Postecoglou sacked, trophyless Arsenal, Manchester United relegated and other football predictions for 2025
Spurs replacing Ange Postecoglou with a Premier League coach, Trent Alexander-Arnold leaving Liverpool and Manchester United going down is in store for 2025.
10) Southampton break the Derby points record
It stands alongside Chelsea’s record for fewest goals conceded in a season as an untouchable Premier League bar – although Jose Mourinho and friends set it impossibly high while the combined efforts of Billy Davies and Paul Jewell placed theirs unfathomably low.
Since Derby accrued 11 whole points in the 2007/08 campaign, there has been an element of intrigue as to whether that perfect storm of awfulness can ever be recreated, albeit with slightly less Eddie Lewis.
The closest any side has ever come is Huddersfield in 2018/19 and Sheffield United last season, both of whom finished on 16 points but passed Derby’s tally in February of their respective campaigns.
Southampton really do stand every chance of making their misery forever historically relevant. Only two sides have ever had fewer points than six at the halfway stage – lockdown Sheffield United and a deducted Portsmouth – and Ivan Juric has arguably inherited a situation even worse in an on-pitch sense.
9) Fabian Hurzeler leaves Brighton
Without anyone really noticing, Brighton appear to have misplaced their golden touch. It is entirely possible that Chelsea have cleverly poached it and brought the Seagulls’ seemingly inexorable rise to a grinding halt.
There is no shame in sitting 10th but a handful of similarly-sized clubs have leapfrogged them. A run of seven games without a win contributed to an inadequate 2024 in which £200m was spent and talented but ultimately flawed managers swapped for more points than only Brentford, West Ham, Wolves and Everton of Premier League ever-presents in the calendar year. Their most important player also seems to be a 34-year-old Danny Welbeck.
Something of a divide has emerged in the fanbase between Fabian fanatics and Hurzeler haters. The German’s style is less ambitious and effective than that of his predecessors, there has been an understandable struggle in getting the many new fragments of his squad to gel and his public comments and personal disciplinary record suggest problems of a different nature.
Brighton’s upward trajectory was only ever going to be able to sustain regular visits from the vultures for so long. That document on Paul Barber’s laptop is not infallible. There was a general mutual acceptance between Brighton and Roberto De Zerbi that a split was best for all parties and the same conclusion will soon be reached with Hurzeler.
8) The Champions League glass ceiling is smashed again
The Champions League format expansion has coincided with a drastic change in Premier League qualification habits. What was once a ringfenced VIP area has been gatecrashed by those without an invite as unexpected clubs have snatched a seat at the top table: your Newcastles, your Aston Villas, your Manchester Uniteds.
From Everton’s brief Pierluigi Collina-cursed foray in 2005 to Newcastle’s small step for Saudi Arabia 18 years later, four of the same old Big Six Premier League clubs qualified for the Champions League with one small exception. Leicester’s discovery of a gap in the glass ceiling only led to it being reinforced.
The Foxes themselves tested the structural integrity of that in recent successive seasons and there are echoes of their Midlands upstart brilliance in Nottingham Forest. Nuno Espirito Santo’s side are maintaining a fierce pace and Chris Wood is uniquely determined to be pointing to a third star above that tree soon.
If they do drop off, Fulham are unbeaten in seven and waiting to capitalise on any slips from the few teams above them, while Bournemouth are the current model for sustainable, scalable and achievable excellence.
7) Spurs replace Ange Postecoglou with Andoni Iraola
A crucial tenet of that Bournemouth template was the refusal to be careful what they wished for. There cannot exist a soul still offering that warning after examining the current status of the Cherries and former manager Gary O’Neil.
It was a brutal and ruthless decision to part with an obviously talented coach after O’Neil far surpassed his objective of survival in difficult circumstances, but Iraola represented the promise of something far greater. He has delivered on that in spades thus far to establish Bournemouth as a genuine Europe-chasing force.
