There seems to be some suggestion that this was a poor Premier League season – I entirely disagree. You had a manager winning the title in his first season, two of the Big Six falling lower than ever before in the Premier League era and battle for the Champions League places that continued into the final minutes of the final day.
You also had forward-thinking, smart upstarts punching above their weight and offering hope that they can break up the old guard: Nottingham Forest, Brighton, Bournemouth, Brentford and Fulham. You had one of the great individual seasons from Mohamed Salah and we said goodbye to one of the great grounds in English football.
As the 2024-25 Premier League season draws to a close, we review every club’s league campaign, also picking their Player of the Year and breakout star…
Liverpool
An astonishing debut season from a manager about which there was understandable uncertainty. In some ways it helped Arne Slot that Jurgen Klopp had finished outside the top two in his last season, but few saw such extreme improvement as anything other than an idealist’s dream.
There’s little doubt that Liverpool benefitted from others faltering, but the ability of Slot to reimagine the midfield and inspire arguably the most complete season of Mohamed Salah’s career effectively secured the title as early as February. Do not underestimate the difficulties of managing the impending contract expiry dates of three pillars of the team.
The greatest compliment: none of it ever seemed like too much trouble for Slot. He changed what had stopped working, supercharged what was and promptly won five more games than any other manager in the division.
Player of the Year: Mohamed Salah
Breakout star: Ryan Gravenberch
League table
Arsenal
The most galling element of this Arsenal season is that this was a campaign of fine margins that led to unacceptably cavernous gaps to the top. Mikel Arteta’s team lost only four times but were repeatedly unable to turn one point into three. Fourteen draws is unacceptable for a title-chasing team.
Most frustrating of all was Arsenal’s performance against the middle pack; that should cause serious scrutiny. From the 12 games against those clubs who finished between eighth and 13th, Arsenal took just 16 points. You could make the case for missing an elite striker in almost all of those fixtures.
Arteta’s tenure need not be defined by this season – nearly moments and just-not-quites. But it probably does have to be significant silverware in 2025-26 to avoid that. In domestic competitions over the last four seasons (without winning a trophy), they have finished behind, or been eliminated by: Manchester City, Liverpool, Newcastle, Manchester United, West Ham, Brighton, Chelsea, Tottenham and Nottingham Forest. It has to be their turn next.
Player of the Year: Declan Rice
Breakout star: Myles Lewis-Skelly
Manchester City
The worst campaign since Pep Guardiola’s first in England. My greatest surprise is that Guardiola still clearly believes that he has the energy to rebuild another team given the evident strain over the last nine months. The charges continue to hang over the club and may shape his ability to do so.
City suffered with injury issues, not least the continued absence of the best defensively-minded midfielder in the world. But when you are a super club with super wealth, excuses evaporate immediately. Guardiola’s team looked out of ideas with previously effective creative forces forced to the fringe of the team.
Their propensity to concede goals after dominating without scoring became City’s defining characteristic for a while; it ruined their chances of a domestic trophy at Wembley. Champions League qualification is a saving grace, but 2024-25 became the end of a mini-era at Manchester City.
Player of the Year: Josko Gvardiol
Breakout star: Nico O’Reilly
Chelsea
A season that is very difficult to examine reasonably. Chelsea were title challengers at one point and then fell away to the point that it looked like all hope of making the Champions League had left Stamford Bridge. The recovery late in the season gives everything a tinge that most of their play this season has barely merited.
How much of this was engineered by the manager is open to interpretation: the uncharitable assessment of Enzo Maresca is that Cole Palmer carried the team for half a season.
Maresca will keep his job though, because top five was all that mattered this year. Chelsea’s creative accounting has permitted them to spend until now and we’ve seen nothing to suggest that they will not try to keep spending more.
Player of the Year: Cole Palmer
Breakout star: Tyrique George
Newcastle
Eddie Howe is the greatest Newcastle manager of the modern era (Photo: Getty)
When Newcastle lost at Brentford in December, they were behind Tottenham in the Premier League table having won two of their previous 11 league games. At that point, European qualification through their league position appeared unlikely.
