The 2025-26 Premier League season has been in the books for nearly a week, and we think we’ve digested the nearly 10 months of chaos that led to Arsenal winning the title and West Ham joining two others in going down to the Championship.
MORE —How Arsenal won the 2025-26 Premier League
So who were the stars of the season, the best players, the biggest disappointments.
PST lead writer and editor Joe Prince-Wright joined Nick Mendola to sort through the wreckage and spoils of this PL season.
Premier League Player of the Season
Joe Prince-Wright:Bruno Fernandes - Amazing quality and set United’s standards to drag them to the Champions League. Broke the assist record for a single season and he was excellent when moved into his proper position. Declan Rice, William Saliba and David Rays were all incredible in Arsenal’s title win too.
Nick Mendola: Bruno Fernandes - My biggest question about the role of Michael Carrick in Manchester United’s long-term project is how the side would’ve looked had Fernandes not went full-on, peak Kevin De Bruyne and willed United’s attack. And credit to Fernandes for much more, as he got stuck into challenge after challenge while playing in a deeper, more defensive role under Ruben Amorim. Fernandes and Casemiro were Manchester United this season, the reasons they could stomach the long-term absence of Matthijs de Ligt and the learning curves of Matheus Cunha, Benjamin Sesko, and Bryan Mbeumo.
Premier League Goalkeeper of the Year
Joe Prince-Wright:David Raya - Made some brilliant saves, won the golden glove and just gives Arsenal’s defense so much confidence. Never really seems flustered.
Nick Mendola: Senne Lammens - I thought about overtaxed Robin Roefs for this and also gave serious weight to the steady if not-so-busy Raya, but somewhere in the middle of this was Lammens. The Manchester United goalkeeper showed the versatility and stability of a man who might just stick around for a while as a worthy No. 1 for a top-four club, regardless of a manager’s preference in goalkeeper.
Premier League Defender of the Year
Joe Prince-Wright: William Saliba - He barely put a foot wrong and his partnership with Gabriel was key to Arsenal’s title win. He never seems to be out of position and oozes class on the ball.
Nick Mendola: Marc Guehi - It wasn’t too long ago that the 25-year-old was a teenager threatening to break into Chelsea’s first team. Stardom did not arrive on schedule, but it’s here. Guehi led Palace to the FA Cup last season then shined while sticking around a half-season longer than expected after Liverpool whiffed on signing him (Imagine how the table might look had they focused on Guehi and not Alexander Isak). Guehi is one of the few players to seamlessly adapt to Pep Guardiola’s system and only had one or two notable mistakes the rest of the way. A wonderful player.
Premier League Manager of the Year
Joe Prince-Wright:Mikel Arteta - It has to be. He finally won the title for Arsenal and made the right decisions at key moments to get it done. Arteta showed he learned from previous close calls and rotated more and was humble enough to change things up. Special mention to Unai Emery, Regis Le Bris, Andoni Iraola and Keith Andrews who all massively overachieved.
Nick Mendola: Mikel Arteta - There are cases to be made for others but how can you overlook the guy who finally gets over the hump, especially when Arsenal had so many hoops to squeeze through this season. It was rarely a sexy run up the Premier League table but that doesn’t matter. It will be interesting to see how an over-the-hump Arteta deploys his team moving forward.
Premier League Best XI
Premier League Breakout Player of the Season
Joe Prince-Wright: Nico O’Reilly - Just came from nowhere to be a star and a starter for England. Pops up everywhere down the left flank and in midfield. Has a brilliant future.
Nick Mendola: Rayan Cherki - For as well as Bruno Fernandes played this year, it’s incredible that Cherki and teammate Jeremy Doku were his closest rivals in terms of chance creation per 90 minutes and through balls (This was a season for the lost art of the through ball, wasn’t it?). What will his role be post-Pep?
Best Premier League Summer Transfer
Joe Prince-Wright: Quite a lot of the big signings struggled, but I would go with Dominic Calvert-Lewin. Why? He was signed on a free and scored so many goals which was so important to Leeds staying up. A proper bargain but it was a gamble due to his fitness record.
Nick Mendola: This one’s tough. Cherki, Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall, and Gianluigi Donnarumma were solid moves and Senne Lammens and Viktor Gyokeres fit their billing but for me it comes down to two players who drove their newly-promoted clubs to surprise heights: Sunderland’s Granit Xhaka and Leeds United’s Anton Stach. Given Xhaka’s status as a known entity from his time at Arsenal, we’ll call Stach’s move the better transfer success.
Rate the USMNT players in the Premier League
Joe Prince-Wright: Tyler Adams and Chris Richards both at 9/10. They were influential in superb campaigns for their teams in qualifying for Europe and reaching a European final respectively. Fulham’s Antonee Robinson had his season impacted massively by injury so 5/10 for his frustrations. Brendan Aaronson became a regular for Leeds and played a big role in them staying up. 7/10 for Aaronson seems spot on.
Nick Mendola: Aaronson had the season of his career and I, too, will give him a 7 for his new floor. Robinson’s season was so flustered by injuries but he was decent when out there and gets a 6 to balance it out. Richards was an 8 but the way Bournemouth looks with Adams versus without him makes him a 9. Good to see him healthy and flourishing ahead of the World Cup.
Biggest player disappointment in the Premier League
Joe Prince-Wright: Alexander Isak - Obviously injury impacted this, but just never got a chance to get going. Hopefully next season he can stay fit, but how he fits in at Liverpool under Arne Slot remains a bit of a mystery.
Nick Mendola: Cole Palmer. Yes, almost all of Chelsea struggled and Palmer missed significant time with an injury but to barely crack the top 100 for chance creation is a shocking statistic. Palmer remains a very good player but he no longer feels like a truly elite gamechanging player and his leadership abilities have to also be called into question. Five of his 10 PL goals came from the spot and he produced just a single assist.
Biggest team disappointment in the Premier League
Joe Prince-Wright: Spurs - Pretty easy one. Injuries were big but they still should have been nowhere near the relegation scrap.
Nick Mendola: Chelsea - They ignored a good manager who wanted veterans for his team then sent him packing. They hired a young manager and then quickly bailed on him. Xabi Alonso is a very strong hire but this was a wasted year in which most of the Blues saw their status sink over the course of the season.
Favorite moment of the 2025-26 Premier League season
Joe Prince-Wright: Arsenal 1-1 Man City back in September - Proper high quality game and this is when Arsenal told everyone how serious they were about winning the title. When I think of the Premier League I think of a game of this quality with stats galore on show. This is what it is all about.
Nick Mendola: I loved Marc Guehi’s late goal to beat Fulham in December, a sentimental moment as most everyone knew he was not long for the Crystal Palace shit, but Antoine Semenyo upped the ante for Bournemouth as he stuck around into January to bang home a last-minute, tenure-ending goal to beat Tottenham Hotspur in stoppage time.
Semenyo drills Bournemouth 3-2 ahead of Spurs
In what is set to be his final match for the Cherries, Antoine Semenyo delivers a 95th-minute winner for Bournemouth against Spurs at the Vitality Stadium.