Nice couple of early away trips so hopefully fans will be allowed to travel. Nightmare month as usual and a tricky ending although as @Filbert will know Leicester don't do endings well. Will Sarr miss the January games due to the African nations cup?
I’d say that’s not bad at all. A start that could help us hit the ground running. The tricky fixtures come when most of those clubs will be involved in European matches. The run in isn’t too bad. I suppose it was written in the stars that our first match would be against the side that ultimately sent us down. (And who we did manage to beat at home last time we played them). I wonder if Ashley Young will be at the Vic after all for the start of the season!
If we are out of the bottom 3 on December 6th, then we'll be doing okay. And if we go in to the last two games 7 points clear of 18th, then perfect. Hopefully we don't get trigger happy at the first sign of danger....that's what cost us last time.
It's funny that the Euro 2020 VAR is getting praise all over the place. I imagine it's the general knuckledraggery of the English football fan that likes to blame a computer for bad refereeing decisions and their team losing.
That's not too bad actually - the 5 games from November to early December are a bit of a nightmare, but aside from that in general the toughest fixtures are spaced out pretty well to hopefully avoid us dropping in to too much of a rut. Some decent chances to get points on the board early as well, albeit we've not started a season well in quite a while.
Not necessarily - Leicester under Rodgers have repeatedly collapsed completely by the end of the season, and maybe Chelsea could have another CL Final to focus their attention on?
Norwich start with Liverpool, City and Leicester. So at least we are unlikely to be bottom after 3 games.
Villa first up. What about the lones? Will Young be back from his by then? Do we have to get Hoggy back to send him back to them?
Southampton game aside, Oct & Nov look horrible. Followed by Man C at the start of Dec. Could do with picking up a decent number of point before then, because I doubt we'll get many from that spell.
That is hard because it’s usually early on that promoted teams play their best. A few teams can steadily improve through the season. That’s not often been us.
Norwich lost 4-1 to Liverpool on their opening day last time in the PL, albeit that was at Anfield and this time around they're at home first.
I predict a guard of honour from the already relegated home team for the newly crowned domestic and European treble winners
Let’s face it Villa are in for a hiding that will make their summer holidays in Rhyl and Weston Super Mare seem a distant memory.
Pretty good fixtures at the start of the campaign hopefully we'll be far from bottom 3 before Liverpool game, as the matches get tougher from there.
True, how crap we've been at the start of the last two seasons makes that seem an awful long time ago.
Better than Norwich's start Liverpool H City A Leicester H Arsenal A Comfortably predict 0 points from that
People speak of being in the group of death when playing in tournaments, but I think we are going to be in THE TWO MONTHS OF DEATH from the beginning of October up to and including the 1st week of December. I think points will probably be in VERY short supply for us during that period Leeds A; Liverpool H; Everton A; Southampton H (main chance of pts me thinks); Arsenal A; Man Utd H; Leicester A; Chelsea H, and topped off with Man City H.
I've heard most clubs not expecting to be full capacity until at least Jan with no away fans until then either...
Oct-Nov looks horrible, but it seems to be a fairly concentrated couple of blocks of hard fixtures. Good start, Dec-Jan looks good and then the harder games spread out towards the end of the season. Would like to be safe before game 40 though.
