Predicting 2025-26 Premier League table: Liverpool, Arsenal, Man City vie for title, Man United bounce back

Sports

add

The Premier League is back, the 2025-26 iteration one with the potential to deliver more drama, tension and shocks than many in recent memories. Champions Liverpool might start the season as favorites, but they have taken risks in rebuilding Arne Slot’s squad, the sort that will have Mikel Arteta and Pep Guardiola eyeing up an opening they can go crashing through.

In the upper midtable ranks no one seems to have definitively kicked on while several of those teams who upset the odds in 2024-25 will have to adapt. Can Bournemouth cope without the foundation stones of their side? Will Nottingham Forest and Crystal Palace be hindered by their European exertions?

Meanwhile it is now two seasons in a row in which the newly promoted teams have been relegated. This threatens to become an existential issue for English football, all the more so if Leeds fail to stay up after an outstanding season in the Championship. Will they? Here’s where we’re predicting them and the rest of the league to land in our third annual 1-20 rankings: 

1. Liverpool

There is risk to Liverpool’s significant overhaul of their championship-winning team, some of which was forced on them. There will also almost certainly be risk in the way they play, Milos Kerkez and Jeremie Frimpong arguably a more front-footed full back duo than Andrew Robertson and Trent Alexander-Arnold. Adding a true number 10 too in Florian Wirtz opens this team up to scoring more but also conceding more, as was apparent in the Community Shield.

Liverpool’s risky makeover: Millions spent on high-flying attack, but can defense hold for a title repeat?

James Benge

Much will depend on whether the form of their two great veterans hold. If Liverpool are leaving two defenders back but one of them is a Virgil van Dijk something like his prime, their defense will be good enough. Meanwhile if Mohamed Salah is even 95% of the player he was last season — with Wirtz, Ekitike and perhaps Alexander Isak easing the burden on him — then this will be the best attack in the sport. Liverpool may have lowered their floor but their ceiling come April and May could be irresistible.

2. Arsenal

In the four years since Edu and Mikel Arteta began a radical overhaul of their squad, Arsenal have made barely a handful of mistakes in building a perennial contender. They have been there or thereabouts since 2022 and will be there or thereabouts in nine months’ time. No wonder, then, that they have largely backed the same system and similar personnel. On early evidence Martin Zubimendi will be a better tempo setter at the base of midfield than they had before, but he will ensure Arsenal play the best version of Arsenal football that they can.

Their business this summer has addressed the greatest flaw of last season’s squad, deepening Arteta’s options so that he can afford to give Bukayo Saka or Gabriel Magalhaes the night off. If Viktor Gyokeres clicks — and Arsenal’s recruitment track record means fans should trust he was among the best strikers they could get — then this team can get back to the 90-plus goal peak of 2023-24. Most of all, they won’t have the same red card or injury luck this time around, even if they break a mirror that was reflecting 13 ravens, all of whom were cawing the word “Macbeth.”

Better players, better fitness, better luck: it might all not be enough to end what probably now constitutes a mini-drought of five years without trophies. Arsenal’s misfortune is they find themselves in competition with two other immaculately run hyperclubs plus whatever the Champions League throws at them. However, they continue to position themselves to have a really good chance at both. No matter what loud voices on the internet might tell you, that is an impressive feat.

3. Manchester City

What caused the near 30% upswing in expected goals allowed by Manchester City last season? There are plenty of micro factors — aging bodies, ill-suited players jammed into midfield — but perhaps the greatest macro issue was having the best player in the world, Rodri, on the sidelines for most of the season. His absence was the one intractable problem for Guardiola in 2024-25 as the drip, drip of decline that had been apparent in their most recent title-winning campaign became a shower. 

The worry then is that Rodri is not going to be back in the XI until September and that the time between the ACL tear and the Ballon d’Or holder getting back to the peak of his powers will run far, far beyond this season. With Mateo Kovacic injured too and Tijani Reijnders an unremarkable addition, this could be a team that slogs their way out of the blocks, particularly as they try to work out just how effective Rayan Cherki, Rayan Ait-Nouri and James Trafford (or perhaps Gianluigi Donnarumma) can be.  

