As the Premier League title race enters its final stretch, paranoia intensifies.
Fretting over fixture difficulty is nothing new, but a more niche anxiety concerns not just the opposition, but the order you play them: specifically, which of the would-be champions kicks off first in each round of games.
Arsenal are a comfortable-looking seven points clear of second-placed Manchester City heading into this weekend’s matches, but Pep Guardiola’s side have a game in hand and also host a meeting between the two sides on April 19, a scenario that potentially trims that gap to one point. The margins remain fine enough that these minor scheduling quirks assume an outsized importance, something former Arsenal midfielder Paul Merson seized upon during Sky Sports’ post-match coverage of their 2-2 draw at last-placed Wolves on February 18.
“The title will go down to whoever plays first, and Sky have a massive part to play in that (in terms of scheduling games for live broadcast),” he said. “Tiger Woods always wanted to take the first tee shot to put the pressure on. I saw it years ago when Spurs always had to respond to Leicester. It takes its toll in the end.”
On the surface, the psychological merits of this argument are appealing.
For example, after City won away at Leeds on Saturday, February 28, the pressure immediately shifted to Arsenal to respond and preserve their lead by beating Chelsea at home on the Sunday, which they did.
That was the third straight round of games where City played before Mikel Arteta’s side, and it would have happened again this weekend but their visit to West Ham, originally scheduled for 12.30pm tomorrow (Saturday) has been pushed back to 8pm, after Arsenal host Everton at 5.30pm, because of City’s away Champions League game against Real Madrid on Wednesday night.
Merson’s highlighted example — Leicester and Tottenham in the 2015-16 season — is one of the few cases in which players have publicly discussed the mental burden of having to continually play second out of two title contenders.
“They seemed to play before us every weekend, and it was a sucker blow when they won. If it’s a late winner, or two goals in the 90th minute, it can have an effect,” then Spurs midfielder Eric Dier told Gary Neville in an interview for The Overlap. That sentiment was echoed by Harry Kane. “We always seem to be the last to play,” he said after Tottenham’s 4-0 win at Stoke City on a Monday night in mid-April, when Leicester had faced West Ham the previous afternoon.
The data backs up their suspicions. Across the final 13 matchweeks that season — the cutoff for a “title run-in” for the purposes of this article — Leicester played first nine times, compared to three for Tottenham, while the final day, as usual, all 10 top-flight games kicked off simultaneously. For Spurs, this included three consecutive Monday games, the last of which ended in a bad-tempered 2-2 draw away to Chelsea, a result that handed the title to Claudio Ranieri, Jamie Vardy and company.
In four of the nine instances when Leicester played first, Tottenham subsequently dropped points. Three of those came in the final four matches, perhaps hinting at the cumulative strain of repeatedly having to respond rather than set the pace.
Across all title run-ins, Leicester played first in 69 per cent of matches that year, the second-highest share since the Premier League era began in 1992.
Here, a title run-in refers to seasons (listed in the footnote of the graphic below) in which the destination of the champions’ trophy was still genuinely in doubt late on, excluding processions such as 2024-25, when Liverpool won at a canter, finishing 10 points above Arsenal.
The team at the top of the above graphic may reopen some painful memories for Arsenal fans.
City played first in 73 per cent of their run-in fixtures in 2022-23, chasing down Arsenal’s eight-point lead to win the league for a third year running and fifth time in six seasons.
But despite City’s dominance in playing first, it does not appear to have been a major factor in Arsenal’s unravelling. In consecutive draws away to Liverpool and West Ham in early April, Arteta’s side took two-goal leads before surrendering them, careless lapses in control rather than signs of a team overwhelmed by City’s result the day before, while their 4-1 defeat at the Etihad late that same month proved most damaging.
City, meanwhile, found their role reversed in their 2021-22 title tussle with Liverpool, yet showed little sign of strain. Both sides set an unrelenting pace throughout that campaign and sustained it on the run-in, with City edging the title by a point in dramatic fashion, rallying from two goals down at home to Aston Villa on the final day, while Liverpool were beating Wolves 3-1 at Anfield, to win 3-2.
If there is an advantage to playing first, it barely registers in the numbers. Title contenders average 2.27 points when setting the pace and 2.20 when responding, not a large enough gap to suggest a meaningful, consistent edge.
That is not to say the effect does not exist, though. Each title race is unique, every contending team shaped by a different mental make-up and set of circumstances, and quantifying how each psychological strain manifests itself on the pitch is next to impossible.
But often the narrative around these scheduling quirks is shaped by results. Lose, and playing second is framed as a disadvantage; win, and it becomes an opportunity.
When Tottenham won away to Stoke on that Monday night in April 2016, it came after Leicester had slipped to a 2-2 draw at home against West Ham, only avoiding defeat with a late penalty. Kane was quick to stress that Spurs were “there waiting and fighting”, memorably posting a picture on Instagram of a pack of lions — presumably to underline his side’s readiness to pounce. Playing second was suddenly recast not as a burden, but as a reminder to Leicester of the consequences of any slip, shifting the pressure back onto the leaders.
Ultimately, broadcast selections are a minor thread in the title-race tapestry, secondary to team quality, tactics and mental fortitude.
“To win in this league, you have to be exceptional at everything, because there are no margins,” said Arteta after Arsenal’s painful end to that 2022-23 season. Both he and Guardiola will be solely focused on those margins that they can control in the weeks ahead.
