PL fixtures: Liverpool & Arsenal have easier pre-Christmas run than Spurs & City

Could Tottenham hold their No 1 spot through to Christmas? Can Arsenal and Liverpool take charge? Will Manchester City find their groove after a recent wobble? We rank the difficulty of each club's upcoming fixture list for clues...

As it stands, north London rivals Spurs and Arsenal are locked on 20 points, with Ange Postecoglou's side holding the summit on goals scored - but Manchester City and Liverpool are only one result away from matching the leading pair.

So, have some teams had it easier or tougher with their fixture lists until now and what could, or should, the Premier League table look like on Christmas Day?

To tackle that problem, we used Opta's predicted league table for this season - which factors in current form, historic form and betting odds - to calculate how difficult each club's fixtures have been, and will be.

Opta's supercomputer predicts Manchester City have a 74 per cent chance of winning their fourth-successive league title come May - ahead of Arsenal, Liverpool and Tottenham.

At the other end of the table, Sheffield United are predicted to finish rock-bottom, with Luton and Bournemouth also suffering the drop.

Based on those table predictions above, the chart below ranks the difficulty of every club's league fixtures by matchday this season.

You can use the search bar in the interactive graphic below to filter a specific team and make the chart easier to read.

Matchdays run from the season-opening round on the far left to the final day in May on the far right, with brighter shades denoting tougher opponents. The first vertical, black line indicates the current international break and the second line indicates Christmas Day.

Even at a glance, league-topping Spurs appear to have had an easy ride so far