Who has the worst fixtures at the start of the 2021/22 FPL season?
Little more than three weeks since the end of 2020/21, the fixtures for the upcoming Premier League season are out. Weve already taken a look at the top-flight teams with the best runs of opening games on paper, so now we switch attention to those sides with less favourable schedules. A six-Gameweek lookahead is our initial focus but well cast our eyes further where necessary. Our Season Ticker was updated almost immediately after the fixtures were released at 9am BST on Wednesday, with the opening six Gameweeks sorted by difficulty below:  Subscribers to Fantasy Football Scout can use this helpful tool to pick out the best and worst runs of matches for each club, sort by rotation pairings, use their own customised difficulty ratings and more. You can see a tutorial on the Season Ticker below:  WORST FIXTURES  NORWICH CITY    FIRST SIX FIXTURES : LIV | mci | LEI | ars | WAT | eve  : LIV | mci | LEI | ars | WAT | eve POSSIBLE TURNING POINT: WAT (GW5)  Welcome back to the Premier League, Norwich City. The champions of the English second-tier sit rock bottom of our Season Ticker in the opening month, having been handed a nightmare start. Liverpool and Manchester City are first up, with Leicester City to follow before the September international break. Its difficult to know which incarnation of Arsenal will turn up when the Canaries welcome the Gunners to Carrow Road in Gameweek 4 but Mikel Artetas Jekyll-and-Hyde side were second in the Premier League form table in 2021, hinting at some modest improvement. Daniel Farkes troops have some respite from Gameweeks 4-7, at least, with fellow new boys Watford to come as well as Everton, Brighton and Hove Albion and Burnley. Fantasy investment in Teemu Pukki may have to wait, then, although the Finn did of course bag against Liverpool, Chelsea and Manchester City in the first few weeks of 2019/20. CHELSEA  FIRST SIX FIXTURES : CRY | ars | liv | AVL | tot | MCI  : CRY | ars | liv | AVL | tot | MCI POSSIBLE TURNING POINT: SOU (GW7)  A number of Chelsea assets may well be on Scout Picks duty in Gameweek 1 but the medium-term outlook is not so rosy for the European champions. Crystal Palace visit Stamford Bridge on the opening weekend and have provided obliging opposition recently, losing their last seven encounters with the Blues  including both fixtures last season by a combined 8-1 scoreline. The Eagles may be a bit of an unknown quantity given the change of manager, of course, while more traditional stiffer tests then await Thomas Tuchels troops. A triple-header of away games at Arsenal, Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur is punctuated by a clash with Aston Villa, who defeated Chelsea 2-1 in Gameweek 38. Champions Manchester City then follow in Gameweek 6. Write off Tuchels side at your peril, though: Chelsea beat City in all three of their league and cup meetings in 2021 and shut out the likes of Liverpool, Spurs, Manchester United and Leeds United after Frank Lampard departed. LEEDS UNITED  FIRST SIX FIXTURES : mun | EVE| bur | LIV | new | WHU  : mun | EVE| bur | LIV | new | WHU POSSIBLE TURNING POINT: new (GW5)  For Leeds, read Chelsea: iffy opening fixtures but a side that showed big improvements at the back in 2021 and who proved themselves capable of going toe to toe with the traditional elite, especially on home soil. In truth, its only really the clashes with Manchester United and Liverpool that should be off-putting. Everton are an unknown quantity at this stage following the change of manager, while Burnley, Newcastle and West Hams defensive form deserted them in the second half of last season: only Southampton kept fewer clean sheets than that trio of clubs (four each) from Gameweek 20 onwards. The Gameweek 5 trip to Newcastle indeed heralds a six-match run in which Leeds are catapulted to the top of our Season Ticker. CRYSTAL PALACE  FIRST SIX FIXTURES : che | BRE | whu | TOT | liv | BHA  : che | BRE | whu | TOT | liv | BHA POSSIBLE TURNING POINT: WOL (GW11)  Whoever takes over at Crystal Palace faces a baptism of fire. Extending the Season Ticker lookahead to Gameweek 10 sees the Eagles drop to the bottom, with seven of the teams who finished in the top eight last season awaiting Roy Hodgsons former charges. Home games against Brentford, rivals Brighton and Newcastle are chinks of light amidst that run but therell few Fantasy managers gambling on Wilfried Zaha and co until November at the earliest. ALSO CONSIDER  No team kept fewer clean sheets than Southampton (eve | MUN | new | WHU | mci | WOL) in the second half of last season and shut-out opportunities may be thin on the ground in the first few months of 2021/22. The opening six games arent a complete write-off, with an Everton side in flux, Newcastle, a defensively suspect West Ham and Wolves all to come. But taking the Gameweek 7 and 8 clashes with Chelsea and Leeds United into consideration does push the schedule towards unfavourable territory, particularly as encounters with both Manchester clubs are to come before then. Tottenham Hotspur (MCI | wol | WAT | cry | CHE | ars) have the trickiest test of Gameweek 1, meanwhile, with four London derbies to come between Gameweeks 3-6. Spurs do rise to third in our Gameweek 2-8 ticker once the visit of Pep Guardiolas reigning champions is out of the way, however. There is not much to like about Burnleys (BHA | liv | LEE | eve | ARS | lei) opening set of matches, meanwhile. That goes doubly true for Chris Wood, given that Brighton, Liverpool, Leeds, Everton and Arsenal were all in the top seven for clean sheets in the final 12 Gameweeks of the campaign. Group A: Turkey | Italy | Wales | Switzerland  Group B: Denmark | Finland | Belgium | Russia  Group C: Netherlands | Ukraine | Austria | North Macedonia  Group D: England | Croatia | Scotland | Czech Republic  Group E: Spain | Sweden | Poland | Slovakia  Group F: Hungary | Portugal | France | Germany  BY POSITION: Goalkeepers | Defenders | Midfielders | Forwards  STRATEGY  Become a Member and get unrestricted access to our data and articles  Full-year memberships are now available for the price of 25.00. Monthly subscriptions also cost just 3.99. 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