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Sky Sports rate which Premier League club has toughest start to the season

6 years ago
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Sky Sports have ranked all 20 clubs in terms of who has the most difficult set of fixtures to open the 2018/19 season.

The fixtures were released at 9am on Thursday morning and pretty much every fan of every club, will have looked to see who they they’ll be playing first, then the next few fixtures, before moving on to see who you’ve got at Christmas/New Year, then the final game of the season.

Some of us won’t have got past those first few fixtures…

Sky Sports have rated the first six games for each PL club, based on where they finished in the Premier League, then worked out the average 2017/18 league finishing position of those six opposition clubs – promoted clubs Wolves, Cardiff and Fulham getting numbers, 18, 19 and 20.

As you can see from the table below, only Wolves are deemed to have a tougher start than Newcastle United.

Newcastle face Tottenham (3rd), Cardiff (19th), Chelsea (5th), Man City (1st), Arsenal (6th) and Crystal Palace (11th).

This adds up to 45 and an average of 7.5 as a league position of the first six opposition clubs.

However, if we say the first five games and drop Cardiff out of the equation, promoted clubs are dodgy to play at the start anyway, the average league finish of the other four (Man City, Spurs, Arsenal and Chelsea) is 3.75 (1st, 3rd, 5th and 6th).

So basically, the first five weeks of Newcastle’s season is on average up against top four opposition, bring it on!

Sky Sports:

‘Much has been made of Arsenal’s difficult start to the season, with the Gunners facing Manchester City and Chelsea in Unai Emery’s first two games in charge, but which Premier League side has the toughest start?

We have ranked the 20 Premier League sides’ first six games of the season in order of difficulty based on last season’s finishing positions, with newly-promoted Wolves, Cardiff and Fulham taking 18th, 19th and 20th respectively.

The stats say Wolves have the trickiest start, with games against Manchester City and Manchester United included in their first six games, while Pep Guardiola’s champions have the easiest, facing all three of the newly-promoted sides after their curtain-raiser against Arsenal.’

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