Fixture Density and Intensity, and How It Can Help Liverpool Win the Title

Newcastle & Man City As Case Studies in Fixture Density and Intensity – For Title Run-In

Nunez scores against Newcastle

Newcastle & Man City As Case Studies in Fixture Density and Intensity – For Title Run-In

The link between days of rest before games, fixture difficulty and points-per-game

Two weeks ago I started to write a piece about Newcastle’s fixture list, and how much harder any game becomes when other tough games surround it.

I decided to call it ‘Fixture Density and Intensity’, and even then, it’s hard to fully quantify the cumulative effect of not just playing every three days, but the difference in freshness between the third game every three days (three in nine days) and the eighth (eight in 24 days).

I shelv(ey)ed it, but have since been working on a way to rate the difficulty of games; and while I can still finesse the model and expand the purview, I wanted to run the piece given the Geordies are in town on New Year’s Day.

(Here’s wishing you all a happy New Year!)

Part of my motivation was to show that, actually, Man City may not go on one of their usual dozen-wins-in-a-row sequences, as everyone seems to expect, given that they have more mountains to climb between February and April than there are Himalayan peaks.

Which doesn’t make it impossible; just, as I will show, statistically far less likely. You’d never write them off, but this season they have already been more squirrelly than last, with two fewer points after 18 games, and two losses to teams outside the best sides, when last season it was just one all season.

City are a great side, but not yet, this season, provably up there with their best of recent times.

As such, in addition to using Newcastle as a proxy, I went in and analysed the Man City patterns from the recent past, as well as what they face for the remainder of this season, and found even more to be optimistic about as a Red.

I’ll share more details on that for subscribers in the coming weeks, but for now, this is a free read on the general findings.

No Clairvoyance

It’s obviously hard to know right now what shape teams will be in come the spring. It’s hard to know who will be injured. Injuries impact results, and density and intensity of games impacts injuries.

Predictions are partially dumb, because shit happens. But you can look at some probabilities.

Indeed, I used fixture difficulty, via the Relative Performance Index, to show that Liverpool were likely the best team after a quarter of the season, followed by Aston Villa and Arsenal, and not Spurs or Man City, who were the top teams in the league at the time. Spurs had won eight of nine, but eight ‘easy’ games.

Obviously teams’ form changed after MW9, and nothing can fully predict results; but the model was correct at that point, and even now, Liverpool are two points top at the halfway stage.

I’ve already pointed out that, as of just over a week ago, many Man City and Arsenal players had played 20-30% more minutes than the most-used Liverpool players, while the Reds, due to rotation various shifting injuries, kidnaps and suspensions, have seen most players set in a good position to play the rest of the season, if required, and still not rack up an insane number of minutes.

It’s also hard to know who will still be in Europe, albeit Man City should be with their Round of 16 draw (ditto Arsenal, but to a slightly lesser extent), and it’s hard to know who will still be in the FA Cup, and how those FA Cup fixtures (and rescheduled games) will impact the run-in, other than they will add a complicating factor.

While Liverpool should still be in the Europa League, the ability to rest and rotate even in the later rounds is the point of difference here. No one does that in the Champions League unless they win the first leg 4-0. (And a lot of the sides in the Champions League and Europa League play each other during the weekends of the knockout rounds.)

Of course, most big clubs now use lesser cup games to give key players 30-60 minutes, to keep them in rhythm and sharp due to a lack of training due a midweek game.

Either way, I’d say that City could lose the Premier League title this year between February 17th and April 3rd – but obviously only if Liverpool (or Arsenal) profit on that period where it seems impossible for City to average close to three points per game (and if they do, fair play* … albeit without financial fair play.)

Right now, Brighton have their mojo back and will have a week to prepare for City. Bournemouth look a different prospect to four months ago.

Otherwise, it feels like mega-clashes, bar the second leg against Copenhagen. Five huge league games in seven; six if you include Brighton away, which Spurs discovered it is not an easy place to go (Liverpool got a point there).

If there are FA Cup games in between, City will have less time to prepare, albeit FA Cup runs can see league games rearranged.

