The weirdest league games next season: Spurs v Lincoln, Man Utd v Wrexham… | OneFootball

Tottenham vs Lincoln and Leicester vs Bromley as actual league fixtures next season will take some getting used to.

It has felt like a particularly daft season throughout the English Football League, the consequence of which is some genuinely absurd fixtures in the pipeline for 2026/27.

Some have been possible by daft mismanagement, others by absurd overachievement and the rest through a potent combination of the two.

Tottenham v Lincoln

If challenged by some deeply troubled individual to sum up Tottenham’s 2025/26 campaign in one sentence, this should cover all bases: after a 5-2 Champions League knockout stage defeat to Atletico Madrid in which their keeper was substituted for tactical reasons in the 17th minute, Spurs fans sang in the concourse about travelling to Lincoln away the following season.

A 70,000-capacity European football cauldron makes for incongruous surroundings when it comes to gallows humour, but it captured the ongoing absurdity of the situation.

Sincil Bank holds roughly one-seventh of that number, and there will even be hilariously long-suffering Spurs supporters still around from their last visit to face the Imps in the league for a goalless draw in the 1948/49 Second Division.

The two clubs faced one another in the League Cup second round more than four decades ago, but have since existed on different stratospheres.

When Spurs finished as Premier League runners-up in 2017, Lincoln were being crowned National League champions. One month after Lincoln won League Two in 2019, Spurs were playing in the Champions League final.

That they might well be playing each other home and away next season is a testament to how brilliantly run, unified, community-led and fan-focused one club is, and how the other is so irrevocably Spurs.

West Ham v Stevenage

The banter option is fairly obviously for Spurs to be relegated, but West Ham do provide a solid back-up plan.

The Hammers did sink to the Championship in 2011, at which point their most incompatible opponent was probably Doncaster or Peterborough. And of course, they drew with the former at home while scraping past the latter through a Mark Noble penalty.

If Nuno Espirito Santo does prove incapable of halting the West Ham slide – and is probably then replaced as manager by Noble – then their schedule might well contain one fixture never seen before.

This is where the League One play-off picture comes in. The Jussi Jaasekelainen derby against Bolton is old hat, and meeting Bradford would evoke memories of that 5-4 Carling classic in 2000. West Ham have even played Stockport a few times, most recently in the FA Cup five years ago.

But Stevenage? Three points clear of Luton with two games remaining? That would be a deeply humbling first-time match-up to cap the Boro’s debut season in the second tier.

Leicester v Bromley

It could be reasonably argued that the most ludicrous league game of all to be played next season has already been confirmed.

Leicester, Premier League champions in 2016, Champions League quarter-finalists in 2017, FA Cup winners in 2021 and Europa Conference League semi-finalists in 2022, versus a Bromley side which has only existed above the sixth step of the English football pyramid for ten seasons, and spent 132 of their 134 years as a non-league club.

In this, Bromley’s first campaign in the Football League, they have already earned automatic promotion and might yet hold off the challenge of MK Dons and Cambridge to win the title.

And they will have done it with one of the lowest wage bills in League Two – one of many stark contrasts with the crippling improvidence of Leicester.

“Just to give you one sort of comparison to us and Leicester,” said Bromley manager Andy Woodman, “we have one astroturf pitch that we train on; I mean, their training ground is unbelievable. And then when you’ve just listed all the people and all the staff, I mean that is massive mismanagement, let’s be honest. I don’t know who’s to blame, where the blame is. And it strikes me from the outside that there’s been one or two liberties taken really with the sort of naiveness of the owner on that.”

Woodman might not be expecting a call to take over in the summer, and nor should he entertain taking that step down right now.

Manchester United v Wrexham

It remains the least favourable choice for a neutral because of the circus it would attract, but ultimately Wrexham earning promotion would also be the biggest novelty in terms of potential fixtures.

There could be a wonderful freshness about all three promoted clubs. Coventry are different enough to the standard yo-yo teams, with Millwall an intriguing possible Premier League debutant.

But Wrexham would undoubtedly make the most headlines if they prosper in the play-offs, having only shared a division with one member of the Big Six for a single season: Manchester City in the 1997-98 Second Division.

While Wrexham have never faced Manchester United in the league, their five previous meetings include a two-legged European Cup Winners’ Cup tie en route to the Red Devils’ 1990 crowning.

There can’t have been many times that opponents have played each other in a European game before a league one.

Rotherham v Boreham Wood

Not the most ridiculous pairing, granted, but Boreham Wood’s highest league finish ever is fourth in the National League – their current position – in 2018, while Rotherham were playing in the Championship two years ago.

Boreham Wood would have to navigate through the play-offs and past whichever poor sod out of York or Rochdale racks up more than 100 points without getting automatic promotion.

But if they can manage it, the Millers will be waiting.