It could be a season where the Premier League sweeps the board in Europe, yet the most significant contributions to English football may have come from Leeds United and Hull City, along with Sunderland and Coventry City.
It might seem odd to say if Crystal Palace, Aston Villa and – least likely but far from impossible – Arsenal walk off with the continent's top prizes, but 2025-26 has not felt like a classic Premier League season.
After 22 years between drinks, Arsenal just had to win the title any way they could, and after a Pep Guardiola-inspired era of overplaying, plenty are now following apprentice Mikel Arteta's more brutalist style. The early months of 2026 in particular felt a lot more about winning ugly than the beautiful game.
UPSETTING THE ODDS: Dominic Calvert-Lewin scores in Leeds United's 3-1 win at home to club world champions Chelsea (Image: Stu Forster/Getty Images)placeholder image
UPSETTING THE ODDS: Dominic Calvert-Lewin scores in Leeds United's 3-1 win at home to club world champions Chelsea (Image: Stu Forster/Getty Images)
But this is also the year when spells were broken, and that could – only could – prove more significant.
The Premier League had been going stale. Manchester City and Liverpool kept winning it, the promoted teams were stinking it out and parachute payments were almost becoming trampoline payments.
For Leeds to stay up too should give huge encouragement to Hull and the class of 2026.
EXCEDING EXPECTATIONS: Club captain Luke O'Nien celebrates Sunderland reaching Europe for the first time since 1973-74 (Image: Stu Forster/Getty Images)placeholder image
EXCEDING EXPECTATIONS: Club captain Luke O'Nien celebrates Sunderland reaching Europe for the first time since 1973-74 (Image: Stu Forster/Getty Images)
The Whites did not scrimp last summer, spending a nine-figure amount reinforcing a 100-point Championship squad, but it was not spending on the scale of Sunderland's – financed in part by selling Jobe Bellingham and Tommy Watson – or Nottingham Forest's rule-breaking 2022.
For Leeds to win as many points as relegated Leicester City and Ipswich Town combined last season – never mind bottom-of-the-table Southampton – was significant.
That the teams in 18th went down with 25 and 26 points in the previous two years was embarrassing. This season West Ham United had 39 – proper, healthy competition.
For all six newly-promoted sides to be relegated in the last two campaigns was not just humbling for a league which prides itself on competitiveness, it was beginning to look like a closed shop. From that springs complacency and stagnation. New faces always bring a freshness – so long as they are competitive.
HULL OF AN ACHIEVEMENT: Hull City's players celebrate promotion to the Premier League (Image: Paul ELLIS / AFP via Getty Images)placeholder image
HULL OF AN ACHIEVEMENT: Hull City's players celebrate promotion to the Premier League (Image: Paul ELLIS / AFP via Getty Images)
Even in "football started in 1992" terms, neither Coventry, Ipswich nor Hull are new, but the Tigers have been out of the top flight for nine years, the Sky Blues a quarter of a century, during which time their journey to re-find themselves dropped in on League Two.
But this was the first time in seven years two of the three promoted clubs did not have parachute payments.
You could argue if Southampton and Sheffield United had not been so daft – the Saints in spying on rivals' training sessions and the Blades in sacking Chris Wilder and ripping up a team which had just won 90 points – Ipswich might have had some company. But they did not.
TERRIBLE MOVE: Sheffield United wasted their parachute payment by replacing manager Chris Wilder with Ruben Selles (Image: Ed Sykes/Getty Images)placeholder image
TERRIBLE MOVE: Sheffield United wasted their parachute payment by replacing manager Chris Wilder with Ruben Selles (Image: Ed Sykes/Getty Images)
Coventry have built incrementally with semi-finals in their last three seasons – two in the play-offs, one in the FA Cup. You know, like the Blades ought to have instead of letting the data nerds wreak havoc.
As England increasingly dominates European competition – for eight, possibly nine of the Premier League's 20 teams to be playing in it next season is not good for its health – perhaps it is having a handicapping effect here, if not on the elite, then the tier below.
Leeds finished above Tottenham Hotspur, the Europa League champions who finished fourth in this season's overblown Champions League group stage.
They looked down on Crystal Palace, bogged down in the Conference League after qualifying for it by winning the FA Cup in 2025.
They were also above Nottingham Forest, who made it through to the semi-finals of this year's Europa League before being knocked out by eventual winners Villa.
Club world champions Chelsea finished in a worn-out 10th and fellow Champions League side Newcastle United were a leggy 12th. Even a jaded Liverpool were able to finish fifth, but not above Manchester United, who played just two cup ties all season.
Time will tell what are blips and what are trends, but with a Pepless City and an underperforming Liverpool having lost their feel of invincibility, and with promotion to the Premier League no longer looking like a return ticket, it all just feels a bit fresher right now.