• 17 February 2024 4 days Manchester City v Chelsea

• 24 February 2024 7 days Bournemouth v Manchester City

• 28 February 2024 FA Cup 4th Round*

• 2 March 2024 4/7 days Manchester City v Manchester United

• 6 March 2024 4 days Manchester City v Copenhagen

• 9 March 2024 3 days Liverpool v Manchester City

• 16 March 2024* 7 days Brighton v Manchester City

• 30 March 2024 5 days Manchester City v Arsenal

• 3 April 2024 4 days Manchester City v Aston Villa

As the FA Cup quarter-finals are listed as Saturday 16th March 2024, Man City’s game with Brighton would be postponed if either qualify (which seems likely), albeit that makes it a difficult rearranged fixture for City.

Interestingly, Liverpool away at Everton is the same weekend. So shoving that towards the end of the season could be helpful in another way: two of Liverpool’s trickiest remaining games are already in the final three fixtures.

That said, Liverpool go to Arsenal in the third round of the FA Cup, and it may benefit the Reds to make their exit, especially with the League Cup semis to come. It’s far from certain that the Everton game will need moving.

But if so, it could mean a tough end to the season if it goes to the wire, but also a version of ‘fifth penalty-taker syndrome’, where the contest doesn’t go that deep. It doesn’t matter who you have to play in the final three games if you’ve already won the league (or indeed, lost it).

My hunch is that, like in 2019/20, if City fall behind too far, they’ll lose heart; it’s much harder to go WWWWWWWWWWWW when you have no margin for error. And they’re on the back of a gruelling season.

Arsenal were always likely to mess up last season, as they were young and had no experience of a title race; now they’ve got the extra burden of Champions League games, and I wrote about doubts about them before their 2-0 slip at home to West Ham. City will fear Liverpool more, for obvious reasons.

Arsenal

Meanwhile, Arsenal’s fixture list in that period is almost as tough; while Liverpool have the bonus of being able to rest and rotate at their pinch points in the Europa League, which will surely not be prioritised if a title challenge is in full flow.

Liverpool just had a six-day run with Man United, West Ham and Arsenal, and while all at home, the limited timescale, and having more injuries than Arsenal (who had a full week to prepare), made the Reds far less likely to win, and far more likely to tire.

As Jürgen Klopp said, they only trained for 135 minutes all week. This is where the League Cup can be problematic, but also, it can be helpful to keep the usual substitutes sharp, and to give those 30-60 minutes to key players who will not be training as there’s no time to train; and is a chance for players to score goals a gain confidence. It’s definitely a case of trade-offs, good and bad.

But it shows what I've been saying for a while now, and what both Man City and Arsenal face to a far greater degree from February to April.

And Arsenal also have a lot of big games in the run-in that, if they were to make it the Champions League semis, would all fall (in bold below) days before, in the middle or or days after key European games. So again, while I’ll analyse it in more detail in due course, for now, this sequence of games sticks out:

• Manchester City v Arsenal

• Arsenal v Luton Town

• Brighton v Arsenal

• Arsenal v Aston Villa

• Wolves v Arsenal

• Tottenham Hotspur v Arsenal

• Arsenal v Bournemouth

• Manchester United v Arsenal

The Damage of Fixture Density and Intensity

My theory was that you could easily have a dense and intense run of 10 games where you’d get 2ppg in normal circumstances – if each game came after 5-7 days preparation – and come out instead with 1ppg, as you have to factor in the workload, the lack of preparation time, the lack of recovery time, the additional travel, and the cumulative tolls of fatigue and injury, that multiply with every game.

I guessed it could halve the points you get.

(Weirdly, whilst I guessed at the above a couple of weeks ago, it’s virtually what has happened to Newcastle in a run of games I subsequently compared from last season to their most recent 16 games; and to go back further, their visit to Anfield will be the first time since the start of September that they’ve had more than five days to prepare or recover. That’s three full months with less rest than they’ll have this week, which perhaps makes them slightly more dangerous than people might suspect, if it proves enough time to ‘refresh’.)

I just want to quantify fixture gridlock, and how it damages expected points returns.

For Liverpool, going to Burnley three days after facing Arsenal, itself three days after facing West Ham, itself three days after facing Man United, is a cumulative difficulty that people may fail to grasp. It’s not just the physical effort but the adrenaline required.

And to briefly go back to Arsenal, their 9th game in a fraction over a month came with defeat to Declan Rice’s old team, and the Gunners had a month where half a dozen injuries were mostly to backup players.

