2024/25 Premier League Winners: Liverpool, Salah, Newcastle, Forest, Chelsea, Moyes and more
We’ll have this season’s losers with you separately – for now, please feast upon these glorious glorious winners
Liverpool
The only place we can possibly start is with the biggest winners of them all, the newly-crowned Premier League champions. Coming into this season, nobody knew quite what to expect from Liverpool.
Despite their squad remaining virtually unchanged from last season, they somehow managed to be the Premier League’s biggest unknown quantity, with their lack of transfer business leaving us with very few clues as to what Arne Slot’s intentions were.
They fell short of maintaining a title challenge right to the end last season, and that was under the iconic Jurgen Klopp. If Liverpool had taken a bit of a transitional year in those circumstances, it would have been understandable.
We can’t pretend that it wasn’t made easy for them in the end. Arsenal and Manchester City were both way below the standards they had set over the past two seasons (more on which in the Losers piece), yet still finished second and third. Chelsea looked like potential challengers for, what, like, two weeks? And that was back in December.
Liverpool’s final tally of 84 points is the lowest number racked up by a title-winning side since Leicester won it in 2016, and they still won it by ten whole points.
But let’s not retcon things. Liverpool were sensational in the first half of the season, losing just once in all competitions before the turn of the new year. They were the best side not just in England but in Europe in that spell, at least according to the Champions League standings.
The second half of the season was less impressive, and they looked curiously panicky and undercooked on numerous occasions. Yet in the main, they kept finding ways to win – in the league, at least – and only truly took their foot off the gas after the title was sealed with four games still to play.
That does point to some areas for improvement over the summer: if they want to win more than one trophy next season, they need a bit more depth to allow Slot to rotate the side without it feeling like their quality is being compromised.
But this term, there simply wasn’t anyone nearly as good in the Premier League, and they were extremely worthy winners.
Arne Slot
We’ve got plenty to get through, so we don’t want to go too long on this – frankly, it deserves a whole separate piece.
But for the Dutchman to oversee that in his first season made a complete mockery of the old ‘you don’t want to be the man to follow The Man‘ canard. Didn’t know what to expect? We’ve got an idea now.
Mohamed Salah
Ever-present in the league, and the breaker of a goal contributions record that nobody had ever thought about, talked about or cared about before with his 29 goals and 18 assists, on top of adding to an outrageous array of other statistics.
We honestly don’t have any more to say than that, but it would have been negligent not to single him out.
Chelsea and, in the end, Enzo Maresca
We now skip over Arsenal and Manchester City to the team in fourth, and that’s entirely down to the relative expectations we all had for the respective teams – and the expectations they will have had for themselves.
There’s not really any other way to describe Chelsea’s past few years than ‘chaotic mess’, but they have spent the past couple of years throwing enough players at the wall that some of them were going to stick sooner or later.
Enzo Maresca has had his doubters over the course of the season, and validly so. Their form immediately after Christmas was dismal (just four wins in 12 through to the middle of March) and the football was frustratingly dull on top of that. They no longer looked like the side who regularly scored in threes, fours, fives and sixes at the start of the season, except against Southampton, which doesn’t count.
But we do have to give credit to Maresca for taking that on board and finding a different way to get points on the board. Their results since March lagely read in binary: 1-0 against Leicester. 1-0 against Tottenham. 1-0 against Everton. 1-0 against Manchester United. 1-0 against Nottingham Forest. (We can also chuck in losing 1-0 to Arsenal and drawing 0-0 with Brentford).
None of those wins were impressive in isolation, but conceding seven goals over their final 12 games of the season was massive to helping Chelsea turn things back around. Their only defeats in that run came away to Arsenal and Newcastle, and that’s broadly fine, isn’t it?
At the end of the day, if you’d offered Arsenal and Manchester City second and third at the start of the season, there’s no way they would have taken it. We don’t think you can say the same about Chelsea finishing fourth and ending their Champions League exile…and they still have the Conference League final and Club World Cup to come.
Newcastle United and Eddie Howe
We confess to having had some doubts about whether Eddie Howe really was all that, especially after seeing how one-dimensional Newcastle were in the first half of the season.
But even at the time, that analysis will have been roundly excoriated by Newcastle fans. Now, he’s virtually untouchable. You cannot overstate how massive winning the League Cup was for Newcastle; it’s the the first bit of proper silverware anybody under pensionable age will have ever seen them win. That alone would have got them on the winners list.
