It’s like Christmas Day, only it’s in August (and usually at some point in June), it’s the day the fixtures come out for the new season.
Once you’ve taken a look at the so-called ‘important dates’ on the football calendar, like Boxing Day, your birthday and the last game of the season, you need to take a step back and look at a run of fixtures, and see where a good run of points is going to come.
When I take a look at our fixtures for the upcoming season, one thing sticks out to me and that’s the winter months of November, December and January are really going to be the months that define our season.
Having gone through what will be a challenging month of October, where we face four teams that finished inside the top six last season, things will then start to get a little bit easier in terms of the opponents, including newly-promoted Fulham and last season’s strugglers Aston Villa both at home.
Will Moyes keep West Ham in the Premier League?
Yes
No
When you also consider how tightly packed the games in December are, if we can take the momentum from the games in November into the games in December and January, then I don’t see why we can’t pick up a large proportion of our points during those few months.
So whilst we might not get off to the best of starts, all I’ll say is keep the faith, because the points will come eventually, and hopefully we’ll get enough there to avoid having to go into the last few games of the season in another relegation battle.
Of course, if we can get through those early months largely unscathed, then the more we can look forward to those three months when we can really put our foot down.