Following the addition of the Champions League, and now with +£200m of new additions, they were on 40 points after 19 games, having been on 44 after 17 last season; a drop from 2.6ppg (title-winning form) to 2.1ppg, a sub-80 point season pro rata.

Despite all that, they still had just one three-day turnaround, winning very late at Luton, but then had four days before Villa Park, where they lost. Villa was the third game in a week:

• 2 December 2023 Arsenal 2–1 Wolves

• 5 December 2023 Luton Town 3–4 Arsenal

• 9 December 2023 Aston Villa 1–0 Arsenal

Similarly, Newcastle had far more time to prepare for games last season, and thus far more energy, as well as far more training time.

It’s not just about the six extra European games in the first half of the season, but what they follow and what they lead into. They will take a toll, but how much of a toll can depend on something like coming off the back of a very tough midweek game right into a very tough weekend game, then right back into a tough midweek game.

Brighton (another team now in Europe and seeing their league ppg suffer) going to Arsenal, as happened a few weeks ago now, would have been very different if the visitors had a full week to prepare, instead of it coming three days after playing Marseille, with European football something they’re not used to (and the first-half shot count was 14-0 to the Gunners, and it was 18-0 when Arsenal took the lead, and Brighton finally had their first shot).

Brighton’s first six league games saw them win five. That’s title-winning pace, if not sustainable for a club like that, and just a small sample.

However, in the next 13 league games, once juggling the Europa, they’ve been closer to relegation form: 1.15ppg. Going 4-0 up against Spurs over Christmas came after a full week to prepare. (Their energies also went into winning four and drawing one of their Europa League games, as their domestic results crumbled.)

It’s not a myth; energy is not finite. Even for teams used to the grind.

Again, think of Aston Villa, another new European team. With their European campaign wrapped up for the winter, they absolutely pulverised Man City with almost 20 shots in game after City’s last shot in the 11th minute.

They were everywhere, all over them, swarming like madmen. But then they looked knackered against Arsenal a few days later. They still beat Arsenal, but much more fortuitously than they beat City.

Aston Villa were coming off the back of a 2-2 draw at Bournemouth, three days earlier. But City were coming off the back of a 3-3 draw with Spurs three days earlier.

What is the cumulative effect on Villa of playing those games back to back? How would that exertion carry over at Brentford?

Now, Villa aren’t as good away from home. But Brentford away (with Brentford’s two best strikers out) was ‘winnable’ for a top four team. It’s not easy, but it’s winnable right now. However, it took a late sending off to offer Villa a way back into that game.

Away at Brentford, however, is more winnable if not at the end of the sequence ‘Man City, Arsenal, Brentford’.

That’s just a fourth game, after three (and another game was three days before). But think about once you get to an eighth game, after seven, or a twelfth game, after eleven. All without a proper break, all piling up.

Aston Villa then had little turnaround time, and having won 15 home league games on the bounce, drew 1-1 with lowly Sheffield United at Villa Park; then, took an early 2-0 lead at Old Trafford, but basically did nothing after the 25th minute, and lost 3-2 as they tired badly.

It’s not an accident.

Villa, like Newcastle – also ‘new’ to Europe this season – haven’t been rotating much; in Newcastle’s case, due to injuries, but Eddie Howe seems to like a settled XI anyway.

If you do rotate, you field a less-good XI, and hope a drop in quality and cohesion wards off fatigue and injuries, and is enough to win, as Liverpool showed against Paul Tierney’s Burnley.

Even if you drop points, avoiding injuries and fatigue could prove more important in the long run, albeit you can’t say for sure what is more important at the time.

Going into the last two rounds of games, Aston Villa had made the fewest changes to their league XI from matchweek to matchweek, and Newcastle the fifth-fewest, at 1.1 and 1.5 respectively. Arsenal are mid-ranking, at 1.9.

They don’t change their XI much unless they have to. And that makes it harder to go a full season at full tilt. It also makes it unclear how they’d cope with enforced changes.

As this was before Liverpool’s five changes against Burnley, the Reds were already at 2.5 changes per game, similar to Man City at 2.6, with Brighton miles ahead on 4.4.

I noted recently that both Man City and Arsenal have hellish springs – City especially so – and it could be super-hellish if they draw the best possible teams in the Champions League quarters and beyond, having easier Round of 16s, but that still means those games get in the way of league prep.

In the coming weeks, I will go on to analyse these run-ins with the methods I’m about to use for Newcastle in 2022/23, Newcastle in 2023/24, and something similar for Manchester City’s 2022/23.