4. Chelsea

Given the sheer volume of business you might have expected Chelsea to have more significantly improved in attack, where Paul Winstanley and Laurence Stewart seem to have given up on the promise of Nicolas Jackson much as they did with Noni Madueke. Joao Pedro, Liam Delap, Jamie Gittens, probably Alejandro Garnacho and maybe Xavi Simons: that’s not bad at all but what it doesn’t afford Enzo Maresca is a few more players on the level of Cole Palmer and Moises Caicedo, the sort of superstar talent on which a title winner could be built. Perhaps Willian Estevao is one of those. Any or many of Jorrel Hato, Romeo Lavia, Reece James or Enzo Fernandez might look like it in a year or two as well.

That speaks to what Chelsea have done particularly well in what is the second or third rebuild of the Clearlake era. Buying the best of the best might be the most straightforward way to build yourself a contender but spreading your bets across such a sheer volume of talent gives you cause for optimism. If a few of the youngsters click very quickly then being there or thereabouts is not beyond the realms of imagination. Crucially, we also know this team has built a floor that gives them a high probability of Champions League qualification in all but the most disastrous of years.

5. Aston Villa

Now we enter the subsection of the league table compromised almost entirely of clubs I would rather push two places down the table if only there were a better team to take their place. Either they have failed to kick on, or have done so from a base that is so stultifyingly low that it seems ludicrous to discuss them in terms of Champions League qualification. When it comes to Aston Villa, there is a case to be made for them having gotten worse. Evann Guessand comes in to fill the Jhon Duran/Marcus Rashford minutes and is an ideal foil for Ollie Watkins, but there is no one to bring the guile to Unai Emery’s team that Marco Asensio did. 

Villa might not have kicked on this summer but the core they had was absolutely fine anyway. Boubacar Kamara’s return from injury went as well as could be expected and the best version of him from day one could be transformative to Villa’s prospects, particularly a defense that really should have been more solid over the course of the season.

6. Newcastle

This is a bet on Newcastle getting nothing like the Alexander Isak they got last season. Even if he doesn’t get his wish and a Liverpool move doesn’t transpire, it is hard to believe that the Swede will be such a devastating force after a summer on the picket line. Whatever Isak’s status not as if the supporting cast around him has kicked on. Forty eight hours before their season began and Newcastle still hadn’t secured a replacement for Callum Wilson. Anthony Elanga will vie with Jacob Murphy on the right flank but is hardly a transformative addition. You could probably say the same of Malick Thiaw and Aaron Ramsdale. This would be a very different beast entirely if Bryan Mbeumo, Trafford or Ekitike could have been snared.

Set against that is the fact that the Isak-less parts of Eddie Howe’s best XI look pretty tidy indeed. The midfield of Bruno Guimaraes, Sandro Tonali and Joelinton in particular sets a decent floor for this team, who showed in the early months of the year that they could both outmuscle the big boys and outclass those teams who are inferior to them. That might not carry over when Champions League football is added to the schedule and questions are asked of their depth, meaning this is starting to look like a team that has stalled out.

7. Brighton

Brighton’s biggest problem in year one under Fabian Hurzeler was the faintly shoddy way in which they defended their goal with 59 conceded and the league’s 13th best record in terms of expected goals allowed. It is to their credit then that most of the Seagulls investment this summer has gone into deepening their options in that area of the pitch with Diego Coppola having won rave reviews for his performances at Verona and Oliver Boscagli a center back who knows what is required to play in front-footed systems. Further forward Joao Pedro’s loss should be mitigated by a full season of Georginio Rutter.

As for the biggest signing of the summer, Charalampos Kostoulas, the 18-year-old forward who arrived from Olympiacos for around $40 million, it is hard to know. Indeed, that is the case with many in the squad given that six of Brighton’s eight preseason friendlies have been behind closed doors at Hurzeler’s behest. As such, we will have to go on what we knew about this team before the summer: they ended 2024-25 in a good vein of form and they recruit well. Unless last season’s two most ignominious juggernauts really kick on, European qualification is on the cards at the Amex.

