Our ‘Take’ On The Fixture List
Celebration time for all those in gold and black at the 1988 Sherpa Van Trophy final.
Yesterday’s publication of the Premier League fixtures for 2025-26 have led us to draw one or two conclusions about the match-day experiences that lie ahead.
First, if we can be contradictory and start with the finish, Wolves will be bringing the season to a virtually unique close by visiting Burnley in their final match.
Never before in the 20th or 21st centuries have they closed their League programme away to the Clarets, although they did famously face them in the Sherpa Van Trophy final in 1988 three weeks after the battle for points had ended.
And there was a Molineux meeting of the two clubs at the conclusion of the 1970-71 campaign, with Bill McGarry’s men signing off by winning 1-0 thanks to a Derek Dougan goal.
The last time Wolves ended a season at Turf Moor was, remarkably, in 1894 when they were beaten 4-2 as the last leg of a journey to a final placing of ninth.
Looking at the other end of the programme, next season will be the sixth time in eight years they can be said to have had a clash with Manchester City ‘early doors’ (ie in the first two months) but the first time since Robbie Keane struck the only goal of the game at Maine Road in August, 1999, that they will have met these opponents on day one.
Elsewhere in the schedule, Bournemouth away falls very much in holiday season and Newcastle in September has a familiar ring to it. This will be the third time in four years Wolves have faced them in that month or August.
Other coincidences see Fulham away and Crystal Palace at home in November for the second successive year and there will be no complaints if, at the visit of Manchester United in December, Molineux bears witness to a repeat of the joyous scenes there for the same game last Boxing Day. There is a very quick turnaround for United and Wolves before they meet again in their last game of 2025 and we wait to see whether there will be a December 26 game, the trip to champions Liverpool currently being scheduled for the following day.
The eager ground-hoppers among Wolves’ away season ticket holders no doubt cottoned on quickly to the fact that the club’s first trip to Everton’s new stadium will be on the Wednesday night of January 7. No repeats of the nightmare crash under the Goodison lights last winter, PLEASE!
The home games with Liverpool and Arsenal come in March when the pressure at the top on such opponents might be intense and when the Champions League is in its latter stages.
There is the usual late-season meeting with Brighton – and what pain that collision has caused Wolves over the decades when it has fallen at that time of year – and how about this as one final quirk?
Jody Craddock….among the marksmen on a triumphant trip back to familiar territory.
The club will this time face all three newly-promoted teams among their last six fixtures, so the potential for picking up late points is there.
While Burnley and Leeds have recent top-flight pedigree, it will be eight seasons since Wolves faced Sunderland and they have a fine end-of-season record against them.
Despite losing 3-0 at the Stadium of Light in May, 2018, in a fixture rendered insignificant by the winning of the Championship crown beforehand, they drew away to the Wearsiders in the spring of 2012, won 3-1 there 11 months earlier and beat them 2-1 at Molineux in May, 2010.
Among the scorers in the biggest of those Wolves victories were two men who also previously served in red and white stripes in the north-east, Jody Craddock and Steven Fletcher.