Match Preview Week 1

The Football season will properly start this weekend, following the taste of action we had last week. Highlights of last weekend were Liverpool beating Manchester City in an entertaining Community Shield match and, Bayern winning an eight-goal thriller against RB Leipzig in Germany’s Super Cup.

We’re in for some serious action as the English Premier League Kicks off on Friday evening, with Arsenal travelling across London to take on Crystal Palace. The first league match in France sees Lyon host AC Ajaccio, while Bayern Munich are in motion once again as they travel to Eintracht Frankfurt. Other leagues starting this weekend include the Turkish Super Lig and Liga Portugal.

On Saturday we’ll have six matches from the English Premier League starting with the early kick-off between Fulham and last season’s runners up Liverpool, followed by four matches taking place at 4 pm. The late kick-off sees Chelsea travel to Everton. 

Weekend Highlights

There’s a full schedule of matches from the English Championship over the weekend too for fans of English Football beyond the Premier League. 

Saturday sees two matches taking place in France, including Paris SG’s encounter with Clermont. And six matches taking place in the German Bundesliga with the highlight being the late kick-off between Dortmund and Leverkusen. The league is yet to start in Italy, so Football action comes from the early rounds of the Coppa Italia.

There will be three matches from the top flight in England on Sunday, with Leicester hosting Brentford, Manchester United at home to Brighton and West Ham welcoming defending champions Manchester City. Highlights from around Europe include Lille taking on Auxerre in France, FC Köln up against Schalke from the Bundesliga and Galatasaray are up and ready in Turkey.

Midweek action includes qualification matches for the Champions League, Europa League and Conference League as well as the early rounds of the EFL Cup in England. But the best match of the week is the UEFA Super Cup between Real Madrid and Eintracht Frankfurt.

Friday 05/08

Crystal Palace vs Arsenal

The first match of the new league season in England is a London derby between Patrick Viera’s Crystal Palace and Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal. Palace had a busy summer recruiting players that they hope will allow them to improve on a solid twelfth place finish last season. They will be looking for their first top-half finish since 2014/2015. Wilfred Zaha remains their star player and despite persistent rumours linking him to other clubs, he seems likely to stay for another season. Last time Palace won this fixture 3-0 so a similar result would be regarded as an excellent start to the season.

Arsenal had a good pre-season, with convincing wins against Sevilla and Chelsea amongst others. Their transfer business has also been encouraging with the likes of Gabriel Jesus, Fabio Vieira and Oleksandr Zinchenko being added to their ranks. Last season Arsenal were involved in the opening match, when they lost against newly promoted Brentford, so they will be hoping for a better start this year. Arsenal’s target this year will surely be to end the season in the top four, after just missing out with a fifth-place finish last season.

Eintracht Frankfurt vs Bayern Munich

The Bundesliga season kicks off with last season’s winners travelling to the home of the Europa League Champions. This will be the 60^th Bundesliga season and it will be hard to look beyond Bayern as favourites to win it once again.

Bayern started life without the Bundesliga’s top scorer for five years in a row, Robert Lewandowski. With a 5-3 win over RB Leipzig in the Super Cup they will be looking to carry on that form into the first league match of the season. The Bavarians will be looking for their 11^th successive title but will be hoping for a better start than in recent years as they failed to win their previous two opening matches.

Eintracht Frankfurt are unbeaten in five of their last six opening day matchups but will need to start the season in better form than they ended it. They focused all their attention on winning the Europa League and did not win any of their last eight league matches. Last season both these fixtures went the way of the visiting team with Frankfurt winning 2-1 at Bayern last October so this match is by no means a formality for the defending champions.

Saturday 06/08

Fulham vs Liverpool

Newly promoted Fulham face a tough start to the season as they welcome last season’s runners up Liverpool to Craven Cottage in West London. Their ambition will be to survive the season in the top flight as last time they went straight back down to the Championship despite spending a vast amount of money. They will surely have had enough of being known as a ‘yo yo’ club and will want to solidify their status as a Premier League outfit. They dominated the Championship last season but that does not necessarily mean they are guaranteed to survive this upcoming season. Aleksander Mitrovic will surely be a key man once again for his team.

Liverpool fell just short of what would have been a historic season last year, losing out to Man City on the last day of the season in the title race. They look set to carry on their excellent form judging by their performance last weekend in the Community Shield and will be optimistic that they will be too strong for this Fulham side. Jurgen Klopp has, over the past two transfer windows, attempted to refresh his squad with the additions of the likes of Luis Diaz and Darwin Nunez to compensate for the departures of Sadio Mane, Divock Origi and others.

Mo Salah decided to extend his stay at Anfield by signing a new contract and he will be hoping to start the season with a goal in the first match as he has done in each of the last five seasons whereas Fulham will at least be hoping to continue their record of scoring against Liverpool at Craven Cottage, something they have done in six of the last seven encounters in London.

Sunday 07/08

Manchester United vs Brighton

Manchester United will be hoping to start in much better form than they ended last season when they gave up and were heavily criticised by all, including their own fans. The penultimate game of their season saw them lose 4-0 to Brighton so this fixture gives them an immediate opportunity to right some of those wrongs. Other than that one match last season, this is a fixture that United have dominated, winning nine of the last twelve encounters. United have lost some players and added new ones but many feel there are still issues to be solved in the squad. This is the sort of match they simply must win if they have hopes of returning to the top four.

Brighton finished in a very respectable ninth spot last season and will be hoping to maintain that level this time out. They rely heavily on coach Graham Potter as they do not spend much in the transfer market. In fact, they are yet to make any major signings this summer and have lost Yves Bissouma to Tottenham and are likely to lose star left back Marc Cucurella to Chelsea or Man City. The south coast team will be hoping to make life difficult for new United coach Erik Ten Hag, but a home win is still expected.

West Ham vs Manchester City

Defending champions Manchester City start their season with a tricky away match at West Ham, where they are actually winless in their last three visits. They missed out on the first piece of silverware last weekend, losing to Liverpool in the community shield, so will be hoping to make a winning start to this league season as they attempt to add to their haul of league wins, having won four of the last five Premier League titles. They go into this match as strong favourites despite the recent history.

West Ham have made a few additions, as a large squad will be needed once again this season as they play 25 matches between now and the start of the World Cup. Having had a very good season last year, reaching the Europa League semi-finals and once again finishing in a European spot in the league they will be looking to build on that and solidify their status as a top-eight team. Possibly putting in a challenge towards the top four.

David Moyes is key to their success, and he will be delighted to have kept hold of star player Declan Rice as his leadership will be key following the retirement of club captain Mark Noble. The Londoners will take some confidence from their three encounters with City last season and will be hoping to cause the defending champions some issues. Goals will be expected in this one, with six of the last ten matches resulting in over 2.5 goals and both teams possessing significant firepower up front.