8. Manchester United

Across the last three seasons, Manchester United rank 11th for goals scored in the Premier League on 159. It isn’t just that Manchester City beat that target by triple digits, it’s that four other teams are on 200+. This is a team that has been outscored by Brighton, Brentford, even Fulham, and they’re just Arsenal offcuts. Addressing that immediately should have been Manchester United’s priority and they almost certainly have through the additions of Benjamin Sesko, Matheus Cunha and Bryan Mbeumo. Those latter two were the biggest xG overperformers in the league last season, 35 goals from 20.93 xG, and so it would be worth setting expectations for both at low double figures but low double figures is still 40% more than anyone in United’s squad last season not named Bruno Fernandes.

Fixing the attack isn’t fixing Manchester United though. There is an intimidating amount of work to do from finding an authoritative partner for Bruno Fernandes in midfield to a goalkeeper that Old Trafford trusts. Hovering over it all is a greater question though. What if United got it wrong with Ruben Amorim? The former Sporting boss arrived in the north west talking a good game about a long term view and the hierarchy have trusted him enough to build forwards tailor made for his system while sanctioning the sidelining of talented youngsters such as Alejandro Garnacho and, to a lesser extent, Kobbie Mainoo.

How Manchester United compared under Amorim and his predecessors

And yet, results did not palpably improve when Amorim replaced Erik ten Hag. Watch United at great length and you will see the only team in the Premier League who seems capable of creating pressing traps for themselves through their playing out from the back. Perhaps a season without European football where midweeks can be given over to drilling players is just what this club needs. A great deal of capital has been invested into Amorim, building a squad to play a system that few other elite coaches want to deploy. This has to work.

9. Tottenham

This is the team that might make me look foolish. Fifth should not be beyond the realms of possibility for Spurs even after the loss of James Maddison, arguably their best attacking player last season. After all this is a team that has just given Paris Saint-Germain an almighty run for their money, holding the European champions to eight shots, only one on target, in the first 80 minutes of the Super Cup.

You can see how this all might coalesce into a very good team if Micky van de Ven and Cristian Romero stay fit, if Dominic Solanke and Brennan Johnson keep getting in good scoring positions and if Lucas Bergvall takes another leap in his development. Thomas Frank has proven himself capable of getting overperformance out of a team with the 17th or 18th biggest wage bill in the Premier League, why can’t he do the same with the seventh or eighth?

Set against that, this is a team that must balance a gruelling league phase of the Champions League, one where they may find themselves scrapping till the end for seeding. Oh and they’ve just finished 17th.

10. Everton

I just think they’re neat.

Usually this column would cast aspersions at a team recruiting for their current manager. We just did that with Manchester United. The difference is that when you’re recruiting for a David Moyes team you are getting solid if generally unspectacular (no, no, not you Mr. Grealish) Premier League players that fit into a formula that most managers could run with. In this case Everton have done that with generally younger players too. There is still more work to do in the market but Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall is a technically excellent midfielder for a team at Everton’s level while Thierno Barry could be one of the breakout stars of this season: a tall, strong and mobile striker at a third the price of Sesko.

This prediction assumes that further business will come from Everton: perhaps another winger to add the same guile that Jack Grealish will offer and at least one more body at full back. If that does come then it is fair to trust Moyes will at least get midtable output from this team. The evidence of his last few years at West Ham is that more than that is eminently possible.

11. Crystal Palace

While the futures of Marc Guehi and in particular Eberechi Eze remain up in the air, it is hard to confidently project where Palace might land. Suppose both stay; Oliver Glasner will be able to hit the ground running with a team who had a compelling case to be the sixth best in England across 2025. The sense of indignation they feel at having had Europa League football ripped from them will fuel better results while the Conference League comes with the advantage that Palace can get away with heavy rotation and still be successful in the competition.

If Eze goes, he will be a tough one to replace and the difficulty Palace had in adapting to life after Michael Olise departed before last season suggests that an immediate downswing will come, the sort that might keep them from getting quite as high as we have predicted them here. Keep hold of their best player, though, and they could exceed this mark by a fair way.

