The 2025–26 season broke Ruud Gullit.
“Lately, I haven’t been enjoying watching soccer much at all,” the Ballon d’Or-winning former Chelsea manager lamented on Ziggo Sport earlier this year. “The soccer is terrible to watch … it seems as if it is all controlled by a computer. I miss the fun.”
While the Premier League hasn’t always served up the kind of “sexy football” which Gullit infamously called for during one of his first appearances as a pundit on English television, some teams have managed to find some fun.
The end of long trophy droughts, returns to Europe and seasons spared from relegation danger have been littered across the division.
To offer Gullit’s glum take some context, it’s worth bearing in mind that he has been forced to watch some of the Premier League season alongside the divisive pairing of Richard Keys and Andy Gray as a panelist on beIN Sports. Maybe (just maybe) that company could impact a person’s enjoyment of anything. There have been plenty of Premier League teams that have certainly suffered through the season as much as Gullit.
Grading Criteria
- It’s all relative: Every club’s judgement is based upon their own financial landscape: a small budget team climbing up the table is more impressive than the fourth highest earners qualifying for the Champions League. Likewise, a club on a shoestring budget is not going to get unduly penalized for a relegation which was always coming.
- Performance: Results are key but the manner in which they were achieved is also taken into consideration—if you want a universal measure of quality, just go to the league table.
- Extra curricula: Other competitions are not ignored but most weight is given to Premier League performance.
20. West Ham United—F
Wage bill from last available accounts: 13th
Expected goal difference: 17th
Final Premier League finish: 18th (relegated)
“West Ham has to be in the Premier League,” Nuno Espírito Santo lamented after relegation was confirmed, still wrapped up in his trusty sleeping bag coat on the hottest May day for 79 years. “We are a big club that has to be in the Premier League.”
The toasty coach is right: West Ham are one of the 20 richest clubs on the planet. They should be in the Premier League. Which makes relegation all the more damning.
Fun fact: The 2026–27 Premier League season will be the first in the history of England’s top flight without a single club whose name begins with ‘W’.
19. Wolves—F
Finances: 13th
xG: 19th
Finish: 20th (relegated)
More than half the campaign had elapsed before Wolves collected their first win of a truly pitiful season. While still awaiting a victory, club chairman Jeff Shi offered an entirely unhelpful (if accurate) diagnosis: “Maybe we sold too many players in one window.” Within a week, he had been forced to step down, much like his former club with five games of the campaign remaining.
Fun fact: Wolves won eight points against the Premier League’s top five, the same tally as champions Arsenal.
18. Tottenham—D-
Finances: 7th
xG: 16th
Finish: 17th (same as last season)
“The bottle is always either half-empty or half-full,” the reliably grim figure of Igor Tudor declared during his disastrous Tottenham tenure. “Here there is nothing full. There are a lot of empty things.” That about sums it up.
Fun fact: Tottenham’s tally of 10 league wins is their lowest since just about scraping double digits when they were relegated in 1934–35.
17. Chelsea—D
Finances: 3rd
xG: 4th
Finish: 10th
A true garbage can fire of a campaign. Chelsea’s self-styled market disruptors tripped themselves up with a strategy which drove the only successful manager of the BlueCo era, Enzo Maresca, out of the door.
Liam Rosenior’s 106-day spell could (and no doubt will) be summarized on a LinkedIn post as Xabi Alonso prepares to inherit a club stuffed with players trying to join other teams actually involved in UEFA competition next season.
Fun fact: Chelsea goalkeeper Robert Sánchez ended the season with as many direct Premier League goal contributions as the club’s No. 9 Liam Delap (one).
16. Liverpool—D+
Finances: 1st
xG: 5th
Finish: 5th
The broad defining factors of this Premier League season read like a list of Liverpool weaknesses. Set pieces, long throws, VAR. Ironically, this year’s champions Arsenal are one of the few sides who never found a way to Arne Slot’s soft center.
Fun fact: Across the final 17 games of the season, Liverpool collected as many points as relegated West Ham (25).
