Premier League winners and losers: Emery, Slot, Leeds, West Ham, Sunderland, Van Hecke, Mane
Arne Slot is an inevitable casualty of this Liverpool civil war and managersplaining won’t help, but Leeds, Unai Emery and Mateus Mane are all flying.
There is praise for Sunderland and Evangelos Marinakis, too.
Less so for West Ham and Jan Paul van Hecke, mind.
Premier League winners
Adam Wharton
Not the most obvious successor to Lomana LuaLua.
Will Osula
Surely in the England World Cup squad now.
Unai Emery
It is difficult to gauge where Aston Villa doubly qualifying for the Champions League would sit on a list of all-time Premier League achievements. But it is a remarkable – if not Manager of the Year-shortlist-worthy – accomplishment.
What felt agonisingly precarious a fortnight ago has been fashioned into an almost perfect sprint to the finish of a marathon season. The Burnley draw notwithstanding, Emery has gambled with the highest stakes imaginable to secure a top-five place and European final for his team.
The group of clubs and managers who have qualified for European competition through league position in four consecutive Premier League seasons is miniscule. Emery and Villa taking their place among them, especially in the circumstances, is ludicrous.
Leeds United
From the moment of Daniel Farke’s half-time epiphany at the Etihad, Leeds have legitimately been among the best sides in the Premier League.
They are sixth in a table from December onwards, with only Manchester United, Bournemouth and Manchester City suffering fewer defeats. It is form sustained over almost two-thirds of an entire season, enough to suggest these are sturdy foundations which can be built on going forward.
But it’s at the back where the improvement has been most obvious. In that 24-game, six-month timeframe, only Brighton, Manchester City and Arsenal have conceded fewer league goals than Leeds, whose solidity and sturdiness provides a platform which Dominic Calvert-Lewin and friends can maximise at the other end.
The most encouraging sign is that the system does not rely on those playing within it.
There was perhaps more desperation defending than Farke is overly comfortable with, and 35-year-old Darlow Zoff was needed as the last line of resistance. But Sebastian Bornauw slotted in seamlessly on his fifth start of the league season alongside Jaka Bijol, who has missed 13 games, and Joe Rodon, without whom Leeds are unbeaten in the five matches he has not started.
Some teams merely adopt the three-man defence in a hopeless bid to avoid relegation; Leeds were born in it, moulded by it.
Sunderland
The response to shipping nine goals against Aston Villa and Nottingham Forest has been heartening. Sunderland have reaffirmed their identity by eliminating daft mistakes, recalibrating their standards and, without particularly wanting to single anyone out, removing Dan Ballard from the equation.
A win against Chelsea on the final day – they have already beaten them at Stamford Bridge – combined with defeats for Brighton against Manchester United and Brentford at Liverpool will catapult Sunderland into the Europa League.
It would be an unfathomable achievement, but as Regis Le Bris said after the Everton win when citing the “painful” Forest defeat: “When we start dreaming it’s a distraction.” As cliched as it is, when Sunderland take things one game at a time they are a powerful force.
Manchester United
‘There won’t be too many who believe it’s sustainable and neutrals should perhaps be more keen on a lack of evolution than Man Utd fans, though those Red Devils can can look forward to being hailed as the greatest-ever Premier League champions if they win it like this.’
It is wonderful stuff in the one-game-a-week reality Michael Carrick inherited. And a great start for Bryan Mbeumo’s basketball team, too.
Mateus Mane
Rob Edwards sounded remarkably confident about retaining the singular silver lining to this absurdly dark cloud of a Wolves season. Perhaps naively so, considering the club’s penchant for cashing in on an asset as soon as it accrues tangible value.
The hope ought to be that Mane and his representatives are wise enough to realise a year in the Championship is comfortably the most beneficial next step in his development.
He has already played the most Premier League minutes of any teenager this season. That has been a formative experience; a Championship campaign in a more possession-dominant side honing his craft away from the spotlight could be transformative.
The alternative is to be fully Tyler Dibling’d. The entire season he has spent on Everton’s bench after impressing as an exciting young forward in a relegated team has underlined the inherent need to time an inevitable climb up the ladder well.
Southampton raked in £40m but the extra budget for dedicated spying iPhones, coffee and substandard espionage training has not really been worth it when they could have been patient and extracted far more.
That is the challenge for Wolves: resist the temptation to sell to Manchester United for £50m or fuel Chelsea’s teenage wide-forward obsession, even just for the sake of an extra year which should increase that fee and provide Mane with a better grounding.
Evangelos Marinakis
A sign of genuine character growth that he didn’t stand over a fear-stricken intern while watching them type out a tweet casting aspersions over who the VAR supports. Nor has he furiously employed Mark Clattenburg as a lobbyist again. Yet.
