Assessing the 2024/25 Fixtures: Wild Predictions, Contemplations and Boxing Day nightmares
Were you eagerly awaiting the Premier League fixture release, ready to plan some away days or look at when we’ll meet our raft of ex-players, and manager, or does it highlight how much work there’s left to do? Either way, we’re running through which months look like especially long ones and throwing out some wild predictions.
Nothing says you’re back in the Premier League more than the opening fixture getting leaked a few minutes before and the relief being that it isn't Chelsea. It’s nice to have some football to think about and football to watch with the Euros. Sure, we may not know our financial punishments, have a new manager in place (it sounds like it’s getting closer though) or be making smart decisions on ticket prices, but we do know who we’ll face and when.
Rejoice or panic, we’re back in the land of kick-offs at bizarre times but only one fixture a week, nervously looking to see if the referee is holding his ear before you celebrate a goal and the confusing blend of capped away prices while home ticket prices spiral out of control.
If survival is the best we can hope for given everything else, how do the fixtures stack up and what games feel huge already? There are so many unknowns within our own club that perhaps we could have done a fixture review using a magic 8 ball to rank our chances across the months.
That’s before you factor in other clubs who also haven’t appointed a manager or worked out how much money they can afford to spend without risking PSR sanctions. It’s a wild time to try and make some early predictions, but it’s always fun to look back on.
A Leicester affair
On the one hand, Sky must be horribly disappointed that it wasn’t Leicester v Chelsea to fit the narrative. On the other hand, Leicester v Tottenham resurrects our recent rivalry and still has a couple of talking points given our money plus swap deal that saw us wave a strange goodbye to James Maddison with Harry Winks coming the other way.
Winks either has pull with the higher powers or is excellent at gazing into a crystal ball. When Leicester asked their players who they wanted on the opening day, Winks understandably asked for Tottenham and the fixture computer has delivered.
Hopefully you weren’t looking forward to a sunny, Saturday afternoon kick-off though, we’re the closing fixture of the opening weekend, Monday 19th August at 8pm. Still, take the positives that Leicester can’t ruin your weekend and instead of facing the deadly Kane and Son duo, it’s now only Son (who always has a blinder against us), Richarlison and…one James Maddison. Unfortunate to take him on in the usually unplayable phase of his season.
Assuming we start the season with some sort of points deduction, this doesn’t scream easy chance to whittle that down. With only two other fixtures in August, it’s not likely we’ll enter September in positive figures unless we’re on the low end of any deductions.
A trip to Craven Cottage is the first away fixture, a chance to right some demons after one of worst performances of the whole season in 2022/23, the ex Leicester tour may continue assuming Timothy Castagne stays there.
Completing the trilogy of ex-Leicester players, the Bank Holiday weekend brings Aston Villa and Youri Tielemans to the King Power. Prizes for guessing who gets the best reception out of Maddison and the Belgians? And will Fosse Way's Becky find a bed sheet big enough to remind old Madders of that tweet?
It's not the worst start we could have and if we could wrestle a win and a draw from these three, you'd consider it an excellent start.
If 25 points was this season's marker to stay up, you have to assume it’ll be a little higher this time around and we'll likely need to go above it again factoring in the expected deduction. So realistically we probably need at least 30-36 points to survive? Maybe we just channel Claudio and set the benchmark at 40.
A stop-start Autumn
Our new manager will have a fortnight in September during the first international break to assess the opening three fixtures with the transfer window firmly closed and the squad set. Quite how the squad will look by this point is anybody’s guess and integrating new signings in may not be a challenge if we’re unable to make many.
There's only four fixtures before another two week break in October and two of the games could be huge. Everton and Bournemouth, both home games, have to be ones to target. This could be the month we break back into positive numbers if the deduction was around the six mark.
The two away fixtures are both in London though, where our record reads more like a cursed. Trips to Selhurst Park, where we love to inexplicably throw it away, and a trip to the Emirates closes out September. Unlikely to yield any points given their expectations. That point tally could be looking pretty low still.
From a local derby point of view, we meet Nottingham Forest at the King Power at the end of October and the halloween-themed headlines will write themselves. In our last Premier League campaign, a victory over Forest in October gave us our first win of the season. We’ll hope we won’t need the spirit of a derby to inspire the same outcome again.
