Last updated on July 17th, 2026
Photo by James Kirkup on Unsplash
The 2026/27 fixtures are out, and the Fixture Difficulty Ratings already show a clear split: some squads get a soft landing, others get thrown straight into the deep end.
Every July, the same argument breaks out in FPL group chats: how much should early fixtures actually swing your squad selection? The Premier League’s own Fixture Difficulty Ratings (FDR) for the opening six Gameweeks of 2026/27 make a decent case for “quite a lot.” A handful of clubs get a genuinely soft run through August and September. A few others get thrown in against last season’s best teams almost immediately, and that gap is worth building a draft strategy around.
The soft landings: Manchester, north London and the East Midlands
Manchester United and Manchester City both sit among the best-scheduled sides over the first six rounds, and that alone makes Bruno Fernandes and Erling Haaland obvious early captaincy targets. Neither side faces a top-six fixture until deep into September on current scheduling. The betting market agrees: City are priced around 1.45 at home to Bournemouth, and Arsenal are even shorter at 1.16 to beat Coventry in the opener. Both are about as close to a lock as August football gets.
Arsenal and Nottingham Forest are right there with them. The Gunners face only one of last season’s top six sides across their first eight matches, a trip to Aston Villa in Gameweek 2. That alone makes doubling up on Gabriel and David Raya at the back worth considering from the off. Gabriel’s 209 points last season were more than 30 clear of any other defender in the game, built on three goals, five assists and 18 clean sheets. A clean run of fixtures doesn’t hurt that case.
Forest’s Morgan Gibbs-White is the standout name from their own kind schedule. He put up a career-high 188 points last season on 15 goals and four assists. Home matches against Leeds, Tottenham and Coventry inside the first five rounds look built for more of the same.
Liverpool’s new era starts gently
Andoni Iraola inherits a genuinely favourable opening at Anfield, one of seven Premier League clubs bringing in a new manager this season. Liverpool avoid every one of last season’s top 10 sides across their first four matches, facing Newcastle, Nottingham Forest, Ipswich and Fulham before things get harder.
Virgil van Dijk remains the safest defensive pick at Anfield on raw output alone. The more interesting question is what Iraola does further forward. Dominik Szoboszlai’s role is worth tracking closely in pre-season, since Iraola’s pressing style could push him into a more advanced, central role, and he has the advantage of missing the FIFA World Cup 2026, meaning a full pre-season with his new manager rather than a shortened one. New winger Victor Munoz, who put up seven goals and five assists across all competitions for Osasuna in 2025/26, adds another route into a Liverpool front line that looks set to play with more directness than it has in recent years.
The fixtures line up with what the market already thinks about this season. Arsenal, the reigning champions, are 6/4 favourites to retain the title, with Manchester City next at 5/2 despite City’s own kind schedule. Liverpool sit further back in that picture, and their own Gameweek 1 price shows why: despite the soft run of fixtures above, they’re priced around 2.19 to win away at Newcastle, closer to a genuine contest than a formality. Part of that comes down to Newcastle’s crowd, reckoned to be worth close to a goal on its own for a manager walking into his first away day in charge. A kind fixture list on paper doesn’t always show up as a short price on the pitch. For fans who like to check the fixtures and the market side by side, Gambling.com, a trusted authority on sports betting and new online casino UK options, is one of the places UK fans use to see current prices and offers as August approaches.
The hard starts: Bournemouth, Coventry and Hull
Marco Rose’s first months in charge of Bournemouth look a lot tougher than Iraola’s at Liverpool. The Cherries open away to Manchester City and also face Liverpool and Chelsea inside their first six matches, with all three fixtures rated four or higher on the FDR scale. The odds say the same thing from the other direction: Bournemouth are out at around 5.40 to win at the Etihad. Not exactly a gentle way to start a new manager’s tenure.
Newly promoted Coventry and Hull face similar early tests. Frank Lampard’s Coventry travel to face Arsenal and Manchester City in Gameweeks 1 and 3. Hull play Manchester United, Aston Villa, Chelsea and Newcastle inside their first five matches, and they’re priced at 5-1 to beat United at home in the opener despite having the crowd behind them. Leeds round out the group with the toughest early runs in the division. None of that rules out differentials appearing from those squads later on, but it’s a hard case for going in heavy on any of them in August.
If you want to check exactly how your own squad’s fixture run stacks up beyond the headline names here, the fixture difficulty tool breaks the full 38-game schedule down club by club for exactly this kind of planning.
Six Gameweeks is a small enough sample that none of this should be treated as gospel. But when the gap between the easiest and hardest early runs is this wide, it’s a reasonable place to start building a Gameweek 1 squad around.
