Premier League fixtures today – your guide to Sunday’s games

The first weekend of December has arrived, bringing an extra chill to the air, advent calendars on the mantlepiece and a torrent of Premier League football.

Sunday’s slate of fixtures is stuffed with no fewer than five matches. Three of the division’s current top four are in action alongside a capital derby and familiar faces strewn all over an engrossing round of games.

Here’s everything you need to know about the upcoming clashes.

The last time that Aston Villa manager Unai Emery came up against Bournemouth boss Andoni Iraola, the pair were in opposite dugouts in La Liga 19 months ago. Emery’s Villarreal eviscerated Iraola’s Rayo Vallecano 5-1 away from home, repeatedly beating their hosts’ ambitious high press.

Iraola has belatedly begun to coordinate the trademark pressing schemes that took Rayo out of the second tier and into mid-table on the south coast. However, Emery is further along in his project at Villa and is well placed to cause his former foe more problems this weekend.

Graham Potter may be long gone but the one-way-pollination from Brighton to Chelsea is still strong. Three of Chelsea’s possible rearguard – Robert Sanchez, Marc Cucurella and Levi Colwill – this Sunday have pulled on a Brighton shirt in the recent past.

Watching on from the bench, Chelsea’s goalkeeping coach Ben Roberts will be familiar with many faces of his former colleagues in the other dugout. Even further up the ladder of the club’s hierarchy, co-sporting director Paul Winstanley was poached by Chelsea from Brighton’s roster.

The Blues may have dominated the war of recruitment but Brighton have been in the ascendancy on the pitch. The Seagulls are unbeaten in five Premier League matches against Chelsea (W2 D3).

Jurgen Klopp firmly buys into the mythos surrounding Liverpool’s imposing Anfield home. Fulham are one of the few teams to emerge from Merseyside with a Premier League victory in recent years, taking advantage of Liverpool’s COVID slump to win 1-0 in March 2021.

Since that shock reverse, Liverpool have lost just one of their subsequent 48 Premier League home games.

Ahead of Fulham’s return to Anfield, Klopp was adamant that opposition teams don’t look forward to the trip. “It is our home, it must, must, must be a difficult place to come,” he said.

Boasting a perfect record across all competitions in front of their fans this season, Liverpool have so far lived up to Klopp’s billing.

The wealth of managerial experience shared between the two dugouts at the London Stadium on Sunday is staggering. Between them, West Ham United’s David Moyes and Crystal Palace’s Roy Hodgson have overseen 2,373 matches of football.

They are the two oldest managers in the division but to put them in the same age bracket would do a disservice to the junior Moyes (who is three months younger than Jose Mourinho for reference).

While recognising Hodgson as “a fine ambassador for football” and “a real gentleman”, Moyes had an ulterior motive for encouraging his opposite number’s longevity. “I hope Roy stays in football because it means I’m not the oldest manager in the Premier League,” the West Ham boss joked.

On the back of three consecutive defeats and without a fleet of first-team players, Ange Postecoglou has demanded his Tottenham Hotspur team “show some backbone”.

Postecoglou’s Yokohama F Marinos side certainly stuck to their possession-centric principles when Pep Guardiola’s Manchester City rocked up at Nissan Stadium for a pre-season friendly in 2019. After being limited to just 42% possession while winning 3-1, Guardiola gushed: “Yokohama played some incredible football, they were an incredible test for us.”

How much of a test Postecoglou’s depleted Tottenham will be at the Etihad Stadium this Sunday remains to be seen.

READ THE LATEST PREMIER LEAGUE NEWS, RUMOURS & GOSSIP