Johnny Phillips: Football fixture fix is torture dressed up as hope

There it was weather-beaten, scuffed and scarred and not looking in the best of shape until a new lick of paint is applied and you’re left with a fresh, untouched coating.

That’s what the fixture list represents, a blank canvas that hasn’t been pock-marked with rain-soaked Tuesday night defeats at home to Barnsley or soporific 0-0 draws away at Ipswich, after half-an-hour stuck in roadworks on the A14 at Kettering.

And for those of us that quite enjoy the summer break without worrying about football there is something unavoidable about the fixtures coming out too. There I was idly enjoying a spot of breakfast on Wednesday morning with the radio broadcasting the upcoming Armageddon, or the news as it’s known these days, and the iPhone is on the table. Without even intending to search, a couple of swipes later, popping up all over social media is the 2017/2018 EFL fixture list.

Now if you’re a fan of Villa, Birmingham or Wolves then there has barely been time to forget the drudgery and torment of last season. All three clubs seemingly tried to outdo each other in the under-achievement stakes, their company taxi accounts must have cost a fortune as managers came and went.

The new fixture list has glossed over the rotten memories now and it’s just potential on that fence.

What can next season bring? There will be supporters of all three clubs who genuinely believe promotion is within their grasp. That’s the absurdity of this time of year, anything is possible.

Logic doesn’t always come into play in June when the reality of conceding a first minute goal at home to Burton Albion hasn’t quite hit home.

But the fixture list also represents the first roll of the dice in how the season will pan out. It is not a fair spread, with some clubs benefitting at the expense of others depending on when they play each other, particularly at the start and end of the season. There is no way of countering this, it has to be this way and the fixture list should never be blamed by managers or fans for a team’s poor form.

A quick glance at the opening three games for Blues, Villa and Wolves can conjure up all sorts of possibilities. Harry Redknapp will be privately very happy with a start that reads Ipswich away, followed by Bristol City and Bolton at home.

Think what three wins out of three could do for the team. Redknapp is a manager who believes in the confidence trick. He makes each of his players feel 10 feet tall, energises supporters and knows that wins breed more confidence. Coming up against three of the weaker teams in the division like this could give Redknapp the tools he needs to breathe life into the St Andrew’s crowd and get all his players onside.

Nuno Espirito Santo will be looking at Wolves’ opening three games with rather more caution. Middlesbrough at home followed by Derby and Hull away means facing two teams with a Premier League squad largely in place with the other under Gary Rowett’s management being one of the form teams going into the summer break. Imagine the blades being sharpened in the press pack and the stands if they lose all three.

Forgive me if this sounds a bit confusing, but Birmingham and Wolves could imaginably put in the same level of performance and get completely different results from those games simply because of the opposition’s strengths.

Yet because of the world we live in today where time is rarely afforded any manager, especially in the Championship, the tone could be set for what follows in the coming weeks and months in the space of just three opening games.

Villa’s August fixtures are tough enough too; Hull at home then Cardiff and Reading away but with Steve Bruce finishing last season so well, there is no reason to think that he could be caught unawares by strong opponents he is already familiar with.

In truth, nobody should be looking at any of those games with any reasonable hope of prescience because the Championship is the last place to be making predictions. But that’s what fans are already doing. The release of the fixture list is nothing but a form of torture dressed up as a template for hope.

We didn’t need this. The long summer days aren’t for poring over a fixture list that will last longer than current government. They could have given us until July at least. But it has suckered us all in.

Not just those opening games but the holiday ones too; Wolves and Villa both in London on Boxing Day – Virgin Trains will be relieved they don’t have to run a service. And if you fancy a May Bank Holiday by the seaside, a long coastal weekend away for the last day of the season then only Wolves have got lucky there…Sunderland, you say? Oh, well, maybe not.