The 2025-26 Premier League campaign drew to a tense conclusion on Sunday, as Tottenham scraped past Everton to consign West Ham to relegation in spite of a 3-0 victory over Leeds United. Meanwhile, in the north-east of England, Sunderland sensationally defeated Chelsea to secure a place in the Europa League, while simultaneously preventing the Club World Cup winners from qualifying for any form of continental competition next term.
On the opposite side of the country, Manchester City bid a fond farewell to their iconic and ridiculously successful coach Pep Guardiola, just as Liverpool’s living legend Mohamed Salah was bringing the curtain down on a sensational nine-year spell at Anfield.
Of course, the biggest outpouring of emotion arguably took place at Selhurst Park, where Arsenal’s long-suffering supporters watched their team lift the Premier League trophy for the first time in 22 years.
WINNER: Set-piece coaches
There are obviously a multitude of reasons for Liverpool’s disastrous title defence, but their inability to deal with set-pieces was definitely one of the major contributing factors. As coach Arne Slot lamented ahead of his side’s final game of the season against Brentford, the game has changed a lot over the past year, and the Reds have been brutally punished for failing to adapt.
Remember, Liverpool didn’t bring in a proper set-piece coach under Slot; they simply promoted Aaron Briggs to the position in September of last year and it didn’t go well. Briggs was gone by December, and it was hard not to have some degree of sympathy for a man who had been originally hired as an ‘individual development coach’.
Indeed, if the 2025-26 campaign has taught us nothing else, it’s that it is absolutely essential to have a strong set-piece coach. Corners, free-kicks and throw-ins are more important than ever before, as underlined by the remarkable fact that the team that scored the most goals from dead-ball situations in each of England’s top four leagues were all crowned champions.
So, if Liverpool are to have any chance of reclaiming the title next season, they’re clearly going to have to find their very own version of Nicolas Jover or Austin MacPhee over the summer.
LOSER: Liverpool’s brains trust
Slot probably could have been classed as a ‘winner’ – simply because he’s still Liverpool coach. Despite overseeing one of the worst title defences in Premier League history, the Dutchman managed to see out the season, which took some doing, particularly in light of Mohamed Salah’s not-so-subtle shots at the team’s style of play and declining standards in the dressing room.
However, while Slot retains the support of his employers, it was made painfully clear during May’s draw with Chelsea at Anfield that the fans have lost faith in the man who led Liverpool to their record-equalling 20th English championship just a year ago. They’d already been chanting Xabi Alonso’s name before the end of the humiliating FA Cup loss at Manchester City – and who could blame them?
They’d grown tired of Slot’s excuses and damning inability to do anything about his team’s defensive deficiencies, malfunctioning midfield, or misfiring forward line – all of which contributed to Liverpool limping over the line and into a Champions League place at the end of a trying, trophy-less campaign.
Of course, the supporters aren’t just dissatisfied with Slot. They know he’s not solely to blame for the Reds’ remarkable regression.
Fenway Sports Group’s (FSG) CEO of Football Michael Edwards and Liverpool sporting director Richard Hughes were chiefly responsible for the £450 million summer spending spree that weakened the strongest team in England. Indeed, of the 10 players to arrive at Anfield last summer, only one, Hugo Ekitike, could be classed as an unqualified success – and even he’s facing an uncertain future after rupturing his Achilles tendon in April.
Despite showing flashes of his undoubted class, £100m man Florian Wirtz has flattered to deceive on too many occasions, Giorgi Mamardashvili doesn’t look like an upgrade on Caoimhin Kelleher let alone Alisson Becker, Jeremie Frimpong has struggled for form and fitness, while British-record signing Alexander Isak is looking like one of the biggest flops in football history.
The start of next season, thus, feels like make or break for Slot, Edwards and Hughes. All three of them are out of contract in 2027 and, right now, there’s no desire among the fanbase for any of them to be given extensions.
LOSER: Ruben Amorim
Ruben Amorim’s Manchester United reign looked bad enough when he was relieved of his duties on January 5. However, Michael Carrick’s subsequent success with the same set of players over the past six months has made an absolute mockery of the Portuguese coach’s once-stellar reputation.
Despite being unburdened by European football, Amorim’s United were only sixth in the standings at the time of his dismissal. Under Carrick, they ended up finishing third, and by racking up more Premier League points than any other manager during the second half of the season.
