Arsenal top, Tottenham freakout, assorted flops – 10 of the 2025 storylines we DID see coming
We’ve already had a look at 10 things that occurred throughout 2025 that caught us by surprise, so only reasonable and sensible that we balance the universe with a list of 10 things that we absolutely did see coming.
Tottenham winning a trophy? Surprising. Tottenham freaking out and throwing away the opportunity to kick on after winning a trophy? Expected.
That’s the kind of thing we’re dealing with here. Teams being bad that we thought would be bad, good that we thought would be good, and assorted Floppy McFlopfaces that we all saw coming a mile off.
Tottenham’s trophy freakout
Look, obviously we were as surprised as anyone at Tottenham winning a trophy. It simply is not what they do, not what they’re known for.
Sure, they did manage to win it in the Spursiest way imaginable, stumbling over the line in a historically poor final against a historically poor Man United side and having completely abandoned all pretence at participating in multiple competitions to the extent that they finished 17th in the league.
But that’s all irrelevant: they won a trophy. We can’t all be sat here telling them for years and years and years that they needed to stop f*cking about and win a trophy and then go ‘No, not like that’ when they actually do it. Fair’s fair.
So yes, we were surprised by that. We have been surprised by absolutely nothing they have done since, though. An even halfway-sensible club of Tottenham’s size would have recognised the enormous potential of the launchpad it provided. A real chance to be the start of something.
Yet here we are, seven months on from That Night in Bilbao and the joyous cathartic release of the subsequent parade. They sacked the manager who won the trophy. They sacked the man who sacked the manager who won the trophy.
They responded to what really could be one, final crack at the Champions League before slinking back to mid-table forever by appointing a Brentford manager who in the space of a six months has managed to combine all the worst qualities of the last four managers. As small-time as Nuno; as defensively naïve as Postecoglou; as attackingly bereft as Mourinho; as full of undisguised loathing for the club and its fans as Conte.
They’ve got two sporting directors, one of whom is about to sack it all off just a few months after returning because Fiorentina – hardly a superclub – are making eyes at him. Nobody knows what the plan is. Nobody knows who to pin it on now it’s all going wrong, if indeed it is actually going wrong, which nobody knows for sure because of the aforementioned lack of plan.
The Lewis Family have rebranded themselves as new custodians despite having been there all along. They don’t seem to know what to do about the failing manager, or just as importantly who should do it, or, again, if it actually needs doing. What does success or failure here even look like now?
Meanwhile, the launch-pad has turned into a pitfall trap. The club that sacked a manager for winning a trophy but finishing 17th is blundering towards not winning a trophy but still finishing 17th. Or worse.
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The Gyokeres flop
Big-money signings have enormous potential for floppage. Big-money striker signings have even higher potential for floppage. Big-money striker signings who are also the ‘final piece in the puzzle’? It’s basically a miracle he’s scored any goals at all rather than just spent his entire Arsenal career sat rocking back and forth while gently weeping.
He has been really quite sh*t, though.
READ: Arsenal winning the title while Gyokeres flops would be one of the great one-two punches
The Sesko flop
Big-money signings have enormous potential for floppage. Big-money striker signings have even higher potential for floppage. Big-money striker signings who are also the ‘final piece in the puzzle’? It’s basically a miracle he’s scored any goals at all rather than just… well, you get the idea with that.
One of our most enjoyable pastimes in late 2025 has been watching the Tacticos revelling in Gyokeres’ struggles and claiming total victory over the Eye-Test Casuals in the great football culture war, while entirely memory-holing the fact they thought Sesko was the actual answer.
The Wirtz flop
You can’t go around splashing nine-figure fees on fancy dans from Germany without expecting to get clobbered hard around the face and body by the Bundesliga Tax.
What we will say here is that, while we have far longer-term fears for the alarmingly limited Gyokeres, we do suspect that the case of the absurdly talented Wirtz is going to be different. It’s a short-term floppage. We fully expect 2026’s retrospective, if the boiling seas haven’t risen to claim us all and AI ants haven’t taken over, to include “Wirtz coming good” in the top 10 things we saw coming. Along with the boiling seas. And the AI ants.
There have been encouraging signs in a few recent games at least, and not all of them can be dismissed entirely on the basis of simply being against West Ham and/or Tottenham.
Wolves being bad
We didn’t expect them to be touching Derby’s balls as the worst Premier League team of all time, but we did think they might be quite bad. Relegation trouble bad, if not quite this absurdity.
This season is a culmination of something a long time brewing for Wolves’ owners, and the summer departures and inadequate replacements finally stretched a flawed model way beyond breaking point.
There is no shame in being a selling club, a trading club. Everyone has their place in the food chain. But you cannot just let the quality of the playing squad be denuded to this extent without apparently even trying to source the next rough diamonds that will keep the plates spinning.
Wolves have history for letting a bad end to one season spill over into the next and, from the moment they simply stopped altogether last spring after a brilliant winning run had ended lingering relegation fears always had us concerned.
The extent of the disaster may be a shock. And yes, we’re in the territory of “Our expectations for you were low but HOLY F*CK”. But the existence of some disaster? Entirely, depressingly predictable.
