🔑 Seven key things from the Premier League fixture list | OneFootball

The 2022/23 season might literally just have ended but the hype has already begun for next season with the release of the 2023/24 Premier League fixtures.

We’re hoping for a proper nail-biting title race featuring more than two sides for a change, as well as some more underdog stories and a relegation battle for the ages.

A bit much to ask for? Here are seven key things we’ve picked out from the schedule.

Opening weekend serves up spicy fixtures

The opening weekend is always filled with optimism and hope for the season ahead, with the sun still shining and new signings galore on show, and some standout fixtures.

A master vs apprentice clash starts the season, as Pep Guardiola’s all-conquering Manchester City travel to Turf Moor to take on his-first City captain and club legend Vincent Kompany’s Championship-winning Burnley side. The Clarets have undergone a style makeover in their year out of the top flight but their credentials will face no sterner test than the newly-crowned treble winners.

Elsewhere, Mauricio Pochettino makes his Chelsea bow against a familiar foe in Jürgen Klopp as Liverpool travel to Stamford Bridge. It is 20 years since the two clubs met on the opening day of a league campaign.

And in a battle of two of the overachievers from last season, Eddie Howe and Newcastle take on Unai Emery and Aston Villa. That Emery turned down the Magpies’ job prior to Howe’s appointment is always a lovely narrative to mention when they face off.

The new kids on the block

While Burnley have the hardest game possible upon their return to the Premier League, Sheffield United have an easier outing with currently managerless Crystal Palace the guests to a boisterous Bramall Lane.

Both automatically promoted sides do have recent experience of the top flight, which can’t be said of Luton Town, who were last at English football’s top table the season prior to the dawn of the Premier League (1991-92) and only climbed out of League Two five seasons ago.

They travel to the seaside to take on Brighton on the opening day, meaning the first-ever Kenilworth Road game in the Premier League will have to wait a week when Burnley enter the now-social media famed away end.

It will no doubt be a special occasion, and the first of 19 cup finals for the Hatters, whose home form will be the key to any hope of survival.

Festive fun

While last season Boxing Day saw the return of Premier League football after that mid-season World Cup, things will be back to normal this time around.

The pick of the pre-Christmas games (23rd) sees Liverpool and Arsenal meet at Anfield in a repeat of the game that kickstarted the Gunners’ title collapse in April.

It also comes off the back of Manchester United making the same trip to Merseyside a week prior, with memories of that 7-0 loss sure to be lodged in the psyche of everyone involved.

The best of the Boxing day games feature the two Manchester sides, with United hosting Aston Villa and City making the short trip to Everton, while the last game week of 2023 (30th & 31st) features a classic Premier League fixture in Liverpool v Newcastle (quite the run of games for the Reds) and a first-ever Premier League clash between Luton and Chelsea at Kenilworth Road, in what can just about (arguably) be considered yet another London derby in the league.

Pochettino’s date with destiny

It could not have been easy for Tottenham fans to see arguably their best (and almost certainly their favourite) manager since Bill Nicholson take on the reins at one of their most hated rivals, particularly after they suffered through ex-Chelsea gaffers José Mourinho and Antonio Conte’s rather less successful stints in charge.

After Poch became Todd Boehly’s latest appointment, thoughts inevitably turned to when he would face Spurs and he date is now set, with the first weekend of November (3rd – 6th) seeing Chelsea travel to what is sure to be a white-hot Tottenham Hotspur Stadium.

Pochettino will come up against a Premier League newcomer in Ange Postecoglou, who’s been tasked with bringing the feel-good factor back to Spurs that has been absent since the Argentine’s own exit from north London in late 2019.

The inspirational Australian should be able to do this, but rebooting and reigning Spurs as well as persuading Harry Kane to sign a new deal is also part of the job spec. No pressure!

Arsenal’s home comforts

Despite the heartbreak of their title capitulation, some solace can be found for Arsenal in their return to the Champions League for the first time since 2016/17.

They have also been given a very ideal schedule with all six of their league games after their group fixtures being at the Emirates (albeit two are against City and Spurs), which is so often a factor in managing an assault on both fronts.

Mammoth March for Man City

Looking at the 2023/24 season, it is very much City v the field and it would take a brave man to bet against Pep and his side becoming the first in English football history to win four titles on the spin.

However, if the title is still alive by March, that is when City could possibly falter, with league games against United (home) and Liverpool (away) both being followed by a Champions League round of 16 leg. After that is Brighton (away) and Arsenal (home) sandwiched by a potential FA Cup quarter-final.

Granted they did navigate a similarly packed schedule with relative ease this time around en route to the treble, but maybe things will be different come 2024?

Tricky run-in for supposed challengers to City’s crown

If City are top at the end of March, the trophy engravers may well get to work and finish early for the summer.

Of their last eight fixtures, they only face two sides from last season’s top eight in Aston Villa (home) and Spurs (away), and they were the bottom two placed sides in that.

On the other hand, their supposed challengers for next season have it much harder.

Arsenal have Brighton, Spurs and United away in that same period, as well as Villa at home. Erik ten Hag’s hopes of building on a third-place finish will be severely tested by that clash with Mikel Arteta’s side in addition to home games against Liverpool and Newcastle, plus away trips to Brighton and Chelsea in the final eight games.

One would suspect Liverpool to be amongst it again and while their run-in is slightly easier than Arsenal and United’s, they still have to take on Villa away and Spurs at home on top of that trip to Old Trafford.

For the sake of competition, let’s hope for a multi-side title race for the first time in near-10 years.