The 2023/24 Premier League fixtures were announced at 9am on Thursday (UK time). And in the Northwest hotbed of football, there were woops of delight and astonishment as Vincent Kompany’s Burnley were pitched against European Champions Manchester City in the top-flight curtain-raiser.
The Sky Blues playing legend has already taken his young Burnley side to meet his old boss Pep in the FA Cup quarter-final last year, and they were duly dispatched by the treble winners as Erling Haaland scored a hat-trick.
Kompany spent 11 seasons at Manchester City, four of them under Guardiola. And as captain, he led them to four Premier League titles.
He is one of City’s all-time stars, and there is a statue of Kompany erected at the Etihad Stadium. But when the two teams meet on Friday 11th August, he will plan to make Turf Moor as hostile as possible.
The Belgian leader has said he expects Burnley away to be an unpleasant fixture for anyone, and this is a club which can punch above its weight. Burnley have a habit of beating Premier League champions on the opening day of the season, seeing off Sir Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United 1-0 at Turf Moor in 2009, and then stunning 2017 champions Chelsea with a 3-2 victory at Stamford Bridge.
The SBOTOP stats team are always on the money when picking the teams to watch, and they have installed the Sky Blues as favourites to retain their title, while the Premier League 2023 betting odds suggest the Clarets should survive, but Kompany has set his sights higher.
His team stormed to the Championship title last term, playing a fluid and attacking style of football but with the steel he displayed as a commanding centre-back.
The Belgian ace will be determined to pick up some positive Premier League 2023 results early on, and there is no way he will dismiss this clash as a “free hit”. Whether his young team can cope with Haaland and co. remains to be seen, but this is a match not to be missed.
The other newcomers, Sheffield United and Luton Town, face Crystal Palace and Brighton and Hove Albion on the opening weekend. Play-off winners Luton’s trip to meet the Seagulls is their first top-flight game since 1992, and the Hatters fans will have a party on the South Coast for sure.
Chelsea vs Liverpool is the clash of Round One
While Manchester City have an intriguing challenge away to Burnley, the other 2024 Champions League qualifiers have home games on the opening weekend.
Runners-up Arsenal host Nottingham Forest on Saturday 12th before Aston Villa, who finished strongly in seventh, will take a trip to the Northeast to meet Newcastle United, and the weekend draws to a close when Erik ten Hag’s Manchester United host Wolverhampton Wanderers.
But the other eye-catching clash of the opening weekend pitches together the two underachievers of 2023, Chelsea, who remarkably finished 12th, and Liverpool, who made a late run to scramble up to fifth place.
These are two teams in transition.
Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool has aged since their title win in 2020, and the German head coach is trying to refresh his squad, particularly in midfield where the recruitment of World Cup winner Alexis Mac Allister has been a good start to the Reds’ transfer window.
Mohamed Salah will lead the Liverpool attack again and, at 31 years of age, the Egyptian maestro is still a superbly lethal striker, while Klopp will hope to see Darwin Nunez make a bigger impact in his second season in the Premier League.
While there is a steady evolution going on at Liverpool, there has been something of a revolution at Stamford Bridge since the arrival of American businessman Todd Boehly.
The Blues’ owner has spent eye-watering amounts of money, and there has been some considerable bloodshed too, as he sacked Thomas Tuchel who led the team to Champions League glory only a year earlier.
Boehly appointed Graham Potter, but before the former Brighton man could make his mark, he too was bulleted and Frank Lampard was brought in as an interim manager and the season went from bad to worse.
The appointment of former Spurs head coach Mauricio Pochettino is a progressive move for the club and, providing Boehly gives him time, Poch should lead Chelsea to a successful domestic campaign with no European distractions.
If he can improve the performance of the expensive band of young recruits, including Mykhailo Mudryk and Enzo Fernandez, while inspiring the established players to reach former heights, Chelsea could well be a team worth watching.
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