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Football

Premier League fixtures: How are these scheduled compiled and published

Atos, international IT services company, spoke to the official website to shed some light on how the Premier League fixtures are created.

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Avignyan Mukhopadhyay
New Update

The 2023/24 Premier League fixtures have been released and the dates of all 380 matches are below.

Manchester City will begin their push for a record fourth consecutive Premier League title away to Vincent Kompany's Burnley. The treble winners will visit Turf Moor to face their former captain's promoted side on the evening of Friday 11 August to raise the curtain on the 2023-24 campaign.

Premier league fixtures | Manchester City. | Sportz Point
Manchester City has won the Premier League three times in a row (Image- Manchester City)

The outstanding fixture of the opening weekend will be at Stamford Bridge, where Mauricio Pochettino life as Chelsea manager against Liverpool on Sunday 13 August, with both sides looking to bounce back after disappointing campaigns.

Arsenal, after an anticlimactic conclusion to last season's title challenge, open at home to Nottingham Forest in Saturday's lunchtime game, with fellow Champions League qualifiers Newcastle hosting Aston Villa that evening and Manchester United beginning against Wolves at Old Trafford on Monday 14 August.

Ange Postecoglou's first match in charge of Tottenham will be away to Brentford at 2pm on Sunday, Bournemouth open at home to the Europa Conference League winners West Ham, and Everton, looking to avoid a third straight relegation scrap, begin at home to Fulham.

City's game at Burnley will be the second time Kompany – who won the title on four occasions as City's captain – will have faced his old side as a manager, with City 6-0 winners at the Etihad in March's FA Cup quarter-final.

The season's first north London derby will be Spurs' visit Arsenal on 23 September (with the return on 27 April) and Manchester City travel to the Emirates on 7 October for a meeting of last season's top two.

Old Trafford on 28 October will bring the first Manchester derby since City matched United's treble-winning feat of 1999 (United go to the Etihad on 2 March), with the champions hosting Liverpool on 25 November.

The first Merseyside derby takes Everton to Anfield on 21 October, and Pochettino's new side will face his old one when Chelsea visit Tottenham on 4 November.

Mikel Arteta is unlikely to be impressed with Arsenal's schedule, the club's first two Champions League fixtures in six years coming immediately before games against Tottenham and City.

Pochettino will receive an early test of his Chelsea rebuild when his team face Tottenham, Manchester City and Newcastle in consecutive games in November.

Luton have been handed a seemingly kind start, their only meeting with any of the "big six" in their first seven games coming at Chelsea on 26 August.

The final weekend brings home games for all three promoted sides, with Burnley welcoming Forest, Sheffield United hosting Spurs and Luton playing Fulham. A mid-season break is scheduled for the weekends of 13-20 January, with clubs playing on one but not both of these weekends.

How are Premier League fixtures created?

Fixture list compiler Glenn Thompson, of Atos, an international IT services company, spoke to the Premier League's official website in 2016 to shed some light on how the Premier League fixtures and schedule is pulled together.

Thompson and co are tasked with scheduling 2,036 matches across the Premier League and Football League over a nine-month period, meaning it is impossible to conduct a random draw.

Once the dates for international fixtures, European club competitions and FA cup competitions have been considered, it is then down to Atos to solve the puzzle of sequencing.

Sequencing rules

1. In any block of five fixtures, a team should play three matches at home and two away, or vice versa.

2. A team should never have more than two-consecutive home or away fixtures.

3. A club will never start or finish the season with two-consecutive home or away fixtures. It would be unfair for a team to finish with two away fixtures, especially if they are in need of points.

4. At Christmas, if a club is at home on Boxing Day, they will be away on New Year's Day or vice versa.

Club requests

There are also a number of other stipulations which the fixture list must adhere to.

For instance, the majority of teams have "partner clubs" which they cannot clash home fixtures with. Manchester United and Manchester City, and Liverpool and Everton are obvious examples, although in London it is "more complex and less obvious".

In March, Premier League clubs are asked three questions: "Are there any dates they wish not to be at home? That is answered in conjunction with the local police. They will also be asked which club they want to pair with and whether there are any teams they do not wish to play at home on Boxing Day."

If all of a club's requests cannot be met, they are asked which is the highest priority, though Thompson insists more than 85% of requests are satisfied every year.

Once the make-up of all the clubs in the Premier League has been decided, they are placed in a pairing grid to determine which dates they will be at home and when they will be away.

The fixture computer then randomises the results according to this grid before a two-day review period to check there are no problems. If one match has to be moved, that can result in as many as 40 other fixtures needing to be altered.

Are fans considered?

According to Thompson, the computer is programmed to reduce long-distance trips on Boxing Day and New Year's Day, while they also try to avoid clubs from similar areas traveling on the same trainlines on the same day while creating Premier League fixtures.

They also meet with a representative of the Football Supporters' Federation to go through all the key dates in a season, such as the opening day and the Christmas fixtures.

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