Fixtures for up coming season

I see the new season fixtures are due to be announced on 21 June so not too long to wait now. Lets have a competition to see who gets closest to the when and where of it.

First game of the season who. 1.

Home or away. 2,

Boxing Day who. 3.

Home or away. 4.

New Year who. 5.

Home or away. 6.

Last game of the season who. 7.

Home or away. 8.

 

1. Coventry

2. Away

3. Wycombe

4. Home

5. Bristol Rovers

6. Away

7. Accrington Stanley

8. Away

 

I might have to disqualify myself from this but......
First game of the season who. 1. Luton Town

Home or away. 2, Away

Boxing Day who. 3. Wycombe

Home or away. 4. Home

New Year who. 5. Walsall

Home or away. 6. Away

Last game of the season who. 7. Coventry

Home or away. 8. Home

 

I trust you on the grounds that supporters always believe people at their club know nothing..........................

 

First game of the season.....BURTON (1)...at HOME (2).

Boxing Day.....BRISTOL R (3)...AWAY (4).

New Years Day.....PORTSMOUTH (5)...at HOME (6).

Last game of the season.....OXFORD (7)...AWAY (8).

 

1st game: Wycombe Wanderers (0-0, 2 red cards, 8 yellows).

Boxing Day: Sunderland away

New Year: Scunthorpe home

Last game: Accrington Stanley away ( Televised on a channel nobody has at 7:45 on Sunday)

Sent from my mobile phone - E&OE

 

Home or away. coventry 2, Away

Boxing Day who. 3. Gillingham

Home or away. 4. Home

New Year who. 5. oxford

Home or away. 6. Away

Last game of the season who. 7. sunderland

Home or away. 8. Home

 

You need a "who" for No. 1 Joe.

You aren't taking this seriously are you notdistant?

 

No

Sent from my mobile phone - E&OE

 

When I say no, I really mean who can fathom the logic in fixtures these days?

 

It's serious stuff don't you know. There are people at FA HQ who are paid a fortune to work these things out. Or rather stick their pin in a chart and go from there.

 

Exactly. That's why it's Sunderland away on Boxing Day!

Sent from my mobile phone - E&OE

 

Point of order - it is the EFL and not the FA who do the fixtures. Shortly after the fixtures came out last season I lost 45 minutes of my life (that I will never get back) in a discussion about how it all 'works'. In fairness to the EFL there are are lot of factors that get fed into the 'computer' and it does spit out what it thinks is the best solution for the majority of Clubs. As with all compromises it results in no one being being particularly happy, but neither, in theory, should anyone be seriously unhappy with the schedule. We were particularly unfortunate last season, mainly due to the NW powerhouse in EFL1, but I expect the balance to improve this year. The best way to look at it is that we have to play everyone Home and Away and shouldn't really care in what order!
Just to give a couple of examples of the complexities:-
1.The long midweek trips 'oop north' are a deliberate ploy. There was/is a feeling that fixtures between clubs a long way apart are likely to draw smaller crowds regardless of when they are played, so it makes sense to play those that are closeish on a Saturday, thereby maximizing the attendance and revenues.
2. The police have a significant input- it is unlikely, due to their resource and cost issues, that we would play say Portsmouth or Exeter (had they not bottled the PO final) on Boxing day etc.
3. Similarly some Police forces ask that Clubs are paired with others e.g. D&C might struggled to cope with high profile matches at both ECFC and PAFC on the same day, so we would generally be scheduled to be Home when ECFC are away and vice versa.

Look at a map of where all the EFL1 clubs are situated on it becomes very clear why we always feel hard done by-I think Walsall at 200 miles was our third closest last season.....whereas for the NW teams it was probably one of their longer trips.

I could go on , but I sense some eye lids beginning to close already. In summary, it might not seem like it but quite a lot of thought and effort goes into producing the schedule, including inputs from all the Clubs and Police forces.

Lets see what Thursday brings!

 

ZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!!!!!!

Only kidding. And after all that thought and huffing and puffing that went on they draw them out of a hat or throw darts at a list of teams. Red dart for home and blue for away. Looks like Sunderland on a Tuesday night then for sure. Mind you, anywhere from here is a long way so I guess that's why they don't like us.

 

I think Sunderland will be a Saturday (both), but expect some long trips on Tuesdays- Scunthorpe etc

 

New season fixtures

First game.....Walsall...A...4th Aug
First Home game.....Southend...11th Aug
Christmas....22nd Dec...Accrington...H..........26th Dec...Wimbledon... A
New Year.....29th Dec...Burton...A..........1st Jan...Oxford...H
Easter.....Fri 19th Apr...Gillingham...A..........Mon 22 Apr...Barnsley...H
Last game...4th May...Scunthorpe...H
Portsmouth.....1st Sep...A..........9th Feb...H
Bristol R.....8th Sep...A..........23rd Mar...H
Sunderland.....3rd Nov...H..........2nd Mar...A

 

Well my three "local" games haven't worked out too well.

At Charlton... Sat 22nd Sep.....that's ok.
At Wimbledon...Wed 26th Dec... family time....iffy.
At Gillingham...Fri 19th Apr...again bank holiday...family time.

That's two away journeys on bank holidays for the green army....500 mile round trips....you would have thought at least one of them would have been Bristol R.

 

Well that was good. Just totted up and the winner has to be Joe.

Joe got 3 right and one of them was an actual team name.

Second was a 3 way tie with nobody getting a team name right .

Lyndhurst Plym and notdistand all got 2

Last was me with 1.

All this bodes well for the prediction league this term.

What gets me is again we are away for the first game and on boxing day. This year not only away on boxing day but away again on the Saturday following. At least the last one is at home this time but I still think the FA don't like us much because we never seem to get much our way.

 

Two? I was joking.

 

You may have got 3 if you had predicted home or away for the first game. I didn't notice you hadn't until I did the marking.