There are a lot of considerations that go into making up the EPL schedule. One I wonder about, is if an element of it is to try and avoid the “6 pointer” games, (where 2 teams who are both vying for the title or for survival meet each other), occuring on the final match. Obviously they can’t predict the final table shape with much accuracy but they’ll have a rough guess.
The Championship is relatively rarely up for grabs by the last day. It’s only been true four of the last ten seasons at most. Of course, a couple of those were pretty memorable (especially the 2011-12 season!). But generally speaking, trying to match the Big-6 against each other on the last day usually would mean wasting the value of such a match.
Further, of course, there are never any more than two teams in contention on the last day. So even if you set up such matches, you are not guaranteed to get a six-pointer that matters. For example, this season, Manchester City v Liverpool would have been massive. But there were four other matches possible against top-six teams and any of them would have been wasted.
Much more fun for everyone is setting up potential survive-or-die matches, where likely relegations strugglers are given the task of taking on teams that probably have their next season already set.
How do you figure that?
Because there haven’t been. The closest anyone’s come in the last 20 years were the 2007-08 and 2013-14 seasons, when the spread among the top three teams was four points, but in each case, the third place team was not in contention for the title on the last match day.
It’s theoretically possible, but simply doesn’t happen.
I must admit that until today I assumed the order of the games was more or less random, in terms of who plays who. But this article shows that’s not really the case, though unfortunately it doesn’t seem to answer the OP’s question.
And in true Murray Walker style, let me immediately contradict myself by posting a link to the article preceding the one in my previous post - this seems to imply that the order in which the clubs play each other is random at least to begin with, then other considerations might be applied to move things around: The impossible job: Compiling the fixture list
It should also be kept in mind that, although final day matches are always scheduled as the last match of the season, and happen simultaneously, matches leading up to that can often get scrambled as top teams end up having to postpone scheduled matches in order to play in the various cup tournaments (FA Cup, UEFA Champions League, UEFA Europa League).
I don’t know too much about EPL, but why would a league want to avoid a drama-filled last match?
Wouldn’t they, given the choice, try to arrange a super-interesting, high-stakes and high-ratings finale, instead of a boring, don’t-bother-watching-because-it-doesn’t-matter snoozefest in a half-empty stadium?
Excellent point- other than the odd Leicester every now and then, you can pretty much say right now there is a good chance the top 6 this year will be the top 6 next year, unless Ole shits the bed. So why don’t the schedule makers have for the last day of next season ManU- Spurs, Chelsea- Arsenal, City-Liverpool, or some combination of the above? You cant be certain, but close, and it was pretty certain before last year with City- BHA and Liverpool -Wolves last day that BHA and Wolves would not be challenging for the title. Yes Wolves had a brilliant season no one expected, but they weren’t title challengers.
You’ll never see a half empty stadium. This isn’t like a late September Blue Jays at the Royals game with both teams way out of the playoffs and the NFL season already underway and the baseball game only draws 10,000.
People fly from all over the world to see Premier League games.
Years ago, there was some trouble at the opening fixture for a side that had come up from non-league into the main league structure - the fixture computer had given them a local derby on Day 1, having not been in the professional leagues prior to that. The consequence was that, for many years, my team (Carlisle United - one of the most geographically isolated of English clubs in the league system) would be at home on the opening day, playing whichever side came up. I definitely remember us playing Wycombe Wanderers in their first game in the Football League for instance.
Anyway, there’s one potential reason why you don’t try and engineer title deciders between two of the bigger clubs on the last day of the season, or put local derbies in those slots. The police get a bit antsy.
On May 12 of this season, the Champions, Manchester City FC played away at Brighton & Hove Albion, a team that was already assured of avoiding relegation (they finished 17th out of 20). City were playing for the title; had they drawn or lost, they would have had to hope Liverpool mirrored their result to stay in first. Albion took a shock lead 27 minutes into the game. However, City immediately righted the ship, scoring one minute later to knot it at 1-1, and again 11 minutes later to take a lead they would never relinquish. They eventually won 1-4 (remember: they were away!).
The attendance? 30,662, which was only 20 people less than the record attendance they had earlier in the season when Liverpool came to visit. 
But you might think that was a function of City’s attendance. So let’s look at Fulham FC hosting Newcastle FC at Craven Cottage. Fulham were already relegated, and Newcastle were bumbling around in about 13th. So, of course, 24,979 people came to Thames-side that day to watch their beloved Cottagers get walloped 0-4.
Oh, yeah, Craven Cottage seats 25,700. So it wasn’t a sell-out. Just 97% of the seats full.
Why doesn’t the Premier League try out what people are suggesting? Because they find that they don’t really need to. It’s the same reason that they haven’t fully adopted the idea of Monday Night Football; only about half the Monday evenings during the season have games scheduled. And even then, those games are often not very compelling ones. But the Premier League chugs along just fine without following American scheduling models. Four of the top-50 teams in the world in terms of net worth are from the Premier League, and this despite playing in a country which has one-sixth the population of the US.
And think of it this way: as I pointed out, in most seasons, there’s no last day drama anyway (most seasons, the winner is determined weeks before the last games). The way they schedule the top matches ensures that these matches still are massive games with the potential to impact the final standings. Imagine that the National League of MLB didn’t have divisions. Would you really want the Cubs playing the Dodgers at the very end of the season, when one or the other already had the pennant wrapped up? Or sometime in early Sept., when everything was still on the line?
[QUOTE=DSYoungEsq;21703021And think of it this way: as I pointed out, in most seasons, there’s no last day drama anyway (most seasons, the winner is determined weeks before the last games). The way they schedule the top matches ensures that these matches still are massive games with the potential to impact the final standings. Imagine that the National League of MLB didn’t have divisions. Would you really want the Cubs playing the Dodgers at the very end of the season, when one or the other already had the pennant wrapped up? Or sometime in early Sept., when everything was still on the line? ;)[/QUOTE]
I suspect that even if nearly all games are essentially sold out for in-person tickets, TV viewership might show a much larger difference between meaningless games and critical ones (and so the league does benefit more from critical games than meaningless ones), but it is a very good point that it’s impossible to predict whether a last-day match between the presumed #1 and #2 teams is going to be critical or meaningless. Whereas a mid-season matchup among the leaders will almost certainly be at least somewhat meaningful.
So given the difficulty in knowing when the high-leverage moments in the season are going to be, it would make sense that the league wouldn’t try to strategically arrange matchups among top (or bottom) teams.