But that victory at Wembley inspired Newcastle into a brilliant run of form as they very pleasingly scored 1, 2, 3, 4 and then 5 in successive Premier League victories. That run of form, plus a six-game winning streak in December-January, was enough to see Newcastle scrape over the line and into the Champions League for the second time in three seasons.
Newcastle are not the finished product by any means, and when they lose chances are as good as not that they get absolutely pumped: 4-0 to Manchester City, 4-1 to Aston Villa and Bournemouth, 4-2 to Brentford. Newcastle’s form against the mid-table pack is curiously dreadful; they won just two out of 12 against the sides that finished between 8th and 13th.
Therein lies a glimpse at the reason for our long-standing Howe scepticism dating back to his Bournemouth days, and also why we have enjoyed watching Newcastle so much this season. You just don’t know what you’re going to get from them.
And in all fairness to Howe, that squad does need work for them to get to the next level. Decisively for their successful Champions League push, though, and again to Howe’s credit, Newcastle also claimed league wins over Arsenal, Chelsea, Aston Villa and Nottingham Forest (twice) over the course of the season.
They also won every single one of their games, home and away, against everyone from Manchester United in 15th down to bottom-of-the-table Southampton. That’s very good going for a side with obvious talent but not a huge amount of depth.
Who knows what they could be if Champions League football puts them in a position to start investing again in a bid to find a bit more consistency?
Alexander Isak
More important than who Newcastle sign, however, could be the question of whether or not they can hold onto their star striker. Isak finished the season with 23 goals, putting him behind only Salah in the overall standings.
Newcastle didn’t win a single one of the four league games Isak missed through injury this season, scoring just one goal. This is the second year in the row he has broken the 20 goal barrier in the Premier League.
At just 25 years old, Isak sits alongside Erling Haaland in bucking the overall European trend for the very best goalscorers being in their 30s – and that makes him an extremely valuable commodity.
Nottingham Forest
It says everything that Forest ended the season disappointed at having to settle for a Conference League place having fallen agonisingly short of making it into the Champions League. That’s…a bit ridiculous. Forest finished 17th last season, 16th the year before that.
This is their best finish since Frank Clark led them to third in 1995. They have played three Johnstone’s Paint Trophy campaigns since they last appeared in Europe.
We really hope the powers that be at Forest keep in mind just how excellent this season has been.
Nuno Espirito Santo built that success on superb organisation and incisive counter-attacking football, led by the unexpectedly excellent Chris Wood, the creativity of Anthony Elanga, the sparkling midfield displays of Morgan Gibbs-White, the brilliantly organised Murillo and Nikola Milenkovic, and the goalkeeping heroics of Matz Sels.
In any other side, any of those players would have their own individual entries here, but for Forest it’s impossible to pick the individuals apart like that. The reason they ended up falling short of the top five was obvious to see: by March, they just looked absolutely knackered. And fair enough.
Like Chelsea, Forest’s recruitment strategy had become a bit of a punchline after their arrival back in the Premier League, but on the quiet they had moved to something altogether more targeted and precise over the past year or two.
Keeping together the side they have assembled may now prove to be a challenge, but one that for the first time in 30 years, their fans can face up to with pride.
The solid mid-table pack and their excellent managers
And by this we mean Brighton, Bournemouth, Brentford, Fulham and Crystal Palace. All of them were inconsistent, whether that was an inability to put together an extended run of wins (Brentford claimed back-to-back league victories just once before April, Fulham just three times all season) or a tendency towards streakiness with long-ish runs of good form alternating with long-ish winless spells (that’s you, Brighton, Bournemouth and Palace).
But all five sides are fun to watch, especially those beginning with ‘B’. All of them give off the sense that they are getting the most they possibly can out of budgets that are dwarfed by all of the top six and even a few of the teams below them.
All of them have a handful of players who are destined to move on to bigger and better things. And all of them have managers with the same prospects.
To pick just one example from the five: Bournemouth at their best were genuinely brilliant, for instance, with Andoni Iraola taking an extremely modern, quick, direct attacking approach. In much the same way as Forest, they just don’t have the resources to keep their best going for long spells without running out of steam.
It’s clubs like these that make you curse football’s financial stratification, because we’d absolutely love to see what Iraola, Fabian Hurzeler, Marco Silva, Thomas Frank and Oliver Glasner could do if they had access to the kinds of players available to Slot, Maresca, Mikel Arteta and Pep Guardiola. (Newcastle fans, please remember to include this section in your letters complaining about our Howe doubts.)
Unfortunately, the only way we’re going to get that is if those mid-table coaches take their jobs. But all of that little group actually feel like they should be seen as viable options for the next big Premier League job that opens up; we feel like it’s been a while since we’ve been able to say that on quite this scale.