So for Eddie Howe to have engineered a run of 49 points from 21 games since then, taking Newcastle back into the Champions League despite a health scare of his own is a monumental achievement given the relative spending limits of the last two years. To combine that with a trophy at Wembley establishes Howe as the greatest Newcastle manager of the modern era.
Thoughts now turn to the summer and increased budgets, but Newcastle must ensure not to throw out the baby with bathwater. It is Howe’s work in improving players he inherits that has laid the foundations for this season’s overachievement. Don’t just splurge and lose that.
Player of the Year: Jacob Murphy
Breakout star: Lewis Hall
Aston Villa
Qualifying for the Champions League once allows you to dream. Qualifying for the Champions League in consecutive seasons would have been the game changer. Given the money spent here and the need to meet financial limitations, it may have platformed Aston Villa’s entire future.
This was still a fantastic campaign, given the management of European football with the Premier League and their participation deep into the Champions League (including pushing Paris Saint-Germain all the way). Villa’s work over the second half of the season represented one of the achievements of the season. Having struggled to follow up midweek European adventure with Premier League consistency, they then won nine of their 11 league games heading into the final day.
That final day will linger long in the memory, though, and it really could change their short-term future. Will Villa’s best hope of getting back at Europe’s top table come through winning the Europa League?
Player of the Year: Youri Tielemans
Breakout star: Morgan Rogers
Nottingham Forest
If there is an iota of disappointment about missing out on the Champions League, let it not last for more than a second.
Nottingham Forest haven’t played European football since 1996. No team in Premier League history have ever before doubled their points total from one season to the next. That is the legacy of this season.
Ask any supporter for their player of the season and you will get a range of at least eight different answers. The defensive might platformed everything else, but the midfield combination of Morgan Gibbs-White and Eliott Anderson sparked counter attacks and the pace and skill of Callum Hudson-Odoi and Anthony Elanga troubled every opponent. We haven’t mentioned a striker with more than 20 league goals or the Golden Glove winner.
Player of the Year: Nikola Milenkovic
Breakout star: Elliot Anderson
Brighton
A season that comes laced with a little regret, given the fine start and strong finish. That only serves to reinforce how far this club has come over the last decade. Brighton finished eighth in the Premier League and the immediate reaction is not one of universal celebration.
The team tended to reflect its manager: often brilliant, often inconsistent, occasionally naive but almost always watchable. Fabian Hurzeler made some odd decisions and Brighton suffered weird lurches in form, but this can be the start of a project with him at the helm and the squad requires no major surgery this summer.
Only slight niggle, given what their rivals enjoyed this season: another deep cup run would be nice. Brighton have only got past the fifth round in the FA Cup or Carabao Cup once in the last five years.
Player of the Year: Carlos Baleba
Breakout star: Yankuba Minteh
Bournemouth
Bournemouth defender Dean Huijsen has completed a £50m move to Real Madrid (Photo: Getty)
It is an established pattern of Andoni Iraola’s career that his teams tend to tail off later in the season. He demands a high-energy, high-pressing style that can cause injuries and fatigue. Bournemouth were fifth in the table after beating Southampton in February. Then they took two points from 18 available, continued to stutter a little and ended up in midtable.
Which is absolutely fine. This is a club without large revenues and whose record signing was injured for much of the season, having sold Dominic Solanke to Tottenham. They have already sold Dean Huijsen for £50m to Real Madrid and it is likely that others – Justin Kluivert, Antoine Semenyo and Milos Kerkez – will be wanted by the apex predators in football’s food chain.
So you enjoy the best moments. Bournemouth are now an established Premier League side who dreamt big during the autumn and winter. They beat Arsenal, Manchester City, Manchester United, Newcastle and Tottenham, clubs who have spent most of the last 100 years in a different sphere to them. These are times to remember.
Player of the Year: Milos Kerkez
Breakout star: Dean Huijsen
Brentford
A seriously impressive season, even if there was no European qualification to act as the ultimate crowning glory. Brentford finished 16th last season, sold their centre forward and then saw his replacement get ruled out for most of the season with a serious knee injury. But Yoane Wissa and Bryan Mbeumo became an even more effective partnership – the rise of Mikkel Damsgaard as a creative force hauled Brentford forward.
