The Premier League fixture list is engineered to stop the biggest clubs playing each other on the final day of the season, it can be revealed.

The top-six teams over a three-year period are also kept apart in the opening round of games and on FA Cup semi-final weekend, according to the tender document for the UK television rights to the world’s richest league.

Seen by the Daily Telegraph, which exclusively revealed in December details of the invitation to tender for the Premier League’s 2019-22 seasons, that document contains an entire section on the scheduling of what are called ‘Top 6 Club Matches’ and ‘Top 8 Club Matches’.

Defined as games between clubs with the “highest average finishing positions in the Premier League competition over the three seasons immediately preceding that season”, the document stipulates that “not less than one Top 6 Club Match shall be scheduled to be played as part of twenty-six different weekend fixture programmes during that season (which weekend fixture programmes shall always exclude the opening weekend fixture programme of each season, the final fixture programme of each season and the weekend on which the FA Cup semi-finals are scheduled to be played)”.

Such a policy appears already to be in place, with Manchester United, Liverpool, Arsenal, Chelsea, Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester City kept apart on those same dates this term.