15. Burnley—C-
Finances: 19th
xG: 20th
Finish: 19th (relegated)
Relegation is about par for a club as modestly funded as Burnley. Putting in performances so bad your manager actively accepts the boos of fans is less ideal.
Fun fact: Burnley conceded 16 league goals while winning promotion in 2024–25. Halloween had not yet arrived by the time they shipped their 17th Premier League goal of the season.
14. Newcastle—C-
Finances: 8th
xG: 9th
Finish: 12th
In May 2025, The Athletic published an article asking: “Newcastle United, 2025–26 Premier League champions. Is it really that far-fetched?” Yes, would prove to be the answer by the time May 2026 rolled around.
The Magpies never recovered from a disastrous summer window, which saw Alexander Isak force his way out and Eddie Howe’s nephew Andy play an oversized role in buying some wildly underwhelming replacements. “We can’t be happy,” Howe Sr. surmised when it was all mercifully over. Nobody was.
Fun fact: Only one of Newcastle’s final 24 opponents of the season failed to score against the Magpies (Chelsea).
13. Nottingham Forest
Finances: 10th
xG: 15th
Finish: 16th
Four permanent managers plus one European semifinal minus all the foundations built up from last season’s seventh-placed finish adds up to one typically chaotic campaign at the City Ground.
Fun fact: Ange Postecoglou’s eight-game winless stint as Nottingham Forest manager lasted 39 days, 10 fewer than Liz Truss’s infamous reign as U.K. Prime Minister in 2022.
12. Everton—C
Finances: 15th
xG: 14th
Finish: 13th
After flirting with European qualification as late as Easter weekend, there was no resurrection for those fanciful ambitions by the end of a campaign which left fans, players and the manager a little hollow. Everton’s chief executive Angus Kinnear claimed to have been “happily dissatisfied.” At least half of that was true.
Fun fact: The last player to score for Everton’s men’s side at Goodison Park also scored the first goal at the new Hill Dickinson Stadium. Well done, Iliman Ndiaye.
11. Fulham—C
Finances: 11th
xG: 12th
Finish: 11th
Marco Silva summed it up rather well. Fulham “missed the cherry on the cake” by consistently failing to find enough consistency for European qualification. They were left with a rather bland campaign.
Fun fact: Only the top four won more Premier League home games this season than Fulham (11). Craven Cottage must be the division’s only ‘fortress’ with an infinity pool.
10. Man City—C+
Finances: 2nd
xG: 2nd
Finish: 2nd
Pep Guardiola sailed off into the sunset content with his decade of accomplishments at Manchester City but Bernardo Silva joined him in the departure lounge with a sense of bitter disappointment.
“If we didn’t make so many mistakes,” the captain argued, “we would have won this league.” After dropping points against the likes of Nottingham Forest, Tottenham and West Ham, he had a compelling case.
Fun fact: The most common scoreline out of all 380 Premier League fixtures this season was a 3–0 win for Manchester City (it happened nine times).
9. Man Utd—B
Finances: 5th
xG: 3rd
Finish: 3rd
Manchester United expanded the cliché of a “game of two halves” to the season as a whole. Carabao Cup humiliation was balanced by Champions League qualification. The darkest days of Ruben Amorim’s bleak tenure were followed by the bright light of the club’s returning white knight, Michael Carrick.
After the horrors of last year’s 15th place, third represents a ridiculous improvement, but it’s still not any higher than United should be aiming.
Fun fact: Manchester United took more shots than any other Premier League team (596) but shared the goals around. With 12 apiece, Bryan Mbeumo and Benjamin Šeško represent United’s lowest top scorers across any of the last 52 seasons.
8. Crystal Palace—B
Finances: 16th
xG: 7th
Finish: 15th
Crystal Palace could yet improve their season with triumph in the Conference League final but even reaching a European showpiece fixture seemed unthinkable a little more than 12 months ago—so unthinkable, in fact, that Palace didn’t even bother checking their email for any correspondence with UEFA until they had won last season’s FA Cup, when it was too late.
While 15th place may not inspire much euphoria, the underlying numbers are far more impressive.