November's big talking point is Chelsea and whether by the 23rd, we will face Enzo Maresca or if his job will already be back on the market. Even if he’s not there, will he have taken any of the current squad with him? It may not be the one to target for points but it is our only home fixture in November. Three away trips to Ipswich, Manchester United and Brentford await. It could be a long month.
It says a lot that if Ten Hag remains in charge, the trip to Old Trafford may be the more realistic one to get some points from.
Boxing Day Faes-mares
December packs in a game almost every four days and presents a lot of opportunities to try again if at first you don't succeed or to start seeing gaps in the table. With four home games, the atmosphere will be vital and we'll start to see what sort of fight the side has about them. These will be the games to target some points from.
Is it even the Christmas period if we don’t have to play Liverpool and Manchester City? As if our Christmas form doesn’t leave enough to be desired in the average year, facing two of the big boys likely to be fighting over top spot isn’t ideal.
Another Boxing Day trip to Anfield awaits and it's impossible not to still be haunted by Wout Faes inexplicably scoring both of Liverpool's goals in the 2-1 defeat on the same day in 2022. The last time the 26th and 29th fixtures lined up this way, we won the Premier League but we’d all need some help to imagine that happening again this year.
For a lot of us, the Boxing Day game will be sneakily trying to watch it on our phones while definitely listening to the family conversation. Watching it hit somebody in the face and a resulting penalty again. We don't have many good Anfield memories, do we?
Assuming we can expect zero points from both of them, we need to be targeting the Wolves game just before to have something to be cheery about. When we found ourselves bottom at Christmas before, we had 10 points amassed and were 5 away from safety. Expecting a similar or bigger split this time around doesn’t seem too far fetched.
January brings a break from the Premier League with the FA Cup, which may be a welcome distraction. Our first Premier League fixture of 2025 is away to Aston Villa. The rest of the month is unpredictable fixtures with a couple of teams whose seasons could go either way but given how tough February onwards looks, this might tell us our fate early on.
Whether we’ll have been in any position to bolster the squad in January is unclear and one eye will inevitably be on which league we’re likely going to end up in come May.
February’s key fixture is Everton at the start, Arsenal will be the free hit where any points would be a bonus and the other two are impossible to call at this stage. Brentford are tough to call and West Ham will also be an unknown entity initially under new manager Julen Lopetegui.
Crunch time
March looks incredibly sparse, just two fixtures with the planned week off for the FA Cup. Chelsea away, Manchester United at home are the only games. It wouldn’t be a shock if we were feeling a little desperate come mid-April.
February’s fixtures are tough to call in terms of points yield and March doesn’t really offer the chance to carry on good momentum or fix bad momentum given how stop-start it feels. This has the horrible feel of a couple of months where we may not have picked up a win approaching the final stretch.
If our latest relegation season is anything to go by, we’ll have a good feel for whether we are okay or doomed by the time April begins. It’s the business end of the season, the time that Manchester City turn into the Hulk and we start the month by playing them, hurray. Newcastle, Brighton and Liverpool follow. You’re not predicting us to be coming away with too many points from that combination.
The last five fixtures scream six-pointers assuming we are still in the fight and not long relegated. Wolves (A), Southampton (H), Forest (A), Ipswich (H) and the final day of the season, Bournemouth (A). All of them are likely clubs to be in the mix for relegation or on the periphery.
A fixture list isn’t the basis for how we’re hiring our next manager but we are going to need somebody who is up for the fight and who can either get the fans on board (in a united way Maresca didn’t entirely manage), or at least be able to empathise with them.
How we outwardly present ourselves has to give more the fanbase more hope and something to cheer than the last time out at this level.
We all understand there’ll be fewer wins, fewer goals to celebrate than the Championship season. In 2022/23 the Foxes only won 9 times and only 5 of those were in front of the King Power crowd. Beating that is the goal and we will definitely need to be better at home if we are to stand a chance.
As things stand, only the opening round of fixtures has had changes to days and kick-off times so enjoy the rare number of Saturday 3pm kick-offs before they all inevitably get pushed around to please the tv bosses.
