The 2025\u201326 Premier League was a study in contrasts: one club ended 22 years of agony and others lurched from chaos to survival. Arsenal finished top (finances: 4th; xG: 1st; finish: 1st), and Thierry Henry captured the mood succinctly: \u201cYou don\u2019t have to like it,\u201d Thierry Henry said of Arsenal\u2019s robust approach, \u201cbut you must respect it.\u201d<\/p>\n
Manchester City closed as runners-up (finances: 2nd; xG: 2nd; finish: 2nd). Their campaign left Bernardo Silva to argue, \u201cIf we didn\u2019t make so many mistakes,\u201d the captain argued , \u201cwe would have won this league.\u201d Manchester United recovered to third (finances: 5th; xG: 3rd; finish: 3rd) after a season of extremes.<\/p>\n
At the top end and middle of the table there were disparate stories: Aston Villa finished fourth (finances: 6th; xG: 13th; finish: 4th) and won the Europa League; Bournemouth produced a remarkable sixth-place finish (finances: 14th; xG: 10th; finish: 6th) and recorded the season\u2019s longest unbeaten run (18 games). Brighton secured Conference League qualification (finances: 12th; xG: 6th; finish: 8th) and Lewis Dunk was unequivocal: \u201c100% it\u2019s a success.\u201d<\/p>\n
Several established names struggled. Chelsea endured a chaotic year (finances: 3rd; xG: 4th; finish: 10th) and even saw Robert S\u00e1nchez match Liam Delap for direct Premier League goal contributions. Liverpool underwhelmed (finances: 1st; xG: 5th; finish: 5th). Tottenham produced a poor return (finances: 7th; xG: 16th; finish: 17th) and Igor Tudor reflected: \u201cThe bottle is always either half-empty or half-full,\u201d and \u201cHere there is nothing full. There are a lot of empty things.\u201d<\/p>\n
Relegation hit big clubs and small alike. West Ham went down (wage bill: 13th; xG: 17th; finish: 18th) and Nuno Esp\u00edrito Santo insisted, \u201cWest Ham has to be in the Premier League,\u201d and \u201cWe are a big club that has to be in the Premier League.\u201d Wolves finished bottom (finances: 13th; xG: 19th; finish: 20th) and chairman Jeff Shi admitted: \u201cMaybe we sold too many players in one window.\u201d Burnley were also relegated (finances: 19th; xG: 20th; finish: 19th).<\/p>\n
Other narratives included Newcastle\u2019s slide after a summer of upheaval (finances: 8th; xG: 9th; finish: 12th), Everton\u2019s deflated near-miss with Angus Kinnear calling himself \u201chappily dissatisfied,\u201d Fulham\u2019s middling campaign where they \u201cmissed the cherry on the cake,\u201d and Nottingham Forest\u2019s turbulence with multiple managers. This season left clear winners, clear losers and plenty for clubs to reflect on ahead of 2026\u201327.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Arsenal won the title; a season of extremes produced champions, chaos and three relegated clubs 2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":14067,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[230,172],"tags":[1317,1162,1637],"class_list":["post-14068","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-analytics-stats","category-epl","tag-accounts-2025-26","tag-analytics","tag-assists"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14068","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14068"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14068\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14067"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14068"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14068"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.weplayfpl.com\/news-articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14068"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}