Two new Premier League opponents for next season
Today’s final fixtures, added to yesterday’s Championship play-off final, have completed the Premier League line-up for the forthcoming 2023/24 season with us about to come up against two teams at Premier League level for the first time.
The league has said goodbye to Leeds and Leicester today who will drop into the Championship alongside Southampton with Sheffield United and Luton joining us in taking their places.
Luton, who will become the 51st team to play in the Premier League, are one of two teams we will play in this league for the first time; the other is Nottingham Forest, last year’s play-off winners who ensured their survival just eight days ago with a 1-0 home win against Arsenal.
Luton, of course, we’ve played during this season, drawing 1-1 at home courtesy of a Josh Brownhill goal and winning the away game 1-0 at Kenilworth Road with an Ashley Barnes penalty. It was during our last promotion season of 2015/16 season that we last played Nottingham Forest. The results were the same as against Luton this season although reversed, drawing 1-1 at the City Ground with a late Matty Taylor equaliser and winning the home game 1-0 with a second half header from Sam Vokes.
We have previously played top flight football against both teams but it is some considerable time ago, and we have to go back to the 1970s to find the most recent of them.
Burnley and Luton have only previously been in the same top flight league in six seasons. Five of those were successive seasons from 1955/56 through to our championship season of 1959/60. The sixth came in 1974/75 when Jimmy Adamson’s team completed the double over the Hatters then managed by Harry Haslam.
The first of the games was at Kenilworth Road at the end of November. We led 1-0 with a Ray Hankin goal, then trailed 2-1. Leighton James restored parity early in the second half and four minutes later Hankin got his second to give us a 3-2 win.
In January, the first home game following the shock FA Cup defeat against Wimbledon, a Billy Ingham goal just past the half hour ensured a 1-0 win and third place in the table.
Games at the highest level against Forest have been more frequent although none since 1971. There have been 24 seasons when we’ve both been in the top division. The first seven of them were back in the 19th century from 1892/93 through to 1899/1900 and there were three more seasons from 1922/23 to 1924/25.
Forest won promotion in 1957 and from then until the end of the 1970/71 season we were both members of the old First Division. Those games in that final season both ended in home wins. We won 2-1 at the Turf. That was in November and we were already rooted to the bottom of the league. Geoff Nulty gave us a first half lead which Eric Probert doubled in the first minute of the second half. Forest quickly pulled one back but we hung on at 2-1. Still bottom, and clearly heading for relegation, we were beaten 1-0 at the City Ground in February 1971 in our most recent top flight meeting.
Next season we will be meeting both and we will find out when in eighteen days time when the fixtures are released.
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