Opta release brutal stats as Newcastle land Liverpool in 2026/27 opener

Newcastle United will host Liverpool for their first game of the 2026/27 Premier League season.

The Magpies and the Reds will have to wait until Sunday 23rd August to get their season underway, as the tie has been selected for broadcast by Sky Sports.

As far as opening fixtures go, they don't come much tougher than this for Newcastle. Indeed, the only way it could have been worse is if the game was to be played at Anfield.

However, even being at St James' Park, the odds are very heavily stacked against Eddie Howe and his men.

This is a stat dump we could have done without

While Newcastle are unbeaten on the opening day in the last four seasons, that trend looks extremely likely to come to an end, especially when you look at what stats bod OptaJoe has posted on X this morning.

"1 - Liverpool have longest ongoing unbeaten run in MD1 Premier League matches (13) and haven't lost in their last 19 games against Newcastle (W14 D5), while manager Andoni Iraola is on the longest current unbeaten run in the division (18 games)."

That's a lot of things going against us for one fixture.

Fortunately, all streaks have to end eventually, and history is all about looking back; we're talking about the present and the future, and that's what counts.

Always look on the bright side of life...

There is a long, long way to go between now and then, and Newcastle have a lot of shopping to do, and Howe has a lot of work to do during pre-season. Newcastle could be a completely different animal by then. Actually, let's rephrase that - Newcastle had bloody well better be a completely different animal by then.

We're still licking our wounds from losing out on Victor Munoz, but that's one deal that we've missed out on, and it's still very early in the window. We can bounce back.

As for who we're going to bring in, at this point I don't think anyone has a clue, but there will be new additions; it just depends how quickly and how well they can be integrated.