Premier League Fixture Difficulty: Which Teams Have the Easiest and Hardest Run-Ins?

(Almost) all Premier League sides have 10 matches to go in the 2024-25 season. With a lot left to be decided, we analyse the fixture difficulty of each club’s remaining games.

With 10 matchdays remaining, the 2024-25 Premier League season is entering its final stretch. Almost every side has 10 games left to play, with just Liverpool and Aston Villa (nine each) ruining the symmetry. Not all run-ins are created equal, though, and understanding the relative difficulty of each side’s remaining fixtures could offer us some clues as to how the final weeks of the season might unfold.

But how do we do that? Well, by using the Opta Power Rankings, we can assess the relative difficulty of every side’s remaining fixtures and identify who has the easiest and hardest schedule.

As a quick reminder, the Opta Power Rankings are a global team rating system that assigns a score to more than 13,000 men’s domestic football teams and over 2,000 women’s domestic teams on a scale from zero to 100, where zero is the lowest-rated team in the world, and 100 the highest.

By averaging the rating of each club’s remaining opponents, we can quantify how challenging their run-in truly is:

Jonathan Manuel / Data Analyst

Let’s start at the bottom of the difficulty scale.

According to the model, Wolves have the easiest run-in of any Premier League side. Given they endured the toughest opening schedule of the season, it stands to reason that their final stretch would be more forgiving.

Vítor Pereira’s side have a healthy six-point buffer over the relegation zone, but they are not out of the woods just yet. Fortunately, their next three fixtures offer an opportunity to turn that buffer into a chasm: they travel to Southampton and Ipswich, with a home game against West Ham in between. Those are three very winnable games.

For the three promoted clubs – Southampton, Ipswich, and Leicester – the fixture list offers little encouragement. All three have middling run-ins in terms of difficulty, but based on their performances this season, even if those run-ins were particularly easy it would still be difficult to identify where the points they need to survive might come from.

Perhaps the most interesting remaining battle in the table is the race for the Champions League qualification spots. Manchester City currently occupy fifth spot in the standings – a position that looks almost certain to be enough to qualify for Europe’s premier club competition – and Pep Guardiola’s side have the second-easiest run-in remaining. That will be a boost for a City team who will need Champions League football next year to salvage something from an otherwise dreadful season.

Nottingham Forest, fresh off a hugely significant win over City this past weekend, have the third-easiest set of remaining fixtures. They will eye up games against Ipswich, Leicester, Everton and Brentford as must-wins, but have proven this season they can go toe-to-toe with anyone.

Newcastle, who are sixth but only on goal difference, also benefit from a relatively kind run-in.

In the Opta supercomputer’s rest-of-season predictions, it’s City who remain the strongest favourites for a top-four finish (66.7%), ahead of Nottingham Forest (55.2%), Chelsea (36.0%) and Newcastle (25.5%). Expand that to a top-five finish, however, and the numbers increase significantly: City (82.1%), Forest (73.5%), Chelsea (57.6%), Newcastle (44.8%).

Speaking of Chelsea, the Blues have one of the hardest run-ins. They face Arsenal away next up, but then finish with a fairly brutal last four fixtures against Liverpool, Newcastle, Manchester United and Nottingham Forest. Enzo Maresca will want to have plenty of points in the bank ahead of that.

On recent form, it’s Brighton who are the dark horses to sneak into the Champions League. The Seagulls have won their last four games in the Premier League, their longest-ever winning streak in the competition, and the first time they’ve done so in the top flight since May 1981. The Opta supercomputer currently gives them an 8.6% chance of creeping into the top four and an 18.9% chance of finishing in the top five.

Fabian Hürzeler will hope the old adage of ‘form over fixtures’ holds true, though, with Brighton’s run-in one of the hardest of all.

Oliver Glasner has worked wonders at Crystal Palace and the Eagles are one of the league’s form teams in 2025. Only Liverpool (25) have won more Premier League points this calendar year than Palace’s 19 (W6 D1 L2).

Could their run come to an end soon, though? Palace have the second-most difficult run-in, with seven of their final 10 matches coming against top-half opposition. Their strong form may need to continue if they are to maintain their upward trajectory.

Fulham are on track for their biggest Premier League points tally ever. They are currently averaging 1.5 points per game this season, which projects to 57 points over a 38-game campaign. That’s well above their current record of 53, set in 2008-09 when they finished seventh.

But Marco Silva’s side face a torrid final stretch. Their upcoming run against Spurs, Arsenal, Liverpool, Bournemouth and Chelsea is one of the most difficult five-game stretches you’re likely to see. They’ll need 11 points from their final 10 games to break their record, which is no easy task given what lies ahead.

Both Liverpool and Arsenal have relatively average run-ins in terms of difficulty, but this is almost certainly going to be irrelevant in the title race, if you can even call it that. Arne Slot’s side currently hold a commanding 15-point lead at the top of the table and could clinch the title as early as mid-April. The Opta supercomputer gives them a 99.5% probability of lifting the trophy when all is said and done.

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