It was a ridiculous decision which befell Nottingham Forest but Vitor Pereira quite calmly calling for a summit to clarify the rules was the sensible, if far less hilarious, reaction.
Premier League losers
West Ham
It was not quite the unbridled mess of picking a right-back at left-back and a left-back at right-back in a team with no recognised striker. But this wasn’t a great deal better from Nuno Espirito Santo, whose three-at-the-back muscle memory kicked in at the wrong time.
Perhaps it is fitting that the system upon which he built his reputation as a reliable Premier League manager at Wolves was the one which ultimately underlined why he might no longer be so readily trusted with these top-flight projects.
West Ham needed a win. Nuno’s last Premier League victory when starting with a three-man defence came in February 2025. It was a curious moment to reach for such an ineffective comfort blanket.
And the result, as it so often is for panicking teams and managers who trick themselves into thinking more defenders = better defending, was disastrous.
Nothing screams “too many cooks” quite like letting a 6ft 6ins centre-forward ghost onto the edge of the six-yard box completely unmarked; being split open by four simple passes while your three central defenders are in the opposition half, on the halfway line and pretending to be Roberto Ayala at the 1998 World Cup, only with the pitch tilted on one side; and conceding within nine seconds of your own throw-in.
Nuno was right after the game: the fans had “reasons” to “show their anger and frustration” by chanting that the players were not fit to wear the shirt. But too often this season, the firefighter employed to rescue West Ham has actively exacerbated the situation too.
Liverpool
A record 20th defeat of the season. A new low for goals conceded in a Premier League campaign. And if they stumble over the line to fifth on 59 points, it would be the lowest tally to ever qualify for the Champions League.
In the same way you can only beat what’s in front of you, Arne Slot can only get Liverpool into Europe’s elite competition if that is indeed what the minimum requirement has been adjusted to over the course of the season.
But it does further undermine any wavering belief that his reign and philosophy is worth investing any more money and time in.
As he said after the Villa defeat, “as a manager, you are also responsible if things happen time and time again, you are hired to try to prevent that for the next time”. Yet Liverpool have looked susceptible at set-pieces, mentally weak either away at teams around them in the table or when trying to chase a deficit, have conceded the second-most goals of any team from the 76th minute onwards and look devoid of ideas and creativity in open play.
“Next time” is yet to come, and fans are tired of the managersplaining.
None of the explanations are flattering: this is either a team he has set up poorly following his instructions to the letter; or one consistently failing to carry out what he wants. And the indication is that Slot has lost the dressing room too.
With one of their rivals appointing the former player many supporters wanted to come in next, what’s left is a club essentially at war with itself.
READ MORE: Liverpool prove Carragher right as Watkins, Aston Villa put Arne Slot on the brink
Jan Paul van Hecke
The inevitable receiver of Fabian Hurzeler’s “full support” has nevertheless seemingly decided that while he will likely be playing European football next season, Brighton might not.
Van Hecke will have earned his move if, as expected, he leaves in the summer. But it is deeply unfortunate that his mistakes have defined the last three games in which Brighton have dropped crucial points.
A blind pass punished by Calvert-Lewin; a slip capitalised on by Harvey Barnes; two losses of possession which Spurs exploited to score both their goals in that frustrating April draw. Van Hecke has captured Brighton’s infuriating tendency to shoot themselves in the foot better than any other player.
Brentford
It has been a remarkable season of overachievement by any reasonable measure, but there is a sense that Brentford have struggled to adjust to the shift in expectations.
After beating Everton and Sunderland in the space of four early January days they were fifth, ahead of Manchester United and a single point behind Liverpool.
Brentford were beaten in successive games by Chelsea and Nottingham Forest thereafter, but consecutive wins over Aston Villa and Newcastle left them seventh and in complete control of their European fate in February.
They have won just twice in 12 games since, against Burnley and West Ham. A phenomenal campaign might still deliver continental qualification, but converting just one of those seven draws in the last three months into a victory would have pushed them over the line already.
Fulham
Another season, another run-in Fulham have approached with all the urgency and enterprise of a workforce returning from a Friday lunch break to clock-watch the final hours of their shift before the weekend.
Since returning to the Premier League in 2022, Fulham have entered the month of May in 10th, 9th, 11th and 11th respectively. In the last three seasons they have used that platform to finish 10th, 13th and 11th, while they currently sit 13th.
Their Premier League record in May since promotion four years ago is four wins (three against relegated teams), three draws (one against a relegated team) and eight defeats.
Marco Silva has guaranteed two things at Craven Cottage: survival; and an earlier end to seasons than any other team.
Crystal Palace
No longer mathematically able to finish in their spiritually correct position, with the second-best option also rendered unlikely. What’s even the point in Crystal Palace if they can’t come either 12th or 14th?
Mark Clattenburg
Expect a call from Evangelos Marinakis at 3am soon, fella.
