Following the big Champions League kick-off tonight, Opta Analyst have been ranking each set of fixtures following last month’s draw.
It’s Newcastle first year in the new Champions League format, featuring a 36-team league and eight games each, and we were handed the following draw:
- 18/09/25 – Barcelona (H)
- 01/10/25 – Union Saint-Gilloise (A)
- 21/10/25 – Benfica (H)
- 05/11/25 – Athletic Bilbao (H)
- 25/11/25 – Marseille (A)
- 10/12/25 – Bayer Leverkusen (A)
- 21/01/26 – PSV Eindhoven (H)
- 28/01/26 – PSG (A)
With an average opponent rating of 92.2, Newcastle United rank fifth overall for hardest fixture list and are the only English team in the top half of the fixture difficulty rankings:
It certainly is a tough set of games, seeing us face the current favourites to win La Liga and Ligue 1 in Barcelona and PSG, along with last season’s Bundesliga runners up, Bayer Leverkusen, current Eredivisie champions PSV and Portuguese giants Benfica, who finished runners up in Liga Portugal.
Marseille were also second to PSG in the French league last season, while Athletic Bilbao finished fourth in La Liga last term, also reaching the semi-finals of the Europa League.
On the other end of the scale, Opta made up a table of the ‘easiest’ draws, showing a kinder schedule for Arsenal, Spurs, Liverpool and Chelsea, to name a few:
