Newcastle United fans saw the Premier League fixtures released on Friday.
Always a welcome milestone to get to in the barren summer months of no proper football.
Fans of all Premier League clubs intensely studying their fixtures, especially when it comes to how easy (or not…) the opening set of matches look.
Newcastle United have had it really tough early on in recent seasons.
Last (2025/26) season, Newcastle United’s first six games saw them play four of the teams that would finish top six.
So what is the case for August/September 2026, how do Newcastle United’s opening five fixtures compare to the other 19 Premier League clubs.
Interesting to see this independent analysis from the official Premier League site, who have looked at the early (first five) Premier League fixtures for each of the 20 clubs and ranked them in terms of difficulty.
The first five Newcastle United matches are Liverpool (Home), Spurs (Away), Bournemouth (Home), Leeds (Away), Hull (Home).
The official Premier League site report – 19 June 2026:
To assess each club’s opening run, we have used the Fixture Difficulty Ratings (FDR) tool, which has long been a helpful resource for Fantasy Premier League managers when planning their squads from one Matchweek to the next.
The FDR is a tool based on a complex algorithm developed by FPL experts, where the difficulty of each fixture is ranked from one to five, with one being the easiest possible match and five being the hardest.
We will use those ratings to assess the first five games for each Premier League team and help you understand which teams have the best starts and which teams have the hardest.
Premier League – Fixture Difficulty Ratings (FDR) – Clubs’ Average FDR First 5 Matches (hardest to easiest)
Best viewed in landscape mode on mobile.
As you can see, Newcastle United ranks as having an easier start than last season.
Liverpool seen as having the very easiest start (FDR 2.6 rating), then Brentford and the two Manchester clubs (FDR 2.8).
Then Newcastle United one of five teams perceived as having the next easiest start (a 3.0 FDR).