Will Liverpool retain their crown? Is this Arsenal’s year? Do Manchester United have any hope whatsoever? We answer those questions in our Power Ranking of the Premier League‘s title contenders for 2025-26.
The new season is upon us and it looks as though the title race could be wide open, with at least four clubs in the mix. But who are the favourites and which sides have an outside glimmer of hope?
Without further ado, we’ve ranked 10 teams from the least to most likely to lift the Premier League trophy next May. Keep checking back on this one as we’ll keep it updated throughout the season.
10. Crystal Palace
Tenth place is always going to be a bit academic, isn’t it? When was the last time 10 teams challenged for the Premier League title? We might well reduce this list to five after a few months, once the stragglers fall away.
Palace win the title in a surprisingly high 2.9% of OPTA’s 10,000 simulations, which are higher odds than we’d give them in real life. That’s about five times likelier than Manchester United.
The data firm know what they’re talking about, though, and it points to their underlying stats under Oliver Glasner being especially impressive.
You imagine in those few simulations, they keep Eberechi Eze and Marc Guehi and adapt seamlessly to the Thursday-Sunday Conference League grind. We’re not quite so convinced.
9. Brighton & Hove Albion
OPTA are hotter on Palace than their cross-M23 rivals.
We’d have Brighton just ahead in the fairytale stakes, just about. We can’t see a Leicester City story this season, but if it is to happen, you imagine it’ll be another club with no European football.
Brighton boast an excellent squad; there’s a crop of very good young players who presumably have a higher ceiling to come. They haven’t been pillaged to the same extent as Brentford and Bournemouth. They only finished eight points behind Chelsea last term and dropped a lot of points in the fine margins.
It’s not completely unthinkable that everything clicks into Fabian Hurzeler’s Seagulls into something spectacular. In all likelihood, that “spectacular” would be – at most – a surprise top-four push, though.
8. Aston Villa
Unai Emery is a superb manager, but he’s not a miracle worker.
Aside from the formality of winning Ligue 1 with PSG, he’s never really challenged for league titles. That’s no slight on him; he’s always taken charge of clubs in no position to – Valencia, Sevilla and Villarreal were never had the players or resources to topple Spain’s two behemoths.
Villa have spent ambitiously, but PSR restrictions appear to have taken the project as far as it can go. For now. Once again, bloodying the noses of the Premier League’s traditional ‘big six’ while going far in the Europa League (Emery’s speciality) would be a more than decent return.
7. Tottenham
Paradoxically enough, we might’ve bumped Spurs up a place or two had they lost the Europa League final. Champions League qualification doesn’t appear to have had the requisite effect in terms of investment and attracting transformative signings.
Full focus on the league and time on the training pitch for new boss Thomas Frank would’ve boosted their Premier League dark horse status.
Add in a gruelling Champions League group phase and a campaign likely to run until early 2026 at least, that makes top four the realistic height of their ambitions this season.
Still, Joao Palhinha looks an exceptional signing. They might add further quality (Eze?) and the UEFA Super Cup hinted at a much more defensively solid side – before ultimately the same old Spursiness came through in the end.
We expect Frank’s Spurs to be much improved and considerably tougher to beat. How could they not be? But finding the winning consistency to challenge for the title is surely only a dream.
The departure of Son Heung-min also begs the question: Do you have to go back to the days before Gareth Bale and Luka Modric to find a Tottenham squad so severely lacking in star quality?
6. Newcastle United
The last time Eddie Howe’s Magpies qualified for the Champions League, their lack of squad depth was severely exposed. Anthony Elanga, Aaron Ramsdale and Malick Thiaw all look like decent signings, but are they enough? Will they even raise the level of Howe’s best XI?
And that’s ignoring the £150million question hanging over the club.
It looks as though Alexander Isak has burned his bridges on Tyneside, but there is a precedent for players returning with their tails between their legs after being denied a dream move.
Harry Kane didn’t dip in 2022-23 after staying put at Spurs. Luis Suarez’s brilliance inspired Liverpool to an unexpected title challenge in 2013-14. Cristiano Ronaldo stayed one more year at Manchester United, firing them to a third successive league title in 2008-09.
Stranger things have happened. We’re not banking on it with Isak, though.
5. Manchester United
Here’s your headline hot take. Bear with us.
This isn’t a top 10 prediction. It’s assessing the chances of a title challenge. We’d probably knock the Red Devils down a few spots in a table rundown, given they finished 10 places and 24 points behind Newcastle last term. That’s a lot of ground to make up.
We still have major question marks over Ruben Amorim, who averaged a relegation-level 1.00 points per game last season. It’s far likelier that he gets sacked before Christmas than masterminds a title charge. OPTA are negative enough to deem them more likely to get relegated than to finish in the top four. Oof.
Frankly, it’s almost impossible to overstate how bad they were last season. There’s the doom and gloom out of the way. The only way is up, right?
