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Premier League Fixtures - Published June 19th, 9am


Colinjb
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Either Hull, Palace or Cardiff will play man united away.

 

I don't know if that is a prem rule but it seems to be the case of the champions and a newly promoted team.

 

Well let's have a look... 20 seasons of reigning Prem title holders, and on 7 of those occasions they've started against a promoted side. That would be 35% of the time, above the "norm" for purely random fixtures (the chances of any one (non-promoted) Prem side playing a promoted team in their opening match is 3/19 which is around a 16% chance) but not by any stretch an actual "rule" happening 100% of the time. I've ignored the years when the Prem had 22 clubs in this calculation.

 

It's more likely that it's in the Prem's interests not to "waste" a big top side clash on the opening day when there's already a lot of interest in the fixtures, and the process isn't random, I'd say that narrows the likely opponent pool down to around 13 "non-big" clubs, making the chances around 3/13, which is around 23%. So actually there should be around a 1/4 chance of the champions playing a promoted side, in practice it's about 1/3.

 

2012 Man City v Saints (yes - promoted team)

2011 Man U @ West Brom (no)

2010 Chelsea v West Brom (yes)

2009 Man U v Birmingham City (yes)

2008 Man U v Newcastle (no)

2007 Man U v Reading (no)

2006 Chelsea v Man City (no)

2005 Chelsea @ Wigan (yes)

2004 Arsenal @ Everton (no)

2003 Man U v Bolton (no)

2002 Arsenal v Birmingham (yes)

2001 Man U v Fulham (yes)

2000 Man U v Newcastle (no)

1999 Man U @ Everton (no)

1998 Arsenal v Forest (yes)

1997 Man U @ Spurs (no)

1996 Man U @ Wimbledon (no)

1995 Blackburn v QPR (no)

1994 Man U v QPR (no)

1993 Man U @ Norwich (no)

 

PS, that kind of poorly-informed statement-as-argument reminds me of another poster, thedelldays - you're not by any chance related, are you ? :D

Edited by The9
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