Fun fact: Jean-Philippe Mateta went more than three months between league goals at one point in 2026 yet still ended the campaign as Crystal Palace’s top scorer, responsible for 29% of the club’s top-flight tally.
7. Brighton—B+
Finances: 12th
xG: 6th
Finish: 8th (Conference League qualification)
That Lewis Dunk even had to be asked if Brighton’s season had been a positive on the whole shows how odd the campaign has been. Fabian Hürzeler has gone from at risk of losing his job to a manager of the year contender.
The hesitant celebrations on the final day, as fans struggled to banish the memory of Manchester United romping to a 3–0 win while players celebrated Conference League qualification, summed up the contradictions of a helter-skelter campaign.
Dunk, however, had no doubts: “100% it’s a success.”
Fun fact: Between 2023 and the summer of 2027, Brighton will have spent as many seasons in European competition as Chelsea (two), the club which has forked out around $240 million on Seagulls players over the same period.
6. Leeds—B+
Finances: 18th
xG: 11th
Finish: 14th
During halftime at the Etihad, as Leeds trailed 2–0 to Manchester City while slumped in the relegation zone in late November, Daniel Farke’s job seemed to be over.
A formation change inspired a second-half fightback which didn’t produce a win but did set the template for a staggering turnaround that secured Premier League survival with three games to spare.
Fun fact: Leeds’ record with three at the back: 1.57 points per game. Leeds’ record with four at the back: 0.79 ppg. Who said formations didn’t matter?
5. Brentford—A-
Finances: 17th
xG: 8th
Finish: 9th
Brentford lost their manager, two top goalscorers, goalkeeper and captain in the summer. Rumor has it the bus stop outside the stadium was almost bought by Everton. Yet, the Bees still conspired to finish above west London rivals Chelsea and never once flirted with relegation.
Fun fact: Much was made of Keith Andrews’s history as the club’s former set-piece coach when he was appointed manager. But only three Premier League teams scored fewer dead ball goals than Brentford (10).
4. Aston Villa—A
Finances: 6th
xG: 13th
Finish: 4th
When you end the campaign on a high, no one remembers the struggles that came before it.
Aston Villa endured a horrific summer transfer window, month-long goal droughts and public doubts from their manager. “We are still not contenders to be in the top five,” Unai Emery declared in January. In a way, he was right. Villa finished fourth, rather than fifth, while winning the Europa League.
Fun fact: Aston Villa were the last team to score a Premier League goal in 2025–26, going the entirety of August without finding the net in any competition.
3. Arsenal—A
Finances: 4th
xG: 1st
Finish: 1st (champions)
The only faint negative lingering over the 22 years of agony ended by Mikel Arteta and his team this season has been a question of style. After such a long wait, and three successive years of near misses, nobody can really begrudge the Gunners for getting the title over the line in any way they could.
“You don’t have to like it,” Thierry Henry said of Arsenal’s robust approach, “but you must respect it.”
Fun fact: Only one player who started Mikel Arteta’s first match as Arsenal manager in December 2019 lifted the Premier League trophy six-and-a-half years later: Bukayo Saka.
2. Bournemouth—A
Finances: 14th
xG: 10th
Finish: 6th (Europa League qualification)
Bournemouth’s season was so staggeringly impressive, a side gutted of all its star players delivering the most exhilarating, high-pressing chaos-ball of any team in the division, that even Andoni Iraola was welling up. “I am quite hard,” the former tough-tackling right back smiled, “but I have been really close [to tears].”
Plenty of Bournemouth fans may shed many tears when they consider what next season will look like without him.
Fun fact: Bournemouth are responsible for the longest unbeaten run of any Premier League side across the 2025–26 season (18 games, including each and every one since selling Antoine Semenyo in January).
1. Sunderland—A+
Finances: 20th
xG: 18th
Finish: 7th (Europa League qualification)
One year to the day after they were 15 minutes away from losing the Championship playoff final, the team with the smallest budget in the Premier League beat the Club World Cup champions on the final day to secure European qualification for the first time in 53 years.
Fun fact: When Sunderland qualified for the European Cup Winners’ Cup in 1973, the Rubik’s Cube hadn’t been invented yet.
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