And a special little mention to Crystal Palace for winning the FA Cup
Because they won the FA Cup, the first major trophy in their entire history, and it was very very nice for everyone who was not Manchester City or Brighton or the other sides they knocked out along the way.
Bryan Mbeumo
We could go through some of the star players from each of those clubs, but we will show some restraint and limit it to just a couple, for different reasons. First, Mbeumo, the best of the players outside the European places, and a Fantasy Premier League hero to millions.
Even Mbeumo himself barely seems able to believe just how much he has developed year on year since joining Brentford the season before they were promoted to the top flight.
Four goals in 35 games in year one in the Premier League, nine in 38 the year after, nine again but in just 25 last season, and now an extremely respectable 20 in 38 this season. Only Salah, Isak and Haaland have outscored him.
Brentford sit alongside Brighton in a very special and select group of clubs who you don’t worry about losing their best players, because they’ve proven to be so very very good at replacing them – but even the Bees may have a hard time filling Mbeumo’s boots if he gets the kind of move we all expect for him this summer.
Danny Welbeck
Already beloved of Brighton fans since joining in 2020 for his indefatigable, selfless work, the hard-working forward has just enjoyed his best-ever Premier League goalscoring season at the age of 34. This is the first time he has broken into double figures, having twice notched nine for Manchester United.
More importantly: he seems like a very happy chappy and that makes our little hearts happy too. More smiling footballers please.
Marcus Rashford, Antony and especially Scott McTominay
And speaking of former Manchester United players absolutely thriving…well, we’re not in the losers section, so we’ll just say that this isn’t a brilliant look for United at all.
More importantly for our purposes here…Rashford’s spell at Villa may not have ended how he would have wanted, but he did more than enough during his loan spell to remind everyone that we like him and he has value. Antony was instrumental in helping Real Betis hit a sensational run of form and claim a Europa League place.
And Scott McTominay is now being treated as something close to the second coming of Maradona at Napoli. There’s hope for us all yet, isn’t there.
David Moyes
The Scot wasn’t universally welcomed back at Everton, with some fans still a bit sore about his departure for Manchester United over a decade ago despite all parties acknowledging the folly of that decision. Worked out alright though, hasn’t it?
At the time Moyes was appointed, Everton had just 17 points from 19 games with a miserable 15 goals scored, had won just three of those games, and were one point clear of the relegation zone. Moyes won three of his first four games in charge, picked up 31 points from his 19 in charge with 27 goals scored, and saw Everton finish 23 points clear of the relegation zone.
Oh…and they had the third-best defensive record in the division over that spell, too.
This is the second time Moyes has returned to a former club and saved them from the threat of relegation, having also done so at West Ham five years ago. Quick, Manchester United, get him on the phone.
Vitor Pereira
But hold on, David, the Wolves manager has you beat. Under Gary O’Neil, Wolves had just nine points from 16 games, were five points adrift from safety, and had conceded 40 times. Pereira led them to 33 points from 22 games, conceding just 29 and finishing 17 points clear of the drop.
In O’Neil’s slight defence, we saw a fair bit of Wolves in the first half of the season and mostly thought they didn’t look too bad; the results in the games we didn’t see suggest that may have been a misleading impression.
Whatever the case, Pereira found a way to get the best out of his side more often. A simplification of the tactics, giving the players a bit more creative freedom, some subtle disciplinarianism, and a move back to something a system much like what half the staff and squad had worked with under Nuno Espirito Santo has been credited with the revival. Sometimes, less is more.
Matheus Cunha
We’re not entirely convinced we’d like to go for a pint with him, but he is clearly a very talented player, he scores brilliant goals, and he was absolutely massive for pulling Wolves out of the dreck with 15 goals and 6 assists. (In fairness, Jorgen Strand Larsen has 14 goals and 4 assists, but he’s not nearly as fun.)
Cunha to Man Utd: First summer signing ‘agrees contract’ as ‘shirt number’ decision ‘confirms’ key exit
Tottenham Hotspur, who are also in the losers list
Again, we’ll go into the considerable negatives for the side that finished in 17th in the Losers list, where they belong. And yet there they are, celebrating a Europa League triumph and a place in the Champions League next season.
Somehow, Spurs have turned a terrible failure of a season into a glorious triumph. Isn’t that supposed to be the other way around?
The cups, for actually being interesting again this year
Newcastle winning the League Cup, Palace winning the FA Cup, Spurs winning the Europa League…nice to see some different names on the honours list, isn’t it? Even Liverpool’s title win was only their second in 35 years.