In many ways they are what Spurs should be: attacking, energetic, dynamic, assertive, but not so bizarrely wedded to one philosophy or style of play as to hold them back. Bournemouth are even dealing with an injury crisis better, adapting to adversity instead of trying to plough through it.
There is sympathy for Ange Postecoglou in what he has to deal with: those injuries, the decline of Heung-min Son, the loss of Harry Kane, the presence of Daniel Levy. But this really has been substandard for too long with no suggestion that things are about to get consistently or sustainably better. The manager speaks of wanting to entertain but too often that comes at the expense of his side, players and fans.
It is slightly depressing to be hawking the services of a manager out to a team four places and six points below his current employers but that is the nature of the football food chain and Iraola, already high in the running to replace Postecoglou, does feel like a potentially perfect fit at Spurs.
6) Chelsea fail to qualify for European football
For a while there it looked as though Behdad Eghbali, Todd Boehly and their Clearlake friends had cracked the football code. The apparent madness of chopping and changing managers while selling all your academy-developed superstars to afford the best young available players from other clubs had a method all along.
Enzo Maresca was probably right that Chelsea weren’t in a title race, but they were on the right track and in a Champions League spot again.
A draw and two defeats over Christmas has forced a significant rethink. The game management of a coach with fewer than 100 first-team games in the dugout has been questionable and despite rampant recruitment and investment over the past couple of years, glaring holes in the squad remain.
With momentum finally squandered, the wisdom of building a side lacking seniority and leadership might well be exposed. The five teams immediately below them are all either in wonderful form or emerging from their own difficult runs with shoots of promise. It would be a genuine achievement in the Europa Conference era but Chelsea will slide back into that mid-table morass and miss out on continental football again.
5) Manchester City end the year top of the table
The champions can be filed squarely in the ’emerging from their own difficult runs with shoots of promise’ section, having just about limped through a victory over relegation-battling Leicester to stem a miserable tide.
It is worth mentioning that Manchester City’s recent historic ineptitude has left them an entire eight points off Arsenal, a position to which they have grown accustomed in the previous two seasons. The only difference is that with half a season remaining they are staring at a climbable mountain to second; the brilliance of Liverpool can and has ruled out another successful defence of their Premier League title.
Perhaps the corner has not properly been turned yet but it does feel as though the Guardiola resignation ship, a genuine prospect at one stage, has sailed and he will oversee at least the initial attempt at a rebuild.
The noise coming out of Manchester City is that their next two transfer windows – the last of Txiki Begiristain and first of Hugo Viana – might be approached with all the ruthless precision of the summer 2017 Etihad squad cull. Combine that with easing injury problems and the juggernaut will rise again within the year.
4) Arsenal fail to win a trophy
It does remain a bit funny that Arsenal placed themselves so perfectly to capitalise on a Manchester City slip until the precise point they didn’t. Had Guardiola’s side displayed even a fraction of their current vulnerability in either of the last two seasons then the Gunners would have ended their long wait for a title. The second they did, the foibles in Mikel Arteta’s machine showed themselves too.
The Arteta trophy narrative still seems a bit disingenuous considering the sheer state in which he found Arsenal, but there is a point at which his fine work needs to be backed up by something tangible. That his only trophy after five years remains a lockdown FA Cup won with Arsene Wenger and Unai Emery’s team is a curious quirk.
And the “The Charity Shield as well twice, no?” shtick, while performative Born Winner nonsense and very possibly delivered with more than a hint of irony, did not really help.
Arteta basically finds himself in the Mauricio Pochettino spot of having inherited a mess of a club with grand ambitions, before rebuilding it so phenomenally in his own image as to bypass the point at which a domestic trinket can properly satisfy the critics.
Pochettino struggled with that dynamic at Spurs but his overall sentiment at the time rings true for Arteta and Arsenal now: “Our objective is to try to win the Premier League and the Champions League. For me, two real trophies. That can really change your life. And then the FA Cup, of course, I would like to win. I would like to win the Carabao Cup. But I think it will not change the life of Tottenham.”
