Like a few others, am rather pissed off that we are away on Boxing Day for the 8th yr running so I emailed the Football League asking them to explain how this can be fair.
This is the response I received, don't know why I expected to get a decent answer! sorry it's a bit long winded.
Thank you for your email.
We have raised your query with our fixtures and competitions department who have advised the following.
Swindon Town are one of three teams in League 1 who do not have a natural pairing, others are Crewe Alexandra and Gillingham. Pairing are when clubs are linked together, usually due to proximity and thus avoid fixture clashes, assisting with club and local authority requests. You will note that all of these three teams are away on Boxing Day so it was difficult to force a Swindon change to be at home in any of the available slots in the pairing grid. There are a number of potential knock-on effects of pairings. One such example may be knocking all South Yorkshire clubs to be at home and all permutations have to be considered. However the fixture officer was aware of the frequency of away games you note and will certainly look at this for next season.
By way of some background, The Football League works with the clubs themselves in attempting to shape fixture lists that meet the majority of clubs’ approval. This is due to the complex methodology involved in the compilation of the fixture lists. The fixtures are worked on for many months by The Football League’s competitions department and our fixture scheduling partners. During this time all considerations and requests from all clubs are considered by The Football League, to get to a position where most are satisfied with the final list.
Along with certain basic competition rules on home and away frequencies, often there are several circumstances which dictate when fixtures will fall and many are specific to individual clubs (such as when near neighbours are home/away or whether there is a local public event/activity taking place on a certain date). Once the fixture lists have been compiled, Clubs will consult the Football League’s competitions department to attempt to mould their fixture list in their favour but it is extremely difficult to meet all clubs’ requests.
There may be specific reasons why a club has indicated they might wish to play a certain fixture at home or away so it might be worth consulting with the Club regarding a specific date/change.
A couple of historical online resources may provide further insight into the process for you.
Football League FAQ – Fixtures Explained
http://www.football-league.co.uk/features/20120618/behind-the-scenes-compiling-the-fixture-list_2293307_2813098 News story on The Guardian from 2013 regarding the compilation process
http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2013/jun/15/fixtures-premier-league-football-league-compiled Thank you for contacting The Football League.
Kind Regards,