12. Bournemouth

From a team who doesn’t know what will become of their best player to one who has been forced to part ways with a string of theirs. Four of Andoni Iraola’s first choice back five from last season have left over the summer and no matter how good their replacements are, this is a team that will greatly miss Dean Huijsen and Milos Kerkez.

Then again it is worth noting that Bournemouth’s great strength last season was not their defense but their attack. Kerkez helped in that regard, but so did Antoine Semenyo, Dango Outarra and Evanilson. So far the core of the attack remains in place and enough of them are around prime age that it seems plausible the Cherries will at least retain as much goal threat. That will give them enough time to bed in the defense.

13. Nottingham Forest

A pretty average Premier League team got sufficiently hot early in the season that they managed to hold onto a European place even as they slid down the table in the final weeks. There is no particularly special sauce about Nottingham Forest, it’s just a thing that happens every few years in the Premier League. Nuno Espirito Santo put out a team that started out as fairly robust defensively and then Chris Wood got on a hot streak. That won’t last into 2025-26. It didn’t even last until the end of last season. 

14. Fulham

A good team with a manager who has proven himself to be eminently capable of getting quality attacking football out of players you wouldn’t consider to be superstars. If it can be taken for granted that Marco Silva will deliver performances that are easy on the eye, it is probably worth noting that last season Fulham allowed the seventh fewest xG in the division, only 0.11 more than Manchester City. The double pivot of Sander Berge and Sasa Lukic might be ripe for upgrading, but it is another spot where Silva got upper midtable performances from lower midtable talent.

Ranking 10 must-watch games that will define the 2025-26 Premier League season: Arsenal-Liverpool not No. 1

James Benge

Why not push Fulham higher up the predicted table then? Well the Evertons and Nottingham Forests of this world have strengthened their squad at a time when the only addition in west London is Benjamin Lecomte, a second choice behind Bernd Leno. At the time of writing it seems that Rodrigo Muniz could depart, robbing Fulham of 90 minutes of decent Premier League striking alongside Raul Jimenez. Meanwhile Emile Smith Rowe needs to kick on after a bright start and underwhelming remainder of his first season, Adama Traore remains reliably unreliable in front of goal and Harry Wilson only seems to score against teams from West London. For all that Silva can make better attacks out of those components, the sum of all these parts really is not a lot at all. 

15. Brentford

In any of the last half a dozen years you wouldn’t see much cause for concern in Brentford losing their best player. One of the best run clubs in the game, the Bees tend to have their replacement in the door already and this preview could very easily run with how Kevin Schade has already proven himself capable of plugging a Bryan Mbeumo-shaped hole in the side. We’d probably be hailing Jordan Henderson too as the sort of steadying influence who would mean that Christian Norgaard is not unduly missed. The transfer business is looking good too, Arnaud Kalimuendo and Dango Outtara both linked with the club in recent days.

It’s the Frank factor though, isn’t it? His departure to Spurs means we now have one more element of instability to consider and one where we have much less certainty over Brentford’s ability to replace him. Since Matthew Benham first invested in the club they have got more appointments right than wrong but they were hardly tracking towards Premier League middle class status before Dean Smith left for Aston Villa.

Keith Andrews’ appointment is an affirmation in favor of the Brentford model and it will be intriguing to see what it looks like when a former set piece coach takes the wheel. Is there more juice to be squeezed from dead balls? They have long thought so in this particular part of West London.

16. Leeds United

If Leeds can’t survive then something drastic needs to be done to preserve the English footballing pyramid as it is. Daniel Farke’s breezed through the Championship, playing at a level that none of the teams who went up in 2022-23 and 2023-24 could match. Per game they were an average of 1.33 xG better than their opponent. By way of contrast, Liverpool were at 1.17 xG in the Premier League. 

