We bring to you our simple and clean FPL fixture tracker and take an early look at the start the teams have, who to focus on and who to avoid

Hello and welcome back!

FPL is back with a bang, well ahead of schedule, with them launching the game much earlier than expected.

I know you’re just as excited as we are, so we’re getting to work straight away on bringing you more quality content to help you draft out those teams until they’re perfect in your own eyes!

So without further ado, let’s get this show back on the road…

The Fixtures

The Good

Manchester City’s opening 7 fixtures: Arsenal (A), Huddersfield (H), Wolves (A), Newcastle (H), Fulham (H), Cardiff City (A), Brighton (H)

As you can see above, the champions face all 3 newly promoted teams in their first 7 fixtures and face all 3 of the promoted teams from last year as well.

Even the first fixture away to Arsenal isn’t too bad, given Arsenal’s historical defensive frailties, so having at the very least 1 asset from City is heavily advisable, with 2/3 being my recommendation (Side note: We will suggest the players worth consideration for each team in the team profiles coming out around 1st August).

Everton’s opening 7 fixtures: Wolves (A), Southampton (H), Bournemouth (A), Huddersfield (H), West Ham (H), Arsenal (A), Fulham (H)

Marco Silva was able to steer a pretty poor Hull side to 8 wins at home out of 11 when he was in charge of them and got the side playing good stuff going forward, striking solid balance between scoring goals and keeping it tight at the back.

Everton have very favourable home fixtures in their first 10 GWs and you can expect, with Silva at the helm, them to take advantage of that – 1 or 2 players from Everton would be a good bet.

Burnley’s opening 8 fixtures: Southampton (A), Watford (H), Fulham (A), Man Utd (H), Wolves (A), Bournemouth (H), Cardiff City (A), Huddersfield (H)

Burnley are another team that face all 3 newly promoted sides in their opening fixtures.

Burnley had a fantastic season under Dyche, finishing 7th, having only conceded 39 goals – a defence you can always rely on for some clean sheets at a reasonable price.

Crystal Palace’s opening 8 fixtures: Fulham (A), Liverpool (H), Watford (A), Southampton (H), Huddersfield (A), Newcastle (H), Bournemouth (A), Wolves (H)

Palace have a lovely start, only having to face 1 of the ‘big 6’ teams in the first 8 fixtures.

They finished the season strongly, with 4 wins and 2 draws from their last 6 games, scoring 14 and conceding 5 in the process – Roy will want to start this season the way they finished the last one off and with their opening fixtures, you wouldn’t bet against them.

Others worth mentioning: Liverpool, Manchester United, Arsenal (after GW2)

The Bad

Newcastle United’s opening 8 fixtures: Tottenham (H), Cardiff (A), Chelsea (H), Man City (A), Arsenal (H), Crystal Palace (A), Leicester (H), Man United (A)

Rafa and his magpies will undoubtedly struggle out the blocks this year after receiving a pretty rough start fixture wise.

They face 5 out of the 6 ‘big’ teams, with Liverpool being the only 1 missing – definitely avoid Newcastle players unless they’re playing the role of bench fodder for you.

West Ham’s opening 10 fixtures: Liverpool (A), Bournemouth (H), Arsenal (A), Wolves (H), Everton (A), Chelsea (H), Man United (H), Brighton (A), Tottenham (H), Leicester (A)

Like Newcastle, West Ham face 5 out of the 6 ‘big’ teams in their opening set of fixtures.

Home games against Wolves and Bournemouth balance the first 5 games out a little, but on a whole, Pellegrini will do extremely well to get a decent amount of points from these first 10 fixtures.

Arnautovic might still be worthy of a shout for West Ham, or perhaps a gamble on new boy Yarmolenko (who we have profiled here >> https://fplconnect.blog/2018/07/11/welcome-to-fpl-andriy-yarmolenko/) but aside from that, I’d advise avoiding them early on and observing how the new regime will transpire under new boss Pellegrini.

Fixture Tracker Link

Here’s the colour coded screenshot of the first 10 fixtures for each team:

I’ve completed the whole set of fixtures but haven’t colour coded all of it, as I believe the fixture difficulty can change depending on how the teams are playing, with new players and new managers having certain impacts etc.

So, for those who want to play around with it, you can download the excel link here >> FDR Schedule 18:19