What was really embarrassing for Amorim, though, was that Carrick didn’t do anything particularly revolutionary from a tactical perspective. He made the most obvious changes imaginable, changes that the absurdly stubborn Amorim refused to even entertain. Carrick ditched the three-man defence, put Bruno Fernandes in his best position behind the No.9 and brought the inexplicably ostracised Kobbie Mainoo back into the team.
Amorim is still only 41 and the work he did at Sporting CP should not be forgotten. However, the abiding memory of his time in England will be of a clueless coach frantically moving pieces around a tactics board during a Carabao Cup loss at Grimsby Town last August.
WINNER: Bruno Fernandes
There’s a school of thought that the player of the season should always come from the title winners. It’s absolutely nonsense, though. While football is a team sport, we’re talking about an individual award, and the best player in the league doesn’t always play on the best team in the league.
This year is a perfect case in point. David Raya, Declan Rice, and Gabriel Magalhaes have all been very good for champions Arsenal – but Bruno Fernandes has unquestionably been the player of the season. He might not be a particularly likeable character, but no other footballer in the league is as important to his team as the Portuguese is to Manchester United.
Put quite simply: the Red Devils wouldn’t have even got close to finishing third had it not been for their captain, who broke the Premier League assists record previously shared by Kevin De Bruyne and Thierry Henry. It was a historic achievement and just reward for a player who’s never really got the credit he deserves – despite being the most creative and industrious No.10 in world football for the past five years.
LOSER: BlueCo
As the season ends, there’s actually a little bit of cautious optimism around Stamford Bridge. According to reports, Chelsea’s much-maligned owners, BlueCo, have finally decided to upgrade their player recruitment strategy to include proven players – rather than focusing solely on hoovering up as many top young talents as possible – and this longer overdue shift in approach unquestionably helped the club convince Xabi Alonso to replace Liam Rosenior as permanent coach this summer. It’s also entirely possible the that complete absence of European football will help the Spaniard, as he’ll nearly always have a week to prepare his players for Premier League games.
However, there is simply no disguising the fact that Chelsea’s 2025-26 Premier League campaign was a complete catastrophe.
The Blues were touted as a potential title challengers after last summer’s Club World Cup win in the United States, but they were already out of the running by the time the disastrous decision was taken to sack Enzo Maresca for a perceived show of insubordination and replace him with ‘company man’ Rosenior.
In a development that surprised absolutely nobody, the former Strasbourg boss was unable to win over a dressing room still loyal to Maresca with his LinkedIn language, and he was sacked just over four months into a ludicrous five-and-a-half-year contract after a run of five consecutive league defeats without scoring a single goal that torpedoed the team’s hopes of a top-five finish.
Missing out on the Champions League represented a major financial blow for the club’s accounts, which are coming under ever-increasing scrutiny, so not even an appearance in the FA Cup final under interim coach Calum McFarlane lifted the spirits of the supporters, some of whom walked down Wembley Way behind a banner that read, ‘BlueCo out! We want our Chelsea back.”
There’s little chance of them getting their wish – at least not yet – but if Alonso’s reign starts slowly, the pressure is only going to mount on Todd Boehly & Co. Because while Chelsea may be ‘world champions’, the feeling is mounting that their owners are among the most clueless in the game today.
WINNER: Enzo Maresca
A manager who has been out of work since being sacked halfway through the season might seem like an odd choice for one of our ‘winners’. However, the past six months have gone wonderfully well for Enzo Maresca.
The Italian’s decision to criticise his club after a routine win over Everton in December may have come across as bizarre, but, as we wrote at the time, Maresca knew exactly what he was doing. He effectively talked himself out of a job at Stamford Bridge – because he was already being lined up for another one at the Etihad Stadium.
Admittedly, some have questioned Maresca’s credentials as Pep Guardiola’s successor at Manchester City beyond their previous working relationship, but his work at Chelsea has been cast in a very favourable light since his exit.
The Blues completely imploded under Liam Rosenior during the second half of the season, and it was hugely significant that key players such as Enzo Fernandez and Marc Cucurella felt compelled to publicly lament the club’s decision to get rid of Maresca, the mastermind behind last summer’s Club World Cup final rout of Paris Saint-Germain.
Basically, getting fired by the clowns running the circus at Stamford Bridge was the best thing that could have happened to Maresca, who’s now off to work for a far better-run club.