They have recruited for the top division meta, adding height and muscle in the likes of Anton Stach, Sean Longstaff and Sebastian Boornauw. Lucas Perri should fix the problem position of goalkeeper too, by dint of not being Illan Meslier. It is really hard to know what more could be done to make sure this team is safe in the Premier League. They might not be far from the danger zone, but you would expect this team to be masters of their fate on the final day.

17. Wolverhampton Wanderers

For the second summer in a row, Wolves have not really done a lot to improve this team. Indeed, if you want to be particularly critical, the only bit of exceptional incoming business they have done since the end of the 2022-23 season was to lock in Cunha permanently and he is now going to be turning out for Manchester United. The other best player on the team is gone to Manchester too with Ait-Nouri bound for City. The replacements they have made so far are underwhelming, bringing in an adequate looking left back replacement in David Moller Wolfe and gambling that one of Fer Lopez, 21, or Jhon Arias, who played quite well at the Club World Cup, can replace Cunha. Jorgen Strand Larsen was an adequate Premier League striker on loan last season, now he’s back permanently.

For too long owners Fosun International have been content to gamble on finding a coach who can overcome the problems they’ve allowed to emerge in squad building. Since their heavy spending to survive in January 2023, Wolves’ squad has not kicked on but they have been lucky that the Championship has not always sent its best and brightest. They will have to hope the same is true this year.

18. West Ham

There’s no joy in previewing every one of the 20 Premier League teams and not giving at least one team the Cassandra treatment. West Ham really shouldn’t go down, a team comfortably in the top 10 in terms of wage bills and who have a 60,000 seat stadium through which to generate revenue. Why, it is only two years since they were celebrating a Conference League win. Since that glorious night in Prague, however, West Ham have stalled out, wasting the Declan Rice millions on a squad that still doesn’t have a Premier League level striker, something which the aging Callum Wilson probably can’t fix.

The case for survival isn’t hard to make. There are enough reliable players on this roster and few if any in our predicted bottom five who are at the level of peak Jarrod Bowen, Mads Hermansen or Aaron Wan-Bissaka. Graham Potter knows this division too, even if, like his club, there is the sense of a coach whose momentum has stalled out.

Still, this is a team who ended last season with the worst non-penalty xG difference of the 17 teams that survived. Mohamed Kudus has gone unreplaced, the best option at striker is still probably Bowen and the midfield looks three or four years past its prime. This could all go very wrong.

19. Sunderland

You cannot question the purpose with which Sunderland are attacking their return to the Premier League. Granit Xhaka has arrived after his spell as a dressing room leader with German football Invincibles Bayer Leverkusen, while Robin Roefs and Omar Alderete arrive after impressive seasons at a higher level than the Championship. These veterans are surrounded by bright young things such as midfield dynamo Habib Diarra and dribbling wingers in abundance. Nearly $200 million have gone out the door and you’d fancy that business is not done yet.

It shouldn’t be. The reality is that Sunderland have found themselves in the Premier League ahead of schedule, their best talents from last season like Chris Rigg and Dan Neil still looking like works in progress rather than the finished article. A full 73% of their minutes in the 2024-25 Championship went to players 25 or under; that could not continue into the Premier League. That it hasn’t and that a degree more experience has been added to the squad gives them a puncher’s chance, but it may not be more than that.

20. Burnley

You simply cannot deny that Burnley will be playing in the Premier League next season. Not much about them looks up to standard though. Scott Parker has contrived to get top Championship teams out of the Championship quite frequently (it’s three in four years now), but is yet to show much aptitude at keeping them in the top flight. That task is all the harder for Burnley, who rode Trafford’s hot hands to second and subsequently sold their goalkeeper. Since promotion they’ve spent an awful lot of money on fringe Chelsea players despite the minimal evidence that Armando Broja, for instance, is a reliable source of Premier League goals. Unless Kyle Walker is the Kyle Walker of 2021, this isn’t really a squad to get excited by. We’ll see you again in 2027-28.

This news was originally published on this post .

Share on

email

Previous

trending_flat

NFL training camp roundup: Highlights and storylines from Aug. 14

nfl

Next

Pavlenka, Horníček a Gabriel pomohli svým klubům do 4. předkola Evropské ligy

Sports