There is a scene in The Simpsons that can be applied to the Premier League releasing its 2024-25 fixtures when there is a major international tournament on.
The Springfield-based clan are sitting watching TV with a new litter of puppies, and when one of the dogs puts his paws on the screen to cover up a girl in a swimsuit, the family think it is hilarious.
When Snowball the cat, keen for some attention, does the same thing, dad Homer yells, ‘Get that cat out of the way’.
So… not now, Premier League, we’re trying to watch the Euros.
But until Georgia versus Turkey kicks off in a few hours, it will be impossible to avoid looking ahead to next season in the English top flight, planning derby days and Christmases and, for the conspiracy-minded, checking who your club will play (and where) after a midweek European fixture. And there are more of those European matches next term than ever before.
GO DEEPER
Manchester City’s 2024-25 Premier League fixtures
For fans of Manchester City’s domestic rivals, who had become convinced Pep Guardiola’s teams simply had to turn up to win a match and claim another title, there will be a great deal of consternation about the state of their run-in.
Once teams return from the final international break of next season in late March and can focus on the business end of the domestic campaign, City play Leicester (H), Manchester United (A), Crystal Palace (H), Everton (A), Aston Villa (H), Wolves (H), Southampton (A), Bournemouth (H), Fulham (A).
You can already feel the sense of impotent rage as rival fans tune in for City’s Easter Weekend trip to Goodison Park, hoping for a slip-up, only for Erling Haaland to have scored twice inside the first 13 minutes.
Phil Foden’s City conclude the 2024-25 league season away to Fulham (MI News/NurPhoto via Getty Images)
There are always things for staff and fans to concern themselves with whenever the fixtures are released, though, even if City have shown for years that no matter the calendar set before them, they will find a way to master it.
For those wondering and worrying, City do have a big domestic fixture just days after their first Champions League match: Arsenal at home in late September.
There is also a European game sandwiched between the home game with Tottenham and a trip to face Liverpool at Anfield at the end of November.
That period is probably City’s trickiest of the season. After the November international break, they host Spurs, go to Liverpool, then have Nottingham Forest (H), Palace (A), Manchester United (H) and Aston Villa (A) leading up to Christmas. And, yes, there is another Champions League match between those meetings with Palace and United.
City visit Anfield in November – or possibly early December (Michael Regan/Getty Images)
We will need to get used to the new Champions League format, too; that mid-December European game has often been a dead rubber for City at the end of the six-match group stage, with qualification for the next round already assured, but this time around there will be another two games to come after it, both at the end of January (Tuesday 21/Wednesday 22 and Wednesday 29).
Between those seventh and eighth European games City play Chelsea at home. Then it’s Arsenal away immediately after. Then Newcastle and Liverpool at home followed by a midweek trip to Tottenham, to take us to March.
So it does get quite interesting, and it will probably be around that stage of the season when we are working out why City do not look like themselves, suggesting confidently that Kevin De Bruyne’s assists were impossible to replace and that Guardiola’s announcement about his departure at the end of the season disrupted the camp.
Of course, we have no idea how next season will pan out. City will go into it as favourites, of course, and many will be expecting them to claim their fifth title in a row, a truly remarkable achievement which would no doubt be toasted by supporters the length and breadth of the country.
Guardiola always says — and he is literally correct — that there is no guarantee that his team will put together a long unbeaten run. “Just because it has happened before does not mean it will happen again,” he says, and that is undeniably true.
They have done it so many times, though, that you could not blame anybody who expects it to happen again: in five of their six title seasons under him, they have won at least 12 games in a row, the most being 18 in 2017-18. Yes, the run that clinched last season’s title ‘only’ consisted of nine victories (thought it had to stop at nine as they had no more games to play), but the moral of the story is that City do what they have to do, and if they were not eyeing up the same outcome next April and May, it would be a surprise. Speaking now, anyway.
But maybe this will be the season they finally run out of steam, which would be completely normal given everything they have won in recent years. Maybe they just draw one of their final 10 matches. Who knows.
By then, we will probably (hopefully) have discovered the outcome of City’s two legal battles with the Premier League, which might have some on-pitch impact and will definitely cause anger on timelines and in boardrooms no matter the outcome.
But all this is why it is usually so nice to switch off from the occasional grind of Premier League discourse and enjoy a major international tournament, where everybody pulls together to get behind their country.
Not so much this summer, though, because most of the opinions regarding the England team, for example, are just extensions of the arguments that dictate the online discourse during the club season. The battle lines this summer seem to have been drawn right across Phil Foden, who is either a rubbish system player or being wildly misused, depending on who you support.
City fans, understandably, will point out exactly how good Foden is, although that can sometimes bleed over into Jude Bellingham slander, which seems needless as well.
GO DEEPER
How do England get the best out of Foden? Act like Guardiola and embrace his versatility
Surely the biggest frustration for anybody who has been treated to Ederson’s calm composure over the years is that England goalkeeper Jordan Pickford keeps launching long balls in the vague direction of striker Harry Kane (who doesn’t even have wingers and/or attacking midfielders supporting him for the second balls).
Still, it is nice to switch off from the club stuff every once in a while, so keep that cat away from the TV screen for a little bit longer.
(Top photo: Gaspafotos/MB Media/Getty Images)