LOSER: Ange Postecoglou
During an extraordinary press conference on October 18, Ange Postecoglou reacted to mounting speculation around his future as Nottingham Forest coach by launching an impassioned defence of his coaching career, during which he defiantly declared that his “story” at the City Ground would end in the same way as it had at all of his previous clubs: “Me with a trophy.”
The following day, though, Postecoglou was gone, sacked just 18 minutes after his side’s 3-0 loss at home to Chelsea. The Australian certainly had every reason to feel hard done by. He’d only been at the helm for 39 days – making him the shortest-serving permanent manager in Premier League history.
However, he’d failed to win any of his eight games in charge in all competitions, and lost six of them, including a Carabao Cup tie at Swansea City.
Postecoglou is a great character with an admirably adventurous footballing philosophy, but his historically bad spell at Forest unfortunately did absolutely nothing to alter the perception he hated of him as “failed manager that was lucky to get another opportunity” at a Premier League job so soon after being sacked by Spurs.
WINNER: Mikel Arteta
This was unquestionably a make-or-break campaign for Mikel Arteta at Arsenal. After five full seasons without a trophy, the Spaniard simply had to win some silverware and, despite another anxious April that sparked fears of another perceived ‘bottle job’, he led the Gunners to a first Premier League title since 2004.
It was hardly a victory for ‘The Beautiful Game’, of course; Arsenal took ‘winning ugly’ to a whole other level with their time-wasting, play-acting, and depressing dependence on set-pieces to score goals. Indeed, the 1-0 win over Burnley that effectively clinched the title rather summed up Arsenal’s approach, with both David Raya and Leandro Trossard simulating injuries in the closing seconds of a victory over the second-worst team in the league, achieved with a header from a corner.
Still, while even Thierry Henry admitted that he was less than impressed by Arteta’s cynical style of play, the former France forward felt, just like everyone else connected with the club, that the end justified the means – and the fact of the matter is that Arsenal are now on the verge of a historic Premier League and Champions League double.
Say what you will, then, about Arteta and his methods. Or the amount of time and money it’s taken for him to get the Gunners to this point. But he deserves some respect for turning ‘specialists in failure’ into the best team in England – and potentially Europe. The process may not have been pretty, but it was undeniably effective.
LOSER: Manchester City
May 19, 2026 – Manchester City supporters have arguably never endured a more depressing day during the past decade. As they struggled to come to terms with reliable reports that their beloved coach Pep Guardiola had decided to step down at the end of the season, they then had to watch on helplessly as his hopes of signing off with a seventh Premier League title went up in smoke at Bournemouth.
Of course, Guardiola’s decision to depart this summer – rather than when his contract expires next year – didn’t come as that much of a surprise. There had been rumours of him deciding to call it quits no matter what happened during the closing stages of the campaign. And two domestic cups still represented a fine way for Guardiola to bring the curtain down on a trophy-laden tenure, while at the same time suggesting that the latest team the Catalan has constructed has a shot at continuing the era of unprecedented success he’s overseen at the Etihad.
However, Guardiola isn’t the only one going. City’s inspirational skipper, Bernardo Silva, is also leaving. and his absence will be keenly felt both on and off the field, particularly if Rodri follows him out the exit door. And who knows if Erling Haaland will resist the temptation to join a truly elite club?!
Make no mistake about, these are worryingly uncertain times for City. For all their money, Guardiola was always their most valuable asset, the coaching genius with whom everyone wanted to work. That kind of aura will be impossible to replace, meaning the supposed panic on the streets of north London a month ago has given way to anxiety around the blue half of Manchester.
WINNER: Unai Emery
This time last year, there was an awful lot of anxiety at Aston Villa. Missing out on Champions League qualification was, as Ezri Konsa put it, “a big kick in the teeth for the players”. However, it was also a bitter blow from a financial perspective, as it meant an even more restricted transfer budget for a club with already well-documented issues with the Premier League’s Profit & Sustainability Regulations.
An unsurprisingly underwhelming summer transfer window hardly raised spirits around Villa Park, and fans were genuinely fearing relegation after watching their team fail to win any of their first five matches.
At that stage, the idea of Villa finishing fourth and winning a first European trophy for three decades would have felt farcical. However, as former chief executive Paul Faulkner pointed out, Unai Emery is “a genius”, and the Spaniard oversaw a remarkable revival that culminated in Villa securing a return to the Champions League with a thrilling win over Liverpool before then producing a performance fit for a future king in the final of the Europa League.