To me, the context of fixtures is almost as important as the strength of the opposition.

Newcastle as Proxy

I thought Newcastle would be a good case study, as last season they did really well, finishing 4th and reaching a rare cup final; and this season, in the Champions League, they added more good players (albeit one gambled his way to a ban).

Since October 25th, Newcastle have played sixteen games in the main two competitions.

Part of their recent injury crisis is obviously linked to this kind of run of games; it’s the extra toll that Europe takes in addition to the league. But it could also be linked to a lack of rotation.

They’ve had three great results at home, in beating Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester United.

But their away form has totally collapsed, and the sequence and frequency of games contributed to three-goal defeats at Spurs and Everton, as well as a two-goal beating at Bournemouth. Last season they took seven points from those three fixtures, but part of the reason results shift from season to season is the shifting position within the calendar. (So, it’s the same fixture, but the context can vary wildly.)

In addition, last season their games against the Big Six were generally spread out evenly over the season. These can be used as examples of 12 tough games, but not at swift intervals.

They lost very late at Anfield, having already drawn at home to City. They were then unbeaten in their next four Big Six league clashes, including away at Man United, Spurs and Arsenal.

Their final four Big Six games were fairly equally spread in the backend of the season:

2nd April, 23rd April, 7th May, 28th May; remembering that there was no Europe and the cup final they reached was played in February, well before this sequence.

They lost only one, at home to Arsenal; and beat Man United 2-0 and Spurs 6-1. A very good ppg.

But you get a glimpse of what I’m talking about in between, when they reached the League Cup final:

• 18th February 2023 Newcastle United 0–2 Liverpool

• 26th February 2023 Manchester United 2–0 Newcastle United

• 4th March 2023 Manchester City 2–0 Newcastle United

These games aren’t even especially close together, with each on successive weekends, but they are three consecutive games. All three were lost 2-0.

This is the only negative sequence of results Newcastle had against Big Six clubs last season.

Last season, Newcastle had very few intense periods. Below is a comparison of runs of games, from the start of last season up to the World Cup; then after the World Cup; then the start of this season; then the rest of this season; plus the season average games, as the 4th of five bars.

The three periods before this recent run all seem fairly strong, at an average of around 2ppg (including cup ties), in runs of games of 17, 29 and 12 in total. These runs all averaged a frequency of one every 5-6 days.

In the past 16 games, though, they have faced a pretty testing sequence; going back exactly two months, to the end of October. The average for days between games was just 3.6.

That includes four games against Big Six-level European sides, albeit that may be generous to AC Milan; but it was an intense game at St James’ Park with a lot on the line. However, it meant two games against Borussia Dortmund, both lost, and also one against PSG, drawn. Then Milan beat them at St James’ Park.

They then eased to a 3-0 win over Fulham, but only after a very early red card for the visitors; but with two key players joining the hamstrung party. The dozen-game sequence also included a 2-2 draw with Wolves where they were spared defeat by poor officiating.

Kieran Tripper, used to tons of football, made tired mistake after tired mistake, as they slumped in games against Everton, Spurs and Chelsea; gifting them goal after goal.

At the end of this sequence of 14 games came two more: Luton and Nottingham Forest. Last season, you’d think, six points.

My point here is that they’ve averaged relegation form (1.06 points per game) in this sequence of 16 games. While half the games were tough, half were winnable.

Yet in the more evenly-spaced 12 games against just the Big Six last season, they averaged 1.3ppg, and that obviously did not include teams as weak as Bournemouth, Fulham, Everton, Luton, Forest and Wolves; while AC Milan, though good, are full of Premier League rejects.

Newcastle have essentially played nine very good teams in the last 16 matches, instead of the dozen I’m comparing them to (albeit Chelsea are hazy, both last season and this), and have suffered a sizeable drop in ppg.

If Newcastle played these very same games every 5-7 days, I’d expect them to get far more points; but every 3-4 days is brutal.

And sometimes I wonder if the big wins or near-misses are as exhausting as anything else; the adrenaline rushes that leave you hungover in some mental way. We’ve all run on adrenaline, until that awful moment when it’s all used up.

In December alone, Newcastle are averaging 0.8ppg, counting cup games the same as the league (so, one point for a draw against Chelsea before losing on penalties).

