With the fixtures for the 2012/13 Premier League season having been announced, the Saints have been given a baptism of fire to their first Premier League campaign for nearly a decade, with a tough opening day fixture at defending champions Manchester City.

Roberto Mancini’s champions host the Saints on August 18th, although this looks certain to be a fixture that is a dead cert to be moved for live television coverage.

The fixture list does not get much easier afterwards either, with a home game against Manchester United being followed by a first trip to the Emirates stadium to face Arsenal.

Sandwiched between the two fixtures against the Manchester clubs is a home game against perennial relegation battlers, Wigan Athletic. This will be the very first league meeting between the two clubs, with the only previous meeting coming in the F.A Cup in 1986, with the Saints beating the then 4th division side 3-0. September is completed by a home game against Aston Villa, and a trip to Merseyside to face Everton.

October only consists of three league matches, and strangely all three fixtures are against London clubs, as Fulham come to St. Marys at the beginning of the month, Spurs visit at the end of the month, and in between there is a trip to fellow new boys West Ham.

November begins with a trip to the Hawthorns to face West Bromwich, and this is followed by Swansea City’s visit to St. Marys where the two clubs meet in the top flight for the first time since 1983. Queens Park Rangers at Loftus Road and home games against Newcastle and Norwich complete the month.

December is a packed month with six games although only two are at St. Marys. Reading at home is sandwiched between tricky away trips to Liverpool and then Chelsea, whilst out final home game before Christmas see’s Sunderland make the long trip south. Our Boxing Day match is away to Fulham and this is followed three days later by a visit to the Britannia stadium to face Stoke City for our final match of 2012.

2013 begins with a tough home game against Arsenal on New Year’s Day, and after a break for the third round of the F.A. Cup, away games at Aston Villa and Manchester United bookend a home game against Everton at St. Marys.

February like October consists of only three league matches and opening day opponents Manchester City come to St. Marys in between away trips to Wigan and Newcastle. Whilst March consists of four games with three of those at St. Marys, as Queens Park Rangers, Liverpool and Chelsea arrive in town in that order with our solitary road trip coming at Norwich a week after the visit of QPR.

With most people expecting us to be toiling hard against relegation and an immediate return to the Championship, the run-in during April and May does not seem too bad, as by then we would have met most of the bigger clubs. Of course on the flip side that means that these two months have the potential to include a lot of so-called “six pointers”! April starts with a trip to Reading, and this is followed by a home game against another of the clubs who accompanied us in to the Premier League, West Ham. Swansea City away and a home game against West Bromwich complete the month.

The crucial month of May has three fixtures but two of those are tricky trips to Tottenham and Sunderland, and we finish our first Premier League season in seven years with a home game against Stoke City.

So can Saints survive?

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