We are a month and a half in to the 2025/26 Premier League season, which gives us ample time to let the early results of the campaign digest while we throw out some hot takes about what we have seen so far.
After an eventful Manchester Derby and more 3-0 statement wins from top London clubs Arsenal and Tottenham, let’s take a look at the Premier League stock watch going into Matchday 5 this weekend.
Stock Rising
Bournemouth
Bournemouth won the battle between young, up-and-coming squads last weekend, taking down Brighton 2-1 to follow up from their 1-0 pounding of Tottenham before the September international break.
Honestly, if you asked me which underdog team would be threatened for a top five spot this season before the campaign started, I would have chosen Brighton, but Bournemouth have been the real gem to start.
Bournemouth have a super talented attack with more than just Antoine Semenyo starring up front, as Evanilson has been exceptional at the striker position while Alex Scott, David Brooks, and Marcus Tavernier have all made their presence felt.
Nobody wants to face Andoni Iraola’s men right now, and I don’t care how good you think your team is, they will push you to their limits. They even had Liverpool on the ropes on Matchday 1, and, with time, that win for the Reds has only become more credible when watching how excellent the Cherries have been.
Set Pieces
Set pieces were almost entirely discarded for a while in the Premier League, with Pep Guardiola popularizing the entirely overrated short corner, which is basically a long-winded way of trying to serve the ball into the box – and not even being guaranteed the chance to do so.
Now, the pendulum is swinging back in the favor of sanity, and it is no surprise that the best teams in the Premier League right now are all able to make use of set pieces as great equalizers.
Arsenal’s defenders have been feasting on corners, per usual, and Thomas Frank has turned Cristian Romero and Micky van de Ven into Erling Haaland and Chris Wood from corners.
And don’t get me started on Liverpool, who scored a late banger of a free kick from Dominik Szoboszlai to pick up three points on title challengers Arsenal and then won a Champions League match against Atletico Madrid by virtue of a late corner kick hookup between Szobo and legendary center back Virgil van Dijk.
Free kicks, direct and indirect, and corners are back to being a major way for top teams to win matches, and, honestly, the teams lower in the Premier League table need to pick up the slack.
So if you wanted yet another reason to bank on Liverpool repeating as Premier League champions, then look no further than those sweet, sweet deliveries from this season’s breakout superstar Dominik Szoboszlai.
Robin Roefs
We all love a good hero at a newly promoted Premier League club, and Sunderland have quite a few heroes right now, given they are hanging around the top half of the Premier League table and are literally closer to qualifying for the Champions League than they are to relegation.
All the smart veteran summer pickups have paid off, with Omar Alderete blowing up in defense, Granit Xhaka steadying the ship in midfield, and Nordi Mukiele earning plaudits again after a spell in Paris tanked his stock.
But the real star player in Sunderland is goalkeeper Robin Roefs, who, at just 22 years of age, has been maybe the best goalkeeper in the Premier League through the first four games of the campaign despite only debuting in the English top flight this season.
Roefs has a save percentage of 80 with 0.44 post-shot expected goals above average prevented per game, which is even better than his mark of 0.30 set last season in the Dutch Eredivisie.
Sunderland have recorded a clean sheet in two match and are allowing just 0.75 goals per game, and when you look at Roefs’s performances, you can’t just ascribe all of that to the back four and center backs; he’s been a legitimate superstar in goal.
Jeremy Doku
After a poor Matchday 1 performance, Jeremy Doku sat on the bench against Tottenham and Brighton before coming on as a substitute, unable to change the coure of either loss against these tough opponents.
But on the big stage of the Manchester Derby, Pep Guardiola once again turned to his electrifying young winger, and Doku delivered to such an extent that I doubt the Manchester City manager will leave the Belgian international off the starting lineup any time soon.
Doku was sprightly, involved, and intelligent with his chance creation, linking up with superstar striker Erling Haaland to devastating effect. The 23-year-old finished the match with two assists, two key passes, four fouls drawn, and two dribbles completed in the kind of all-action attacking display that is exactly his upside.
There’s everything inside of Doku for him to become the best – not just one of, but THE best – wide creator in the Premier League, and when Manchester City take on Arsenal in a decisive encounter, there is every reason to highlight him as one of the X-Factors.
Arsenal
Much has been made of the summer transfer window Liverpool had and the start they have gotten off to this season, but Arsenal did push the Reds to their limit and were only really undone by a sheer moment of individual quality on a free kick by Szoboszlai.
Arsenal had a busy summer market, too, and they have, likewise, been very impressive to start the 2025/26 season, with new striker Viktor Gyokeres picking up a third goal on the campaign in a 3-0 win over Nottingham Forest.
Gyokeres is doing much better than the basic pundits would have you think, but it is true that he’s nowhere near the most impressive new signing on Arsenal. Noni Madueke looks like an ideal Bukayo Saka ersatz with Arsenal now no longer missing beats upon beats with Saka injured, Eberechi Eze is playing his role, Martin Zubimendi just had a ridiculous game against Forest with two goals from midfield, and Cristhian Mosquera might be the next William Saliba for the Gunners.
Arsenal need to rectify their loss to Liverpool and beat Manchester City to show that they can take down the other top Premier League title contenders, but, so far, Arsenal have been highly impressive in their games.
