Premier League Fixture Difficulty: Who Has the Hardest Next Five Games Before the November Break? Analyst

ThePremier Leaguereturns this weekend, but some clubs have an easier schedule than others. Who has the toughest and easiest upcoming fixtures?

We use the Opta Power Rankings to find out. With the international break coming to a close, the Premier League returns this weekend.

There are five more matchdays before the next pause for international action, giving us a nice, chunky run of games to analyse. Looking at their prospective fixture lists, though, some teams are going to have a much tougher time of it than others.

We can quantify how difficult each side's next five games are by using the Opta Power Rankings. By taking the average rating, on a global scale of 1-100, of each team's next five opponents, we can work out who has the hardest and easiest upcoming schedules.

Here are the findings: The Hardest Next Five Games Liverpool have the hardest next five games according to the Opta Power Rankings. Home matches against Manchester City and Arsenal headline their upcoming run, but they also face tough games against high-flying Brentford and Brighton.

Those two clubs sit in the top four of the Premier League table as things stand and have shot up the global Power Rankings following their impressive starts. Brighton are now as high as seventh in the world, with Brentford not far behind in 13th.

The Reds came into the season with the easiest opening five games, so this is surely the almighty Premier League fixture machine- almost as prescient as the Opta supercomputer, we've heard - just evening things out. Nottingham Forest have the second-hardest set of five fixtures.

They, too, face both Arsenal and Manchester City before the next international break. But first, Oliver Glasner will travel back to his former club Crystal Palace on Matchday 6.

He'll be eyeing that one, along with an away game against Ipswich on MD8, as one of the clearest places to grab points during a difficult spell. Everyone,including us, is raving about Brighton's start to the season.