So when people say Man City will go on a massive winning streak in 2024, I’ve already shown the fixture list, and talked of the league table-pressure.

That’s already told against Crystal Palace, which for me was part of a stretch of games where they would likely go on a full winning run. This is their time now, and while they beat Everton, Palace was a very poor pair of points to drop, at 2-0 up at home.

This happened in 2019/20, when they just couldn’t keep up. They’re not used to Champions League finals, treble attempts and Club World Cups; and we saw in 2021/22 the toll it took on Liverpool the season after; with also the cumulative strain of season after season competing at the top, and the pressure release valve exploding.

Indeed, just as games can accumulate fatigue, seasons can too. City had a gruelling 2022/23, and this is even busier. Arsenal had an emotional 2022/23, and while they learnt a lot and gelled as a team, now they’re suffering the 10-20% league points drop Europe can bring.

Look at City’s chart for just last season’s successful season, which shows days between games vs points, looking only at sequences when the opposition was easier than ‘rubbish’ (City almost always smash the rubbish). I created an opposition strength value based on league table position and Club Elo rankings, and I’ll apply to Liverpool and Arsenal in the coming weeks. For this graph below, all the teams City played had the same average difficulty rating.

Give City six days or more to prepare, and they were at 2.6ppg. But four days meant a big drop, and three days saw a massive drop, when playing anyone but the cannon fodder.

Freshness

Liverpool, meanwhile – with far more rotation this season and far fewer minutes per player – almost had 2022/23 off.

Only seven Liverpool players from last season played more minutes in all competitions in 2022/23 than Kyle Walker already has for Man City in half a season in 2023/24 – 2,452 (as of after the win at Everton, and he starts again this afternoon).

One of those was Alisson, in goal, and three others were Fabinho (gone), Andrew Robertson (‘resting’ with his shoulder injury) and Jordan Henderson (gone); while Cody Gakpo would be included, and ranked 6th, if you added his PSV minutes, at 3,338, or 37 full games.

And while they are hardy players who don’t tend to miss games unless someone tries to dissect their knee, the new signings did not arrive on the back of gruelling campaigns. Alexis Mac Allister played 3,308 minutes in all competitions last season for Brighton, Wataru Endo played 33 league games but just domestic cup football, to total the exact same number of minutes as Gakpo (3,338, or 37 full games), and Ryan Gravenberch was rarely used by Bayern Munich.

Dominik Szoboszlai is an absolute fitness monster, but played 3,695 minutes last season, or the equivalent of 41 full games.

Should Thiago Alcantara (a huge bonus if fit), Stefan Bajcetic and Andy Robertson return in January, they would be fresh as daisies; ideally, the potential four domestic cup games that month (three guaranteed) would be used as sharpening tools, if they can be ready in time.

And again, Liverpool have so many players who have been so heavily rotated (as well as half a dozen injuries) that the second half of the season should be easier, if they stay fit.

Yes, City tend to end seasons very strongly.

But Liverpool do the same; bar the season when they won the league prior to lockdown and then went into take-it-easy mode. Even the two ‘horror’ seasons of 2020/21 and 2022/23 saw huge improvements on the back end, even with injury crises.

Right now, Diogo Jota has nine goals, but has only played 931 minutes. Curtis Jones has played a similar number of minutes, and Harvey Elliott, Ryan Gravenberch and Ibrahima Konaté are all around the mere 1,000-minute mark. No one looks like they’re in the red-zone.

And vitally, Virgil van Dijk – back to his very best – is not playing every single minute, unlike in the past, but has been wisely rested a lot during the cup games. Even Mo Salah has had some rest.

I’ll in the coming weeks I’ll re-analyse the run-ins with the model I’ve created as to how points get dropped due to the proximity of other games – January is mostly cup football – but aside from when playing cannon fodder (like Sheffield United at home once this piece has been published), even Man City suffered last season in games when they had fewer days to prepare (but where they record against top teams was much better than this season).

They will have their own key players fit again, and they have a far more expensive squad (and were clearly the favourites going into this season), but to end with, I’ll state that some of Liverpool’s advantages are:

• Far fewer minutes played by main players this season;

• Far fewer minutes played by other players this season;

• Easier second half of the season on paper, in terms of home/away;

• The Europa League can always be sacrificed for a title chase, while the Champions League cannot.

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All the best for 2024! 🎉