{"id":5623,"date":"2026-06-26T09:08:19","date_gmt":"2026-06-26T09:08:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/?p=5623"},"modified":"2026-06-26T09:08:19","modified_gmt":"2026-06-26T09:08:19","slug":"championship-fixtures-relegated-burnley-and-west-ham-to-meet-on-opening-weekend","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/?p=5623","title":{"rendered":"Championship fixtures: Relegated Burnley and West Ham to meet on opening weekend"},"content":{"rendered":"<p> <br \/>\n<\/p>\n<div>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\"><b class=\"ssrcss-1xjjfut-BoldText e5tfeyi3\">Relegated Burnley and West Ham will meet on the opening weekend of the Championship season on Sunday, 16 August.<\/b><\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Clarets, whose bid to appoint Wales manager Craig Bellamy as boss looks to have fallen through, finished 19th in the top flight last season and will host the Hammers, who went down on the final day.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Fellow relegated side Wolves will play the league&#8217;s curtain-raiser against Blackburn at Molineux on Friday, 14 August.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Elsewhere, Southampton, who will start the season on minus four points after the Spygate scandal, travel to Watford on the opening weekend and promoted Cardiff welcome Welsh rivals Wrexham on Monday, 17 August.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">League One champions Lincoln start the season at beaten play-off finalists Middlesbrough on Saturday, 15 August and third tier play-off final winners Bolton begin the campaign with a home game against Preston on the same day.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Championship season starts a week after clubs play their first competitive fixture in the first round of the Carabao Cup and one week before the Premier League gets under way.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Relegated Burnley and West Ham will meet on the opening weekend of the Championship season on Sunday, 16 August. The&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5624,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pagelayer_contact_templates":[],"_pagelayer_content":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5623","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-sport"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5623","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5623"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5623\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5624"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5623"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5623"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/racingsport.xyz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5623"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}