Arsenal leading the way at Christmas
We didn’t ever buy into the New Era of Liverpool Dominance theory. We didn’t think Pep Guardiola’s Man City Mk II would yet be ready to dominate English football again.
Therefore it stands to reason that Arsenal – even with Floppy McFlopface up front – would be leading the Premier League when the Christmas presents were being opened.
And really this should be a surprise to nobody. It is a position that Arsenal have now occupied on three of the last four Christmas Days. The problem is that we all know what generally happens next.
But having based our thinking up to this point on such solid historical data, we’re now going to say tits to all that. Because this time they’re actually going to do it. They’re actually going to win the league. Probably.
Haaland reclaiming his birthright
Always thought there’s plenty of truth in the idea that a true test of greatness is how you look at your absolute worst. On that basis, Erling Haaland is pretty, pretty, pretty great after his disastrous and miserable 24/25 season saw him finish with a mortifying return of just 22 Premier League goals.
He finished an embarrassing and lowly third on the scoring charts as a result, failing to win the Golden Boot for the first time in his Premier League career.
It was always likely he’d put that right, and he’s almost secured this season’s Golden Boot already. If he can score three goals in the next two games, he’ll have already matched last year’s 22-goal tally at the halfway stage.
His lead over his nearest challenger Igor Thiago is already eight goals, and nobody else is even within 10. It’s already shaping up as, Haaland apart, a curious kind of year where goals are being shared about by everyone rather than Your Salahs or Your Isaks dominating a team’s scoring charts.
There’s a fair chance that Haaland could miss the rest of the season and still have already done enough.
Only five men beat his current tally of 19 last season. One of them is him and of the others, we can fairly safely say Mo Salah, Alexander Isak and Chris Wood won’t be doing so this season with Bryan Mbeumo definitely odds against.
Chelsea and Enzo Maresca talking themselves out of another title race
Last December, Chelsea had put themselves right in the title picture with a fine run of form, but Enzo Maresca wasn’t having any of it. “Little old us?” he said (we’re paraphrasing), “Winning the league? Cor blimey, no, what a silly thing to say. We are but a tiny little David attempting to compete with veritable Goliaths, our only weapon a tiny catapult costing hundreds of millions of dollars and fashioned only from the most basic raw materials of loads of brilliant footballers, some eight-year contracts and clubs around the world where we can park them for a bit with no regard for either player or that club as long as it keeps the tills ringing at HQ.”
They then won none of their next five league games and had successfully self-prophesised their own exit from the picture.
This December, Chelsea had put themselves right in the title picture with a fine run of form but Enzo Maresca was again having none of it.
They did accidentally win one of their next five games this time, but just the one, and still nevertheless successfully self-prophesised their own exit from the picture.
The inglorious return of Ange Postecoglou
Sacked for an unacceptable 17th-placed league finish with Spurs despite ending that long old wait for silverware.
It was brutal and harsh, but it wasn’t wrong as such. Postecoglou’s preferred narrative that he sacrificed the league to win the cup was true, but only up to a point. He was only able to sacrifice the league campaign because it had already gone really badly wrong before the Europa League got down to brass tacks, and because there were three teams sufficiently abysmal that Spurs had the luxury of calling time on their league campaign after a trio of wins in February took them to the dizzy heights of 33 points from 26 games.
Point here being: that’s still crap. In any normal season, that is not entirely-out-of-the-woods safe. The fact it’s very possibly more points than Spurs will have after 26 games of this season is simply funny, but doesn’t really help Postecoglou.
But the lure and appeal of Postecoglou is obvious. There is a lot to like. But he had been thoroughly rumbled as a Premier League manager.
We knew, though, that someone would be unable to resist. And we knew their regret would be instant and palpable.
We didn’t know it would be Nottingham Forest, but it was as good a shout as any in hindsight. A trigger-happy chairman and a misplaced sense of importance after one half-decent season were a potent combination for being the club to fall into the trap.
He lasted 39 days before being sacked less than 20 minutes after the final whistle of a 3-0 home defeat to Chelsea.
He won none of his eight games in charge, losing six. We will alas never know whether or not he could have delivered on the wild promise that he always wins something in his second month.
Brighton’s elite mid-tabling
They have firmly taken Fulham’s mantle this season as the Barclays’ most mid-table side on the back of their own efforts and the Cottagers’ brief – and now seemingly concluded, to be fair – flirtation with the actual relegation battle.
Brighton’s method of mid-tabling has always leant heavily on the idea of being able to beat and be beaten by absolutely anybody and this year has been sensational on that front.
After eight games of this season they had beaten three of last year’s top five… and absolutely nobody else. That is how you mid-table.
There have been less outlandish wins and more understandable defeats since (even if the nature of a 4-3 defeat to Aston Villa was entirely chaotic) but they remain an extraordinary example to us all.
They have now beaten four of last year’s top seven while managing not a single victory against the teams currently cut adrift to varying degrees inside the bottom three.
You really don’t at this time want to be the other club in any sentence that includes the words ‘…and Tottenham’ but that’s where Brighton are with regard to failing to beat Wolves, and we’re only giving them a partial pass for the reason they have been unable to beat Burnley thus far is that they haven’t actually played them.