The final piece of this jigsaw is improving their record against bigger clubs (especially those whose name is bigger than their current performance). In 12 league games against “Big Six” sides, Brentford won once – at home to Manchester United. A decent cup run as a Premier League side would also be nice.
As with Brighton, though, Brentford are victims of their own success. They have a fantastic manager and a squad with individual stars but who come together to create an inspirational team mentality. Now to hope it doesn’t get picked apart over the summer.
Player of the Year: Bryan Mbeumo
Breakout star: Mikkel Damsgaard
Fulham
An odd season. Until Christmas, it seemed like Fulham might genuinely push for a spot in the top seven and European football. And then, in 2025, a maddeningly inconsistent second half of the season. Over a period of 17 league matches, Fulham didn’t draw once but also never won or lost more than twice in a row. They would beat Newcastle and Forest and then lose to Palace, or beat Liverpool but lose to Everton.
The most frustrating element, bar their own club gentrifying the stadium at the expense of existing local fans, was Fulham’s performance against the teams around them: nine points from 12 games against Bournemouth, Palace, Everton, Manchester United, Wolves and West Ham.
Marco Silva deserves a little better, you’d think. Having stabilised after the loss of Joao Palhinha and kept Fulham punching above their financial weight, it’s time to let him revitalise this team or risk interest in a mightily effective head coach.
Player of the Year: Alex Iwobi
Breakout star: Sasa Lukic (this was the hardest of the lot, given the age of the squad – can you break out at 28?)
Crystal Palace
A trite observation, but a fair one: Palace could have finished in 17th place and this season would have been monumental because of the events at Wembley.
When you play a semi-final and final as underdogs both times, score four times and somehow avoid conceding, nothing else matters. Thousands of people in tears, desperately hugging those they love and those whom they had never met before; this is all that matters.
Not that the Premier League season was unforgettable, you understand. Palace took three points from their first eight games (Michael Olise gone, Jean-Philippe Mateta tired, Marc Guehi’s head scrambled and Eberechi Eze double-marked) but then came roaring back to be as good as most top-six sides from December onwards. And then came the magic…
Player of the Year: Daniel Munoz
Breakout star: Maxence Lacroix
Everton
Everton have bid farewell to Goodison Park after 133 years (Photo: Getty)
The season during which everything changed forever, or at least that is the plan.
It is easy to forget now that Everton won only three of their first 21 league matches this season. The goodwill of the Friedkin takeover, the immediate improvement following David Moyes’ return and the growing emotion about saying farewell to Goodison covered everything like a thick blanket. Each offered reasons to be hugely thankful and relieved.
The playing squad was never as bad as Sean Dyche made it seem during his final 12 months; everybody was ready for a fresh start. But Moyes managed to inject some attacking verve, most notably through Iliman Ndiaye without obviously sacrificing any defensive resilience. Everton didn’t become brilliant, only functional; functional was plenty enough to stay up this season.
Player of the Year: Jordan Pickford
Breakout star: Jake O’Brien (as a right-back)
Wolves
You do have to admire Wolves’s ability to alienate their supporters, pushing them to the point of frothy-mouthed mutiny, only to make one appointment that quickly gets everybody back onside within a few weeks.
But even by their own standards, this was a mad old season. Supporters suffered Gary O’Neil telling them exactly why things couldn’t be much better when their side were 19th in the Premier League. And then their club appointed a Portuguese head coach (mmm, warm familiarity) and promptly made that position look utterly false including a run of six straight league wins.
Matheus Cunha leaving makes it a(nother) big summer at Molineux, but Vitor Pereira has generated enough pride and reconnection between supporters and team that they don’t have to spend half of it fighting PR fires.
Player of the Year: Joao Gomes
Breakout star: Jorge Strand Larsen
West Ham
Honestly just the longest season of any Premier League club. It is surely more than ten months ago that Julen Lopetegui was discussing his philosophy and the potential impact of new signings that he could build a long tenure around?
Two things that epitomise this West Ham season:
They haven’t won two, drawn two or lost two league games in a row all season; ingloriously inconsistent.
