Football fixture feast and famine

It’s almost certainly a computer that comes up with the League football fixture lists for England and Wales, but the rules that it follows are set by people. And many of them are sensible. You don’t, for instance, get cities or areas with two neighbouring and rival teams – Liverpool, Manchester, Bristol, Sheffield, north London etc – playing at home at the same time on League football days. And you try to schedule local derby fixtures and, conversely, matches between far-distant teams – Carlisle v Exeter, for example – with some sensitivity about travel.

But sometimes it seems to be arbitrary. And if you look at it through the eyes of the uncommitted football-watcher – ie, me – very arbitrary indeed.

I was puzzled, for example, last weekend when I went for the first time ever to see Ipswich Town play at home to spot, a dozen or so miles away from Ipswich, that Colchester United were also playing at home. Of course, neither of them is likely to cause a breach of the peace or vast traffic congestion. But if you’re just a football-watcher from that area, you might perhaps want to go to both.

This coming weekend in London is almost the converse of that. There are three Premiership matches, two of them at exactly the same time on Saturday in west London (QPR and Fulham) with the third match, at Arsenal, on Sunday. All right, having three west London sides in the Premiership (with Chelsea) is awkward, and I can’t afford to go to QPR anyway. But it seems strange to put on two games within about three miles of each other at the same time when Sunday is an option. Then lower down the leagues, West Ham are at home and Charlton are playing a top-of-the-table probable-sell-out match against Sheffield United. And that’s it in London.

London has three clubs in League Two – AFC Wimbledon, Barnet and Dagenham & Redbridge – and they’re all away. In League One, Brentford and Leyton Orient are away and Championship teams Crystal Palace and Millwall are away too. For good measure, not far out of London, Watford, Stevenage, Crawley and Brighton are all playing away. Wycombe Wanderers are at home, but that is oddly placed when you realise Reading are home as well (all right, Wycombe can’t avoid both Oxford and Reading, so I suppose it has to take its turn).

Anyway, the gist of this is that people like me, who like going to football matches but aren’t too bothered about who or where, alternate between almost no choice at all or lots of it. And that seems a bit silly. Computer, sort it out for next season, please.