They showed some championship grit, too, in the Champions League, beating out Athletic Club with Gabriel Martinelli turning from ghost into impact sub with a sprightly run that turned the tide of the game with the go-ahead goal.
Stock Falling
Danny Welbeck
Where on earth has Danny Welbeck been this season? The veteran Premier League striker has been such a mainstay for the Brighton attack over the years as a key starter and one of the league’s most underrated all-around forwards.
Instead, Welbeck has been arguably the worst player in the entire league this season, starting three games and yet barely looking like he’s been on the pitch in any of those encounters.
Welbeck has one key pass, one foul drawn, and no dribbles completed in four Premier League appearances this season, and, needless to say, he has not scored or assisted for Brighton.
That level of production is simply untenable at the striker position, and as the Seagulls watch former star man Joao Pedro flourish at Stamford Bridge, they have to be miffed at Welbeck’s decline and the ensuing pressure it has placed on the young wingers to score.
Morgan Rogers and Ollie Watkins
Aston Villa are buried in the relegation zone of the Premier League, and after years of either qualifying for the Champions League or competing for European football, Unai Emery’s men are at serious risk of finishing in the bottom half of the league table and becoming this season’s Tottenham
Although Villa’s defense is nothing to write home about and there are always going to be a litany of weaknesses in a winless team stuck ahead of only Wolves in the table, it’s really the attack that has been the most disconcerting thing here.
Villa somehow drew a white-hot Everton 0-0, with the defense doing its job against Jack Grealish and Co. However, the attack could not take advantage, and although Aston Villa tout two of the Premier League’s biggest breakout stars of the last three years in striker Ollie Watkins and attacking midfielder/winger Morgan Rogers, these two have been dreadful to start the campaign.
Watkins’s decline has been particularly concerning, since Villa don’t have a great alternative at striker, having sold Jhon Duran to Saudi Arabia during the 2024/25 season.
The England international has been working hard on the ball to create chances for himself and teammates, but, needless to say, on a team that has not scored any goals in four games this season, you have to highlight the starting striker as a flop.
Yet Rogers has been even worse individually. His own chance creation statistically has been worse than Watkins’s, and while I’d argue that the midfield has been more problematic, it’s never a good sign when your best creator is only averaging 0.5 key passes per game.
If Aston Villa can’t get more of their two best attacking players, then their drought is only going to continue and more points are going to be dropped in a Premier League table that is becoming less and less forgiving.
Newcastle
Newcastle lost Alexander Isak just before transfer deadline day after the superstar striker successfully pushed his way out of St. James’s Park to Liverpool, and the Magpies have been predictably suffering without him.
New Bundesliga signing Nick Woltemade was the difference in a 1-0 win over Wolves last weekend and did impress on his debut, but it’s abundantly clear that neither he nor Yoane Wissa are going to be adequate Isak replacements.
But while you’d think that the striker position would be the chief concern for Newcastle this season – at least in the early going – the 10th-placed Magpies are finding more holes in their squad than they thought.
The midfield isn’t up to the standard of the top teams in the Premier League, as star man Bruno Guimaraes has been slow out the gate while Italian international Sandro Tonali continues to underperform.
Newcastle aren’t getting enough out of their ancillary attackers, and with the exception of Dan Burn and Fabian Schar, all the other key players on the team from last season are not playing up to their standards.
Although Newcastle are coming off a win, which is their first of the 2025/26 season, it’s hard to call a 1-0 victory over the literal worst team in the Premier League an actually impressive feat.
Manchester United
It’s a little obvious to pick Manchester United as the Premier League team whose stock is falling the most, but sometimes you have to call a spade a spade and continue to pour molten lava on the situation.
Manchester United bought three great attacking players this past summer transfer window, and, so far, we’ve only really seen greatness from Bryan Mbeumo due to Matheus Cunha’s injury and Ruben Amorim slowly bringing along a very raw – he wasn’t even RB Leipzig’s best striker – Benjamin Sesko.
Honestly, though, Man United’s midfield, structure, and coaching are the real culprits. It doesn’t matter who starts in the attack, because unless they are transcendentally great at creating their own shot against two or three men game after game (like Mbeumo), they are going to struggle in this system, which is as much of a system as Subway’s sandwiches are subs. That is to say, Amorim’s system is a lie.
How can you play Bruno Fernandes as a deep midfielder in a 3-4-2-1 system and waste the talents of the best chance creating attacking midfielder when you know he doesn’t have the physical or mental skill set to be a 6 or an 8? And how can you bench your best 6/8 in Kobbie Mainoo who is the future of your franchise in midfield?
Not a single player has benefited from the hiring of Amorim, and as the results continue to turn south and the team increasingly relies on the same few players’ individual quality to save them from a point as a low as relegation, the decision for Jim Ratcliffe is going to become increasingly obvious. Amorim, who prefers to die by his system than succeed on any terms, must go.
Joe Soriano is the editor of The Trivela Effect and a FanSided Hall of Famer who has covered world football since 2011. He’s led top digital communities like The Real Champs (Real Madrid) and has contributed to sites covering Tottenham, Liverpool, Juventus, and Schalke. Joe’s work has appeared in ESPN, Bleacher Report, and Sports Illustrated. He also helped manage NFL Spin Zone and Daily DDT, covering the NFL and pro wrestling, respectively.