“He’s been incredible as a manager,” Faulkner told the BBC. “The team was struggling under his predecessor, Steven Gerrard, and he’s just transformed it. He’s got a lot of the same players, they’ve added a little bit to the squad but a lot of this team have been there for an awfully long time, predating the manager. You see how he’s managed to knit that unit together and get consistent results. It’s absolutely remarkable.”
As a result, a man once mercilessly mocked at Arsenal is now considered a living legend at Villa.
LOSER: Harvey Elliott
After Aston Villa’s Europa League rout of Freiburg, Harvey Elliott took to Instagram to write, “Was written in the stars from the moment I signed! Up the f*cking Villa! Played a huge part! All jokes aside, Villa fans, thanks so much for everything! Enjoy yourselves.”
The mix of sincerity and self-deprecating humour was typical of Elliott, but it only made one feel even sorrier for one of the most likeable characters in the game today.
Elliott’s move to Villa could have been the making of an incredibly talented young man who had left Liverpool last summer in pursuit of regular game time. However, the 23-year-old hasn’t seen a single minute of action since March because Villa didn’t want to trigger the £35 million obligation to buy in his loan deal by allowing him to reach 10 league appearances for the club.
Despite rumours that former sporting director Monchi signed a player that Unai Emery didn’t want, the latter has never properly explained why Elliott was quickly deemed surplus to requirements.
“To now reveal the reason for this decision is very difficult, or it is easy, but it is not the moment,” Emery said earlier this month while also praising the player’s professionalism and personality. “My apologies for Harvey Elliott are, every day, in my mind.”
The Spaniard’s contrition is obviously admirable. but it’s of absolutely no use to Elliott, who arrived at Villa Park eyeing a place in England’s World Cup squad and is now returning to Anfield facing an uncertain future after losing an entire year of his career. It’s a testament to his fantastic character that he can still see the funny side of a desperately sad situation.
WINNER: The Championship
As this season has underlined, the Championship is fiercely competitive. Clubs are willing to go to ridiculous lengths to secure promotion to the Premier League, be that running the risk of financial ruin by spending obscene amounts of money on players – or simply spying on opposition training sessions!
Of course, the problem was that while it was very difficult to get out of the Championship, it was very easy to drop straight back into it. Consequently, before the Premier League season began, the expectation was that the three newly-promoted teams would all be relegated for the third year in a row. However, only Burnley failed to beat the drop.
Leeds United may have been in a bit of trouble going into April, but they were mathematically safe with three games remaining thanks to a tremendous undefeated run that featured a historic win over Manchester United at Old Trafford, meaning Daniel Farke went from a dead man walking to a candidate for the freedom of the city!
Remarkably, Regis Le Bris did an even more remarkable job at the Stadium of Light. Granted, Sunderland spent a significant amount of money last summer, but nobody expected to see them sitting seventh after a 0-0 draw with Manchester City on New Year’s Day – let alone finish there. However, the Black Cats won their final two games, away to Everton and at home to Chelsea, to qualify for Europe for the first time since 1973 – and just a year after winning the Championship play-off final at Wembley.
Consequently, Le Bris, Farke, and everyone connected with both clubs deserve all the praise in the world for proving that it is still possible for newly-promoted teams to not just survive – but thrive – in the Premier League.
LOSER: Eddie Howe
Newcastle United clinched a Champions League spot on the final day of the 2024-25 campaign. On Sunday, they didn’t even have a chance of qualifying for the Conference League – which only serves to underline just how far Eddie Howe and his team have fallen over the past year.
In fairness to the coach, he can hardly be blamed for the Alexander Isak strike that threw his entire pre-season plans into total disarray. It’s also not his fault that Newcastle failed dismally to land any of their main transfer targets to replace the Swedish striker.
However, Howe has not been able to get the best out of Nick Woltemade and, in particular, Yoane Wissa, who has proven one of the worst Premier League signings of the season. It’s not as if Anthony Elanga or Jacob Ramsey have improved on his watch either, while the fans have grown frustrated with the manager’s uninspired tactics and predictable substitutions.
Consequently, serious questions are being asked of the coach who ended Newcastle’s 70-year wait for a domestic trophy by masterminding a shock win over Liverpool in the Carabao Cup final, but is now coming off the back of an inexcusable 12th-placed top-flight finish.
