Premier League winners and losers: Bournemouth, Arsenal, Chelsea and shameful Manchester United
The Champions League race is alive with possibility, including Arsenal failing to qualify and Brentford reaching Europe after shaming Manchester United.
Bournemouth
Andoni Iraola has frequently mentioned results and performances against the biggest teams as one key area for improvement at Bournemouth. The ease with which he and they have risen to that challenge this season is remarkable.
No team has accrued more points nor scored more goals against the top seven than Bournemouth – and that includes those sides within it. Their return from games against the teams directly below them have ultimately undermined any Champions League push; both Brentford and Brighton doing the double over them was sub-optimal. But European qualification has been made possible by how effective they have become against the division’s best.
That is pertinent because of a run-in which features the visit of Aston Villa and a trip to Manchester City, neither of which should hold any trepidation for a group which has already won at the Emirates, Old Trafford at St James’ Park this season.
Bournemouth have already broken club records for points and wins in a Premier League campaign, with the bars for goals scored and conceded both almost certain to be beaten. Combine all that by securing their highest-ever finish of eighth and potentially, Europe awaits.
Andoni Iraola
Never before has a manager been so irrevocably destined for not necessarily bigger or better things, but undeniably more expensive and pressured ones.
The feeling persists that Iraola might not be able to replicate this success on the shakier foundations which come higher up the ladder with less time and patience, but it remains an entirely tantalising prospect we must one day witness.
It is impressive how the Spaniard seems able to contort himself into fitting numerous different job specifications. When the Spurs links started to formalise he wisely embarked on a winless run which included exiting a cup competition to show his suitability, before undoing Arsenal with set-piece mastery to plant some possible post-Arteta seeds. Neat trick, that.
Chelsea
A laughably poor version of the champions it may have been, but a team can only beat whatever is put out in front of them and Chelsea did so with uncharacteristic ease.
Their previous Premier League victory over any of Arsenal, Liverpool or Manchester City was so long ago that Thomas Tuchel was the manager, Romelu Lukaku the opening scorer and Roman Abramovich the owner. It was fair to doubt whether Enzo Maresca and his players had the minerals for this Champions League race but three wins on the bounce is a fair riposte.
MORE ON CHELSEA’S VICTORY OVER LIVERPOOL
👉 16 Conclusions on Chelsea 3-1 Liverpool: Brilliant Cole Palmer exploits half-hearted Liverpool
👉 ‘Well done Liverpool’; you handed ‘new Spurs’ a Champions League place
Michael Kayode
An immensely fun player in a ludicrously effective team. Brentford brought Kayode in on loan from Fiorentina in January and have a £14m option to make the deal permanent, which they would be foolish not to execute. It is already difficult to think of many better signings this season.
After an inevitably slow integration, the Italy youth international has found his stride. Three Premier League starts have coincided with Brentford’s first run of three consecutive Premier League wins of the season and his stated aim of “helping them reach European competitions next season” is alive.
It was Kayode ugly for Manchester United but beautiful to watch a 20-year-old acclimatise so seamlessly to the league, setting up Yoane Wissa’s goal, misplacing one pass and completing more than twice as many dribbles as any other player at the Gtech.
Brentford have muddled through without a proper right-back for long enough. From this brief sample, Kayode has been entirely worth the wait.
Aston Villa
The spiral has been stabilised and what once promised to be a generational season could yet deliver a return to the Champions League stage they suited so perfectly.
Their slump across December, January and February could yet prove catastrophic to those hopes, and it will require a slip or two from some of those above, but Villa are in as good form as anyone and primed to capitalise if an opening presents itself.
If only Ollie Watkins started to turn up.
Manchester City’s old guard
It has been difficult to separate baby from bathwater when examining what should be thrown out at Manchester City this season, but this surge to their longest winning run of the campaign to cap what might be an outwardly respectable second-placed Premier League finish with an FA Cup winner’s medal does suggest that an element of restraint is necessary.
Kevin de Bruyne bowing out from the club with a fine impression of his former unparalleled self should not shake the foundations of what is the fair decision to allow his contract to expire. This form and fitness might be sustainable and a post-Etihad career flourish could make Manchester City look foolish. But it is not a gamble even the impossibly rich should overthink if there is to be any sort of emphasis on building for the future.
