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Glenn Thompson: The fixture compiler behind 11,400 Premier League matches | Main Stand

Did you know how the 380 fixtures in a season of the Premier League are so carefully compiled that they even manage to avoid choke points on the British rail system?

 

The league’s fixture list might seem random, as it is in many sporting competitions. However, in reality, things are not that simple. Behind all of these matches, there is a man who spends more than eight months making the Premier League run as smoothly as possible.

His name is Glenn Thompson, a Technical Architect at global IT giant Atos. He has been recognized as one of the 100 most influential in world football by UK football magazine ‘Four Four Two,’ having collated more than 60,000 matches since he first took on the role 30 years ago.

Main Stand invites readers to look behind Thompson’s workflow, and understand that scheduling the UK’s football leagues is not as easy as one might think.

 

Starting from the new year

The professional football leagues of the UK, from Premier League down to the EFL League 2, end their seasons in the May of each year, before restarting in August. However, Thompson’s work starts in November of the previous year.

Around that time, the Football Association will start to consult with Premier League and English Football League (EFL) to determine the scheduling of the next year’s fixture list, and which weeks the FA Cup and League Cup will play. Furthermore, they work around the FIFA international breaks and other events which may disrupt their matches.  

After acknowledging the composition of each division, Thompson will start his work around the new year, as he needs to compile his list with a method known as ‘sequencing.’ He does this by breaking the season into five constituent sets, which are reversed in the second half of the season. For Example, if team A has a home match with team B in the first half of the season, team A will have to play an away match with team B.

But the process is not easy, because Thompson has a few golden rules which he needs to abide by when scheduling matches.

“In every five matches, there have to be three home fixtures and two away matches or vice versa,” he explains. “A team will never have more than two home or away matches in a row.”

“Also, wherever possible, you will be home and away around FA Cup ties,” he adds. This is to avoid any team who is disadvantaged by three consecutive weeks of travel.

He also explained in an interview with the Premier League’s official media that “a club will never start or finish the season with two home or two away matches, because it would be unfair for a team to finish with two away days”

During holidays like Boxing Day and New Year’s Day, each team will need to have at least one home match for the fans to be able to celebrate the occasion with their teams.

Lastly, Thompson adds that he tries to maintain a Saturday-Sunday sequence for home games throughout the season, wherever possible.

However, even that doesn’t even begin to cover all of the variables Thomson has had to grabble with throughout his 30 years of work. 

 

Everything in its right place

In March, the Premier League will send out a form to 20 competing teams with three questions: Are there any dates you wish not to be at home? Which club do you want to pair with? And are there any teams you do not wish to play at home on Boxing Day?

Afterward, the Premier League also has to discuss with the local police to make matches can progress smoothly, and ensure that two teams in the same city or area don’t have home matches at the same time. For example, Manchester United can’t host a match on the same weekend as Manchester City.

To make matters more complicated, this needs to be coordinated across divisions as well, in cases like Newcastle and Sunderland, or Chelsea and Fulham last season. This is crucial for the safety of the fans and the management of emergency staff in each stadium to avoid any accidents.

Furthermore, other non-football events can also play a huge role in scheduling. For example, during the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic games in London, the Metropolitan police also made a requirement to Thompson not to have any ‘high-profile matches’ until after 8 September in order to avoid a clash between the events.

On top of that, teams may request to be at home or away during certain weekends for various reasons. For example, Liverpool requested to play all of their first three matches of the 2016/17 season away from home, as their stadium renovations needed extra time to finish.

Lastly, Thompson can’t finalize the list until the previous season is over, thanks to the promotion and relegation system.

“We start when we know the teams in each division, so after the last Football League playoff,” he explains. “We place each club in a pairing grid, which defines the dates they will be at home.”

Thomson’s software is crucial in making this vision come to reality.

“For every date in the season, the fixture computer knows which clubs are at home and which are away, and then it will mix them up randomly to determine the matches.”

“The computer is very useful during the review because if we do not want a certain fixture on a particular date, it will give us alternative dates for that fixture. It can be that changing one match requires 40 other changes.“

Even Though there’s a computer that helps him in the process, Thomson can’t just leave everything to the software.

“We even look at whether we have supporters from the same area traveling on the same train lines on the same day, across the Football League and the Premier League,” he added. “We want to avoid having ‘pinch points’ on the rail and road network.”

That is especially important on Boxing Day and New Year’s Day, where the Premier League aims to minimize the travel distance of the away team’s fans.

With so many factors to consider, Thompson must painstakingly work up to 70 hours per week for the final weeks before the fixture list is officially released. 

 

Can’t satisfy everyone

Despite Thomson’s hard work, the fixture list commonly comes under attack from the coaches of various teams. Former Manchester United boss Sir Alex Ferguson, for example, voiced his dissatisfaction when he found that his team faced away matches against other top-ranking teams right after significant matches in the Champions League.

“'I've been saying this for a few months, but our fixture program didn't do us any favors and I think we have been handicapped by the Premier League in the fixture list. They tell me it's not planned. Bloody hell!'”

Similarly, Liverpool boss Jurgen Klopp once complained about the “crap kick-off times” after being assigned a Premier League fixture at 12:30 on Saturday, right after finishing a Champion League match on Wednesday night, giving the team almost no recovery time.

Thomson faced an even tougher task during the 2022/23 season, as he had to work around the FIFA World Cup in Qatar, which falls right in the middle of the Premier League season. The competition is set to take a break on November 13th, and resume on Boxing Day (26th December) to accommodate.

“It’s a near impossible job,” Thomson reflected. “You can't satisfy everyone. It's a compromise across all clubs; you can't do anything to favor any one club.”

“There are 2,036 matches across the Premier League and Football League over a nine-month period, and the ideal solution is to ensure that those matches can all be played when scheduled.”

Given how smoothly the Premier League runs year after year, it's hard to imagine how much consideration goes into finalizing its fixture list. That alone is a testament to Thomson’s excellent work in helping deliver the most popular football product on the planet. 

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Kornthong Wiriyasawetkul

2000 - Football and F1 fanatics - Space enthusiasts - aka KornKT

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