To be fair, I think it's better to play Man City early before they've established their stride. Also, they'll have a lot more players coming from playing significant roles in the WC than us.
Also, Chelsea. Better to play them early as well. Who will be their manager? They seem a little bit discontented at the moment and if it's Conte, half the team will be pissed off about it, and if it's a new manager, he'll not have had much time to settle in.
Sure it would be nice to get a couple easy games early, but I don't see this as being the end of the world.
Start of March we have:
2: Tottenham Hotspur (a)
9: Manchester United (h)
After that it's all very winnable. Lucky old Emery.
Title's ours tbh
Having Man City and Chelsea in your first two fixtures after taking over from a guy who had been at a club for 2 years and made a right hash of it in the last few years would generally be seen as unlucky to most people I think. Sure you have to play them at some time in the season, but to have to play them in your first two games when you have a completely new group of players you haven't seen play in a competitive match is pretty unfortunate.
As mentioned we have Spurs and Man U in March so it's not that easy either.
The FA as an institution hate us so it's no surprise they've given us the 2 hardest games to begin with so that we lose and fan unrest & the pressure on Emery increases.
That might be true but we have a manager who has a totally new group he would have never seen play in a competitive match, a guy who ha had to take over from someone who had the job for 22 years, pretty unprecendented, in that situation you want a few games to get in your stride and get to know about your players, the defence and keeper might well be new as well so they need to build an understanding.
I personally would have wanted some easier games to start off, maybe to get off to a few wins, we could quite easily lose these two games which wouldn't be great for a new manager.
Wenger was the luckiest manager in football, circumstances always falling in his favour for top 4, easy job getting paid a fortune for 22 years where he didn't have to deliver anything, luck seems to have run out now as all those opportunities he's said to have lined up don't seem to be panning out