Amorim has title-winning pedigree. Winning the Primeira Liga probably means little compared to the Premier League, but you might’ve said the same about Arne Slot and the Eredivisie. And Sporting were similarly starved of success when Amorim turned their fortunes around.
They’ve spent in the region of £200million in bolstering their ailing attack. Bryan Mbeumo and Matheus Cunha are relatively proven in the Premier League, while Benjamin Sesko has the potential to replicate Viktor Gyokeres as the free-scoring focal point of Amorim’s system.
Add in a game-changing midfielder like Carlos Baleba and a serious goalkeeper (Gianluigi Donnarumma?) and things could suddenly look very different.
Claudio Ranieri at Leicester in 2015-16. Antonio Conte at Chelsea in 2016-17. A proper pre-season, the right signings and no European distractions are the recipe for a project to take shape faster than anyone might’ve predicted.
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4. Chelsea
Take that very optimistic spin on Manchester United’s summer with a large grain of salt. It suddenly looks as though the Premier League has a settled top four for the first time in ages.
That’s evidenced by all 32 BBC pundits choosing the same four clubs for Champions League qualification. There’s a wide-ranging consensus that Chelsea will finish fourth.
We’d chastise the football commentariat for a lack of imagination, but we’re no different – there appears to be a massive gap between Chelsea and the unlikely lads that comprise the rest of this list.
Chelsea bring us to the realm of semi-realistic title contenders. Things are finally taking shape after the scattergun recruitment of the early Tood Boehly years. The focus on youth points to a trajectory in the right direction.
The Club World Cup final masterclass victory over PSG hinted that the penny has dropped. Signings like Jorrel Hato and Joao Pedro immediately look like significant upgrades. Cole Palmer could be a title-delivering Player of the Season.
We’d offset all that positivity with how much more the Champions League will demand of their first-teamers than the light ‘n breezy Conference League campaign last term. So we expect that to balance out with a second successive fourth-place finish. Just like everybody else.
3. Manchester City
Every time City have lost a key player, Pep Guardiola’s winning machine has had this unerring habit of just whirring on unabated.
Kevin De Bruyne is undoubtedly one of the best players in Premier League history, but City never looked back on Yaya Toure, David Silva, Vincent Kompany and Sergio Aguero. Same again?
The last time City ended up miles behind a title-winning Liverpool, they came roaring back in an immensely impressive fashion, topping the table four years in a row.
With Guardiola in the dugout, you can never rule out that happening again. Get Rodri back to full fitness and Erling Haaland well supplied by a talented supporting cast, and that’s two major cogs of a pretty formidable machine.
Those are far from guaranteed, though, and we’re still not sure of the shape of this new-look City.
2. Liverpool
Arne Slot’s Reds won the title at a canter last season. Not only did they seal the title with games to spare, but all the underlying metrics suggested they were by far and away the best team in the country.
We totally understand everyone backing them to retain their crown – from pundits including Alan Shearer, Joe Cole and Owen Hargreaves to the likes of OPTA, The Athletic and the BBC.
But it’s been a massive summer of upheaval at Anfield. Their 2025-26 team will be considerably different to last season’s champions.
Better? Quite possibly. Florian Wirtz and Hugo Ekitike are immensely exciting signings. Milos Kerkez and Jeremie Frimpong are fantastic attacking full-backs. Add Isak, and Liverpool will be downright frightening in the final third.
But might they lose their balance? They’ve looked open down the flanks in pre-season. Trent Alexander-Arnold was a huge part of their dynamic over the past five years. Adapting to a different one will be easier said than done.
Could Wirtz be another Thiago Alcantara or Juan Sebastian Veron? Where the talent is unquestionable but the fit not quite right?
Will senior players like Virgil van Dijk and Mohamed Salah be quite so totemic yet again? The Community Shield was just a blip… wasn’t it?
Could their relative lack of depth in defence and midfield come back to bite them? Will they miss Luis Diaz and Darwin Nunez more than they might expect?
That’s a lot of questions. But we’re very excited to find out the answers.
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1. Arsenal
As outlined above, we don’t know how good Chelsea, Manchester City or Liverpool will be this season. We can take a pretty good guess with Arsenal.
This is a settled team. We know what they’re about. Martin Zubimendi and Viktor Gyokeres should improve them considerably in midfield and attack. Noni Madueke’s had his critics but he’ll offer considerably more than Raheem Sterling did last season.
A repeat of last term’s ongoing injury and suspension issues appears unlikely, too.
The only other team to finish 2nd three seasons in a row was Arsene Wenger’s Gunners back in the early noughties. Then they won the title. We can see history repeating itself, given how methodically Andrea Berta has addressed the gaps in Mikel Arteta’s squad, which might well be the deepest and most balanced in the league.
Dare we say it, but the only thing that can stop them is themselves. The psychodrama ends here. No excuses. This is Arsenal’s time.
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