As usually happens when I churn out multiple versions of the same thing, enough incremental improvements have been made over the course of churning out my fixture difficulty visualisations to make me unhappy with the state of the first ones I did. Therefore here are revised versions for the top four English divisions with the following changes:

• I’ve updated the calculations to reflect the latest odds, as some have moved since I originally produced these on fixture release day.
• The colour scale has been changed from red-green to red-blue to avoid enraging the colour-blind.
• I’ve explicitly categorised clubs by their average odds rather than predicted league finish, and included a list of the clubs in each group.
• Where the distribution of odds makes dividing the teams into equal-sized groups unfair (e.g. if it would cause two teams with almost identical odds to fall into different categories) I’ve flexed the sizes to accommodate this.

Jumping back a step, if you’re not familiar with these graphics, the idea behind these is to categorise each club’s fixtures by the strength of their opponent to pick out particularly easy or tricky runs of games over the season. I’ve taken an average of leading bookies’ title odds as a proxy each club’s “strength” and then divided each division’s clubs into four groups based on the bookies’ implied ranking.

The point of doing this is to identify points in the season when individual clubs might enjoy a good or bad run of form due to playing a succession of mostly weak or strong teams respectively. In addition to helping manage expectations, it’s also come in pretty handy for planning fantasy team transfers.

I’ll provide some observations for each division to give you the idea, and you can click on each image to bring up a full-sized version.

Premier League

As you might expect, the Premier League has the most skewed odds of any division here and we’ll need to resort to uneven category sizes straight away:

• Of the newly-promoted clubs, both Bournemouth and Norwich have relatively easy starts and don’t have to test themselves against a member of the “big four” until October.
• However, along with Aston Villa, the Cherries have to face three of the big four in their last seven matches, so both will want to have made significant strides towards safety by April.
• It looks like Sunderland should be able to start well, facing four of the seven worst-rated sides in their first six matches, but a pretty horrendous December that pits them against three of the big four plus Liverpool, could see them spiral downwards.

The clubs are categorised as follows (in descending order of average odds):

• Under 5/1 (4 clubs): Chelsea, Man City, Arsenal, Man Utd
• 25/1 to 270/1 (4 clubs): Liverpool, Tottenham, Southampton, Everton
• 1400/1 to 2250/1 (5 clubs): Stoke, Swansea, West Ham, Crystal P, Newcastle
• Over 2600/1 (7 clubs): West Brom, Aston Villa, Leicester, Sunderland, Bournemouth, Norwich, Watford

Championship

Here the seven most favoured and seven least favoured sides were clustered together, so these form the darker, larger groups and the remaining sides are split into two groups of five.

• MK Dons have been handed a straightforward start to life in the second tier, with four of their first five matches against clubs that the bookies believe to be relegation candidates. Nottingham Forest also have a relatively mild start to their season.
• Brighton‘s festive period isn’t likely to be cheerful, with a horrible run of games from early December until New Year’s Day.
• Brentford get all of their encounters with their (presumed) fellow promotion contenders out of the way by mid-March, so could enjoy a late surge in form.

The clubs are categorised as follows (in descending order of average odds):

• Under 15/1 (7 clubs): Derby, Middlesbrough, Hull, Brentford, Burnley, Wolves, QPR
• 18/1 to 23/1 (5 clubs): Ipswich, Sheff Wed, Fulham, Bristol C, Nott’m Forest
• 26/1 to 35/1 (5 clubs): Cardiff, Brighton, Blackburn, Leeds, Reading
• Over 42/1 (7 clubs): Preston, Bolton, MK Dons, Birmingham, Charlton, Huddersfield, Rotherham

League 1

This one is slightly bottom-heavy, as the sides predicted to finish lower in table tended to have more similar odds:

• It’s a pretty brutal start for Gillingham, who play four of the five scariest clubs in their first five fixtures, although they then don’t have to deal with any until December.
• A similarly unforgiving run-in awaits Shrewsbury, who have to face all five of the most-fancied teams in their final seven matches. Coventry‘s run-in isn’t much better.
• Both Burton and Chesterfield have an opportunity to climb the table in October, when both have very mild-looking runs of matches. The Spireites have another nice-looking sequence between February and early April, so theirs could be a season of “boom and bust”.

The clubs are categorised as follows (in descending order of average odds):

• Under 15/1 (5 clubs): Sheff Utd, Wigan, Millwall, Peterborough, Bradford
• 16/1 to 22/1 (6 clubs): Barnsley, Swindon, Doncaster, Coventry, Shrewsbury, Chesterfield
• 23/1 to 26/1 (6 clubs): Fleetwood, Bury, Scunthorpe, Burton, Rochdale, Gillingham
• Over 33/1 (7 clubs): Walsall, Oldham, Southend, Blackpool, Port Vale, Colchester, Crewe

League 2

The extreme categories are smaller here as the odds for many of the clubs in the middle are somewhat clustered:

• Bristol Rovers have been handed a testing start to life back in the Football League, facing all four of the current promotion favourites in their first nine matches. However after a similarly tough run after Christmas they then have a much easier season from mid-February onwards.
• Meanwhile Cambridge and Wycombe enjoy much milder starts, with both exclusively facing sides expected to finish in the bottom half during August.
• If the bookies are correct about Dag & Red struggling this season, then their last four matches could be crucial. After having to face all four of the current favourites in a five-match spell from late March, they could be dragged into the danger zone late on.

The clubs are categorised as follows (in descending order of average odds):

• Under 13/1 (4 clubs): Portsmouth, Luton, Oxford, Leyton O
• 15/1 to 20/1 (7 clubs): Cambridge, Northampton, Notts Co, Bristol R, Plymouth, Wycombe, Stevenage
• 27/1 to 37/1 (8 clubs): Yeovil, Barnet, Wimbledon, Carlisle, Crawley, York, Hartlepool, Exeter
• Over 42/1 (5 clubs): Newport, Mansfield, Morecambe, Dag & Red, Accrington

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Note: I had originally intended to produce versions for the National League divisions but it turns out that their fixtures don’t fall neatly into “rounds”. For some reason there are weeks when only some teams play, with the other matches belonging to that round of fixtures