to be at the bottom of quite a lot of these lists.
I don’t love this run for their attackers one bit, I have to say, and it’s making me more hesitant on DCL.
There isn’t a single easy game on here. Granted, we don’t know how the likes of Sunderland or Spurs will look compared to last season, but if I had to guess neither of them will be walkovers (especially with Sunderland being away).
Defensively, they’re better, but still not great. Forest and Sunderland away are the only games where they probably ‘should’ clean. Brentford, Palace, and Newcastle at home aren’t terrible… but again, still not exactly good.
The likes of Ampadu and DCL are so cheap at their positions that maybe you just gamble anyway, since it’s costing you little. I wouldn’t be optimistic, though.
Even after their mixed bag of a first 5 games, they get another mixed bag of a second 5.
Sunderland away, and Palace and Brentford home aren’t terrible. Liverpool and City away back to back definitely is awful.
4/10 of their opening fixtures are against the best teams in the league, 3 of those are away, and the home game is against the reigning champions.
If you are going to have Brighton players, get ready to rotate in very specific gameweeks!
Not awful, but not great either.
Depending on whether Spurs are good or not, their run from GW 3-6ish could be fine. And frankly, speaking as an Arsenal fan, they always seem to play well against us at Villa Park, so maybe GW2 is fine too.
Frankly I don’t think any Villa players are interesting except Watkins. And I think these fixtures are decent enough that it wouldn’t put me off owning him. They’re not good enough to make we want anyone else, though.
They play 4 of the best teams in the league in the first 8 weeks, plus Newcastle away.
I will say that they do also get Everton, Sunderland, and Leeds at home, plus Ipswich away. So I don’t mind the idea of getting a defender in (or even Petrovic), and trying to rotate your way through this.
You definitely can’t have a Bournemouth player as a key, ‘every week starter’ part of your plan, though.
Again, while there are some scary teams here, you could probably rotate your way through this with a cheap player.
Liverpool and Villa away, plus Arsenal and City at home, isn’t great. But you also get Leeds and Coventry at home (plus Spurs – who knows), and Ipswich away. Palace and Brentford away aren’t the absolute worst fixtures in the world, either.
Frankly, I don’t hate these all-round, and am quite tempted to back MGW myself, and just bench him against Arsenal and maybe City.
That GW 4-5 back to back is obviously brutal. But they also get Ipswich and Fulham, and latterly Leeds and Coventry, in succession.
Bournemouth away in GW7 isn’t great, and this opening spell ends with Chelsea… but also, whoever your Sunderland player is will be cheap, so you can easily just bench him in those games and roll him out in the others.
Liverpool have a pretty nice start to the season, with Forest, Ipswich, and Fulham in a row, once they get St James Park out of the way.
After that though, they have a very tough run. Bournemouth, City, Brentford, Brighton, and Arsenal were all top half finishers last season, and they’re all in a row here.
Again, when you’re wildcarding plays a big role here.
If you’re planning an early wildcard, I’m fine getting in the likes of VVD, Szobszlai, and Isak, then binning them around GW5. If not, I’d either think twice about having too many of them, or at least have a plan to get rid once the fixtures turn.
Hmm.
We’ve already covered their so-so opening fixtures, and I can’t say they get vastly better after that.
Bournemouth home is fine, Everton away could be tricky for attackers, Spurs at home is probably good, Man U home is tough, then Sunderland away could again be tricky offensively.
For the record, this is not me saying ‘Don’t get any Chelsea players’!
Chelsea are almost certainly going to be one of the best teams in the league. Their players are really, really good.
Fixtures can, however, be a distinguishing factor if you’re trying to decide between Really Good Chelsea Player and Really Good Other Player. If the latter has significantly better fixtures, lean towards them.
Well, I tell you what. The more I babble on about all this, the more excited I get for the start of the season!
Reading this article on the worst opening FPL fixture runs in 26-27 presumably either had the same effect on you, or sent you straight to sleep. It’s a pretty binary choice, I’d say.
Either way, thanks for reading/snoozing your way to the end. Be sure to check out our growing mountain of preseason content here, follow us on Reddit, sign up for our newsletter just below, and… well, that’s about it, I suppose.
Happy preseason tinkering, everybody!
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