The word is that Howe retains the backing of CEO David Hopkinson and sporting director Ross Wilson and he’s adamant that he’s still the right man for the job. However, one cannot help but wonder if he’ll actually still want the job come the end of the transfer window, given there’s a genuine chance that this summer could go even worse than the last, with Anthony Gordon, Sandro Tonali, and Bruno Guimaraes all being linked with moves away from St. James’ Park.
Newcastle had an awfully tough time attracting top talent to Tyneside even after qualifying for the Champions League. Just imagine how difficult it’s going to be without no European football to offer whatsoever – particularly amid rumours that the club’s Saudi Arabian owners plan to scale back their investment in sport…
LOSER: Nuno Espirito Santo
Seasons don’t get much worse for a manager than Nuno Espirito Santo’s. Despite qualifying Nottingham Forest for Europe last year, the Portuguese was sacked just three matches into the 2025-26 campaign after falling out with the club’s temperamental owner, Evangelos Marinakis, over the decision to appoint former Arsenal sporting director Edu as the club’s global head of football and give the Brazilian control of transfers.
Nuno wasn’t out of work for long, though, as he was unveiled as Graham Potter’s replacement at West Ham on September 27, tasked with getting the team out of the bottom three. However, Nuno’s side only really looked like surviving in April, when they took seven points from a possible nine just after the March international break. West Ham wouldn’t win again until the final day of the season, though, and, by that stage, they’d allowed Tottenham to overtake them in the table, meaning a 3-0 win over Leeds proved in vain.
While relegation felt like a fitting punishment for the Hammers’ hapless owners, it was hard not to feel some degree of sympathy for Nuno. Some big calls unquestionably went against his side during the final few months of the season, while Unai Emery fielding a weakened team ahead of a Europa League semi-final gifted Spurs a massive three points at Aston Villa.
Still, while no side had gone down with 39 points since Blackpool and Birmingham City in 2011, Nuno was given eight full months to beat the drop – and failed to do so. As he said himself immediately after relegation had been confirmed, “We improved, but not enough.”
WINNER: Well-run overachievers
Money makes modern football go around, meaning the game’s richest clubs get their hands on nearly all of the available silverware. However, it is still possible for teams with small budgets to upset the big boys, as Brentford, Brighton and Bournemouth so thrillingly proved this season by finishing in the top half of the Premier League table despite all ranking among the bottom five in terms of wage bills.
Lest anyone has forgotten, Brentford (20th) were expected to struggle badly this season following Thomas Frank’s defection to Tottenham, with his successor, former set-piece coach Keith Andrews, tipped by many pundits to win the sack race. However, so solid are the foundations at the Gtech Community Stadium that the Irishman didn’t just outlast Frank, who was sacked by Spurs in February, he equalled the Dane’s best-ever top-flight finish of ninth place.
Brighton, meanwhile, has long been regarded as one of the best-run clubs in European football, a model for others to follow, so it came as little surprise to see Fabian Hurzeler get the Seagulls into the Conference League, which they have every chance of winning next season.
As for Bournemouth, Andoni Iraola is clearly an outstanding young coach deserving of a top job, but the Spaniard would be the first to admit that the credit for the Cherries’ historic sixth-placed finish should be shared among not only the coaching staff and the players, but also everyone behind the scenes at the Vitality Stadium.
Consequently, they’ll be optimistic of remaining a competitive Premier League team even after Iraola’s departure, because Bournemouth have proven, along with fellow over-achievers Brentford and Brighton, that so many of England’s elite have more money than sense.
LOSER: Tottenham
Spurs may have avoided relegation on Sunday, but that was hardly a cause for celebration. As defender Micky van de Ven admitted to BBC Sport, “Finishing 17th two years in a row is unacceptable for us. This club has some unbelievable players. It was embarrassing to let it come to the final day.”
Of course, the good work done by Roberto De Zerbi since his arrival on March 31 offers some hope for a brighter future, but let’s not forget that the Italian is an incredibly demanding character who is never afraid to make his feelings known if he feels he’s being let down by his employers in the transfer market – and he’s now working for a team that has become synonymous with shocking signs and dreadful decision-making (Google Igor Tudor for more!).
Indeed, amid the outpouring of relief at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on Sunday, one banner rather succinctly summed up the overriding feeling of frustration among the fans: “Promised success, delivered failure. ENIC out!”.
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