Opening Five Premier League Fixtures for the Top 6: Ranked

1) Manchester City

Opening five fixtures: WHU BOU NEW CRY NFO

The juggernaut that is Manchester City are so hard to stop in this iteration, under Pep Guardiola that relative to their team strength, very few games really constitute a ‘hard’ matchup. Even just on the basis of opposition strength, I believe they have the best opening five set of fixtures.

They start with an admittedly tricky away trip to plucky West Ham United and their next away trip in Gameweek 3 is also against a resurgent Newcastle side. However, the other three of their opening five games are all at home and are against promoted Bournemouth, Crystal Palace and another promoted outfit in Nottingham Forest.

With 2 home games against promoted sides in their opening five and none against last seasons top 6, City have the fixtures to do some real damage and start their league defense strongly. It also serves as a comfortable set of games to introduce and embed Erling Haaland and if the striker can find his feet early, the rest of the league will be very worried.