They signed a player for more than £25m last summer who hasn’t been loaned out, hasn’t suffered a single injury and yet has played 140 league minutes. This isn’t normal behaviour for mid-table (at best) clubs.
Player of the Year: Aaron Wan-Bissaka
Breakout star: Oliver Scarles
Manchester United
The worst league season in Manchester United’s history, when taking into account the money spent, the change of manager mid-season and the pre-season expectations to at least compete in the top half. Everybody involved, from the very top of the club to each player, should be thoroughly ashamed of their output.
It has been a catalogue of strategic stupidity. They kept Erik ten Hag when he should have gone last summer and were thus forced into a change. They coerced their long-term option into taking a firefighting role and it has looked pathetically unimpressive since.
The signings look bad. The existing players look bad. It’s not just that they don’t score enough goals, but that you can’t see how the team is trying to create chances. It is not that they concede silly goals, but that everybody takes turns to make mistakes. Still, good news about the new stadium.
Player of the Year: Bruno Fernandes
Breakout star: Amad Diallo
Tottenham
An extreme version of Crystal Palace, which is an odd thing to be writing about Tottenham. The league results didn’t really matter towards the end due to the pursuit of actual silverware for the first time in 17 years. Winning the Europa League is a game changer and yet the domestic results got so bad that they started to matter again.
Good luck if you can work this one out. Injuries clearly reduced Spurs’ natural ceiling in the league, but nowhere near to the level that their results were acceptable and the style of Ange Postecoglou’s football likely exacerbated them anyway. Postecoglou showed little sign of tactical compromise in domestic competitions and then produced dour defensive might against Eintracht Frankfurt and Manchester United.
Either they back Postecoglou to buy experience, pick out the best bits of both approaches and let him have a shot at the Champions League. Or they use qualification for that competition to attract a high-end coach whose methods might provide results that are a little easier to get a handle on. I have no idea which is best.
Player of the Year: No idea. Brennan Johnson, somehow? Pedro Porro?
Breakout star: Lucas Bergvall
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Leicester City
Not saying that this was a terrible Leicester City season, but I think the greatest cause for cheer was learning that they would avoid a charge from the Premier League in midseason. And by May, most supporters wished that points deduction had come after all because they were being relegated anyway.
They shouldn’t have appointed Steve Cooper if the supporters weren’t going to take to safety-first football from a former Nottingham Forest manager. They shouldn’t have spent so much money on average midfielders. They should have given Jamie Vardy more help up front. They shouldn’t have kept James Justin in the firing line for so long. They shouldn’t have appointed Ruud van Nistelrooy nor been hoodwinked by a couple of games for Manchester United.
And now the charges have landed. And now next season will be far harder than their last time in the Championship. A huge second chance, entirely wasted.
Player of the Year: Mads Hermansen
Breakout star: Bilal El Khannouss
Ipswich Town
Bitterly disappointing on every level. I’m well aware that Ipswich Town had a huge amount of business to do after consecutive promotions.
I’m also well aware that the finances of the Premier League make life inordinately difficult for a promoted club without recent top-flight broadcasting revenue. This is not me lambasting Ipswich as a troupe of fraudsters and fools.
But we did expect more than 22 points and a relegation that was written in pen from February onwards, not least because Kieran McKenna’s side offered occasional glimpses before falling backwards almost immediately. The home record was particularly appalling: seven points in 18 games before the final day. I think that does represent underachievement, even given the financial chasm.
Player of the Year: Dara O’Shea
Breakout star: Liam Delap
Southampton
What can you say? If any Southampton supporter is reading this, honestly what are you doing? It’s only going to make you feel more miserable and the season is over now so you can get into a different sport until August and pretend that football doesn’t exist.
Not the worst Premier League season campaign of any club, but statistically in the top two. It started horrifically, barely got any better after Russell Martin was sacked and has ended with the only positive spin being taking one more point than Derby County’s record setters.
After Burnley and Southampton in the last two seasons, a message to those coming up from the Championship: your defensive players will have less time on the ball when passing and receiving passes to feet. It’s tough out there.
Player of the Year: Mateus Fernandes
Breakout star: Tyler Dibling