His final gift has been to hold Manchester City’s hand into the Champions League after this campaign’s substantial scare, simultaneously displaying himself in the shop window for those interested in parting with a ludicrous signing-on fee and wage.
Bernardo Silva said that “a little bit of the soul of this team is going” with De Bruyne and it reinforces the belief that despite the Portuguese’s own personal struggles, he should be persuaded to stay for yet another year before his own deal expires in 2026. Pep Guardiola would surely prefer not to lose the two most-used players in his entire managerial career over the course of one summer, with decisions to come soon enough on Ilkay Gundogan and Mateo Kovacic too.
The manager recently admitted his reluctance to use the club’s inexperienced academy graduates in this season’s more difficult moments was a mistake. A happy medium can be found, like Nico O’Reilly further embedding himself in a side anchored by that spine containing four 30-something midfield pass masters who have helped Manchester City rediscover their identity before they make necessary moves to update and improve it.
Julio Enciso
The Liam Delap auction will be biblical but a temporary teammate might have used a short-term loan to attract as much attention. Kieran McKenna “would have loved to have had him a little bit earlier” and Brighton will be prepared to field intense interest in Enciso.
Almost 300 players have played 1,000 minutes in the Premier League this season and Enciso ranks first of those for shots per 90 (4.12). Those numbers are skewed only slightly by a productive first half of the season at Brighton; the Paraguayan’s shots per 90 for Ipswich sandwich him between Mo Salah and Alexander Isak as an outlier among the league’s biggest strugglers.
It would be no surprise to see Ipswich and McKenna learn from this season’s harsh lessons to return to this level soon; far more shocking would be if Enciso isn’t back immediately, shooting from ridiculous positions and earning weirdly respectful handshakes from a beaten Jordan Pickford.
Newcastle
“We’re a team that’s set up to try to win, so you’ve got to be careful what you wish for,” said Eddie Howe, weirdly echoing a Sky Sports pundit warning a mid-table fanbase about wanting to replace a British manager. “We want to win games and we’ll attack and try to do that. But, if you can’t, you’ve got to make sure you don’t lose the game.”
Newcastle had made a decent fist of that balance by simply winning 20 of their last 26 matches and losing the rest. That all-or-nothing approach ended their trophy drought and made Champions League qualification a live possibility.
Only 11 teams in Premier League history had ever gone longer without a draw than Newcastle, who finally made sure they followed their manager’s advice and didn’t lose on one of the increasingly rare occasions when victory was not possible.
A first draw for five months in any competition could be crucial, keeping the Magpies above Chelsea and Nottingham Forest regardless of their results in this tireless race. Avoiding a ruinous seasonal hat-trick of losses in the Yankuba Minteh/Dan Burn/James Milner/Chris Wood/Aaron Hughes/Tim Krul/Dan Ashworth derby was just a welcome bonus.
West Ham
It is important to appreciate the small steps, such as West Ham outshooting their opponent for only the second time in 16 games under Graham Potter, and neither the manager nor one of their players feeling compelling to explain at painstaking length how much they hate the club post match.
Wilson Odobert
The scorer of a Premier League goal for Spurs, and the possessor of two legendarily Spurs middle names in Serge and Eric.
Wolves
Defund the Celebration Police by tying them in knots over whether applauding the fans after a 2-2 home draw with West Brom which leaves you in 9th is better or worse than toasting a hard-fought 1-0 defeat at Manchester City which nevertheless consolidates 13th place.
The good news is that Vitor Pereira and Wolves are on track to win the actual title by 2030.
Dean Gaffney
In a season with otherwise almost nothing whatsoever from which to elicit any form of Leicester positivity, there is at least a fitting final scene for the long-awaited Jamie Vardy biopic.
Ruud van Nistelrooy
The Dutchman has now overseen two clean sheets in 23 games as a Premier League manager. That was his first for Leicester, the other having come against them as Manchester United caretaker in November. What an appointment.
Mats Wieffer
Not, it seems, a right-back.
Premier League losers
Arsenal
It was, in some ways, ideal preparation. Bournemouth are as similar a Premier League team to PSG as Arsenal could wish to play, uber-aggressive in the press with numerous different ways of hurting an opponent. But equally Mikel Arteta might have preferred to face any other side in between those semi-final legs.
