Having read the many articles about this Newcastle United season and what we should and shouldn’t do with Eddie Howe, I felt that our success has been diluted a little by the fact that it has been spread over several competitions.
Doing pretty well in several competitions isn’t as good as winning one…but it should count for something.
So I embarked on an interesting experiment this week with my friend Claude (since Chat Gpt has fallen out of favour) to establish a better measure of success than Premier League position.
The starting premise is, if you take every competition that each Premier League team has been a part of this season and apply points based on how many teams they have bettered in that competition, you can have a much more accurate picture of their overall success this season.
The Scoring Logic
PL Points: Total teams in competition- (Current Position)
Cup Points (FA and EFL): Total PL teams in competition – (Number of PL teams remaining/progressing further)
Euro Points (CL/EL/ECL): Total teams in competition- (Number of teams remaining/progressing further).
(Note: Newcastle United is ranked above the other Round of 16 exits (Man City, Chelsea, Spurs) due to first leg draw.
The results
PL Efficiency Leaderboard – March 31, 2026
Rank Club PL Euro EFL Cup FA Cup Total
1 Arsenal 19 28* 18 12* 77
2 Man City 18 25 19 12* 74
3 Chelsea 14 26 16 12* 68
4 Aston Villa 16 28* 9 10 63
5 Newcastle 8 27 16 9 60
6 Liverpool 15 28* 0 12* 55
7 Crystal Palace 6 28* 9 12* 55
8 Nott’m Forest 4 28* 9 11 52
9 Tottenham 3 26 9 5 43
10 Man Utd 17 0 9 12* 38
11 Fulham 11 0 9 9 29
12 Sunderland 9 0 9 9 27
13 Everton 12 0 9 5 26
14 Brighton 10 0 9 5 24
15 Brentford 13 0 7 1 21
16 West Ham 2 0 3 12* 17
17 Leeds 5 0 0 12* 17
18 Bournemouth 7 0 9 0 16
19 Burnley 1 0 0 5 6
20 Wolves 0 0 0 5 5
You will see that with this measure, Newcastle United have had a pretty decent season despite injuries, transfer debacles and misfiring strikers.
I should note however that this is a snapshot of the current state. Starred teams are still in ongoing competitions and can accrue further points. That said, it’s unlikely that more than two or three will.
Let me know your thoughts.
Does this change the way you see this Newcastle United season.
Should we keep Eddie Howe after all, and most importantly, are my figures correct?