Nor would it Arsenal in 2025. Yet the odds remain that the most consistently excellent team nevertheless again ends empty-handed, even with their absolute gimme of an FA Cup third-round tie.
3) Newcastle end their trophy drought
That Arsenal theory might be proven hilariously wrong in short order. There was no good draw for them in the Carabao Cup semi-final – the best team in Europe, their most bitter rivals or just a right arse of a side to play – but Newcastle have hit their stride at the worst possible time for an illustrious opponent.
Eddie Howe’s style is perfectly suited to games against sides of Arsenal’s calibre. Newcastle have won three and drawn one of their last six games against the Gunners, including a 1-0 victory in November, and their form in a wider context has catapulted them back into the Champions League qualification conversation.
The Magpies will fancy their chances in the second leg at St James’ Park if they can emerge from the Emirates on January 7 in decent shape. A final with Liverpool or Spurs would await and Newcastle have already faced both this season without losing, while they definitely don’t have very recent previous for falling painfully short on the Wembley stage.
Newcastle might be better off putting all their eggs in those baskets because Bromley and their big Ronnie Radford energy await in the FA Cup.
2) Liverpool win the Premier League but lose one of the Contract Three
It took Jurgen Klopp not far off a decade to run out of the requisite “energy” to keep the Liverpool motor running. Arne Slot might expend his personal resources fielding the same remarkably tiresome questions at press conferences and post-match interviews.
The Dutchman has sidestepped queries over the futures of Mo Salah, Virgil van Dijk and Trent Alexander-Arnold with the same masterful poise as he has approached this season in a tactical and footballing sense. Liverpool are top of the Premier and Champions League tables but the usual Quadruple chat has been derailed by talk of the Treble: can the Reds keep their imminently uncontracted three?
Van Dijk seems the safest bet to stay as captain who, while showing no signs of slowing down, is also in a position where age is not as defining a factor in terms of performance. That should be more the case for Salah but he is producing career-best numbers with ludicrous ease and it is not difficult to envisage a breakthrough, despite his regular pessimistic updates.
But the Alexander-Arnold needle has palpably shifted. Far younger than those two teammates, there is a sense that he has engineered this situation to benefit him and only him as an eligible 26-year-old bachelor. And as phenomenal as it is to realise there are genuine people out there who don’t think the pull of Real actual Madrid should turn the head of such a player, that is a lure the very best have always struggled to resist.
Alexander-Arnold will stay to cement his Liverpool legacy with another trophy or two, before instantly tarnishing it in the view of a deranged few by sacrificing his career to join the 15-time European champions.
1) A Premier League ever-present goes down
From the ‘different ball game’ of Anders Limpar being served breakfast in bed and Vinnie Jones showering with Tim Sherwood, to 427 different kick-off time slots and a small loan being required to afford the myriad different subscriptions to actually watch the games, the Premier League has always found an anchor in its six ever-presents.
Aston Villa were the last team to leave that group when they dropped down to the Championship in 2016. Before then it was Southampton in 2005, then Leeds a year prior.
Everton have long flirted with that fate and Sean Dyche has been unable to steer them clear of those battles. Two points separate them from the relegation zone and Wolves below them look rejuvenated, while there is ample fight in both Ipswich and Leicester.
Yet the responsibility for this prediction does not lay solely with them. A couple of places higher in the Premier League table are Manchester United, for whom a future in the Championship is realistic enough for their manager to openly discuss without fear of rebuke.
It sounds ludicrous but the numbers are stark and the records are tumbling. Since Amorim was appointed, Manchester United have only accrued more points (7) than Leicester (4) and Southampton (2), and financial incompetence has made January signings difficult to fathom.
There is a general acceptance that things might well get worse before they improve at Old Trafford, but perhaps not yet a realisation about just how bad ‘worse’ really is. The good news for Wayne Rooney is that he might have his pick of interim Championship jobs soon.
