Thursday Hoddle of Coffee: Soccer News and Notes, June 15, 2017

So we begin our 2017-18 Premier League season at Newcastle. The last time we played there the match ended with Mauricio Pochettino wanting to murder our players. So good times ahead! Here’s the full schedule:

So, besides the laughable Newcastle opening, here are the interesting dates: The festive season has us playing at Burnley, home against Southampton, home against West Ham, and at Swansea.

We have home fixtures with Chelsea in August, Liverpool in October, Man United in January, Arsenal in February, and Man City in April. We travel to United in October, Arsenal in November, City in December, Liverpool in February, and Chelsea in March.

The last thing to note: Of our final ten games, eight are ones we can probably feel pretty confident about. The season ends:

• Huddersfield
• at Bournemouth
• Newcastle
• at Chelsea
• at Stoke
• Manchester City
• at Brighton
• Watford
• at West Bromwich Albion
• Leicester

At Chelsea and home against City are obviously huge challenges. But the other eight are all winnable and, away trips to Stoke and West Brom excepted, we probably should expect to win them. In previous years we’ve had late-season swoons while rivals have faced cushier schedules and rampaged through them. So it’s kinda nice to think that maybe this year we’ll be on the other end of that equation.