The idea was sound enough, going basically full-strength to build momentum, rhythm and confidence. The potentially season-shattering risk of an avoidable, belief-shattering defeat to an excellent side was the trade-off and while PSG themselves were beaten at the weekend by Strasbourg, they made ten changes to the starting XI which conquered the Emirates and will be fresh at the Parc des Princes.
Arteta can only try to harness this and it might be that the “rage, anger, frustration and a bad feeling in the tummy” is actually what Arsenal need to pull them through and into the Champions League final.
Yet the Gunners have not looked so vulnerable in as many different areas in some time, from set-piece defending to lead-squandering.
The very real and very funny prospect of Arsenal failing to qualify for the Champions League while Liverpool, Manchester City, Newcastle, Chelsea and one of Manchester United or Spurs all win a trophy and reach the European Promised Land is on, and it starts with Nottingham Forest beating Crystal Palace on Monday night.
READ MORE: Arteta sack inevitable if Arsenal implosion finishes with humbling Champions League exit
Fulham
Marco Silva seethed at Aston Villa’s time-wasting and an apparent refereeing conspiracy to undermine Fulham’s excellence by booking both himself and five of his players. But the fizzling out of what was almost an incredible season has been down to the fundamental flaws in his approach more than anything.
It is a perfect summary of the fine margins Silva relies on that Fulham have had 18 games decided either way by a single goal in the Premier League this season, and they have won nine and lost nine of them. While it guarantees safety – which is an achievement a recently promoted club should not take for granted – it also places a ceiling on what Fulham can do. It inhibits them as much as it enhances them.
That is why Fulham’s longest winning run matches their worst losing streak of two games, why they have had consecutive Premier League victories only once since November, why they can beat the distant champions and by far worst team in the division in between four defeats to clubs in the Premier League’s hard-boiled centre.
It is also quite weird that Fulham have now ended two games this season with ten men despite not having someone sent off, with an injury suffered after all their substitutes were made. Not sure Emi Martinez can be blamed for that.
Manchester United
Ruben Amorim cannot specifically be faulted for honouring the established trope of Premier League teams chucking out the kids to prepare for big European games.
But the idea that Manchester United can actively sacrifice their Premier League season without severe censure feels doubly cowardly. It’s as if they think them giving up on it meaning anything in a material sense pre-emptively counteracts criticism or scrutiny. And when ruthless redundancies are being made, the haemorrhaging of potential prize money is an absolutely atrocious look.
In any event, a ludicrously expensive squad and coach should be able to hold their own and at the very least have an identifiable style, no matter how many changes are wrought. Never allow Manchester United being this abysmal to be normalised, accepted or forgotten.
Everton
If you don’t love David Moyes at his nine-game unbeaten streak, you don’t deserve him at his run of one win in ten games which has neatly overlapped.
It does feel as though the second wedding’s honeymoon is over, that the bloom is off the rose somewhat and Everton have slipped back into their worst habits. And when their worst habits were established at the start of the season as proving 2-0 to indeed be the most dangerous lead, that isn’t ideal.
Their relative ease in sweeping into a two-goal lead over Ipswich underlined how much better than the bottom three they are, but the implosion to hand Ipswich their first points from a losing position since November emphasised the work that needs to be done to steer Everton in the right direction next season.
Moyes has earned the opportunity to oversee these steps into a brave new era but he will know that performance and more generally the last few weeks have not really been good enough.
Sean Dyche was sacked for a run of two wins, seven draws and four defeats; Moyes is currently on two wins, seven draws and three defeats and saying “we controlled the game” after being outshot eight to 12 at home to a relegated team sounds eerily like his predecessor.
Southampton
After all that it really could come down to goal difference. Southampton (-57) have some wiggle room over Derby 2007/08 (-69) but Manchester City, Arsenal and Everton’s final game at Goodison Park keeps the drama alive heading into the final weeks.
One record will almost certainly fall. Four sides share the honour of having lost 29 games in a Premier League season. Southampton are on 28 and have just had the league double done over them by the next-worst team. It’s not looking great.
Liverpool when crowned champions
Liverpool have played eight games as newly-crowned Premier League champions in 2019/20 and 2024/25 and they should be ashamed by a cigar-puffing, beach-dwelling, slipper-wearing record of W4 D1 L3 F16 A15.
