It’s been five days since the 2025-26 Premier League season ended and I’m already nostalgic for it.
Of course, the football world has already moved on – we have a Champions League final on Saturday, and anyway it’s all been preamble to the biggest, baddest, best-ever World Cup™.
But I think in a very short time we’ll be considering this season of top-flight football to have been one of the greats. It’s not a season of consistent quality that has set me alight – though Manchester City’s 2-1 win against Arsenal at the Etihad last month had me cooing. The thrillingly tight contest, the duels, the incisive passing and Rayan Cherki’s fittingly stunning opener; I melt.
People will complain about what we saw on the pitch, argue that Arsenal bitched and grappled their way to the title in an unbecoming manner. But they were the best team in England and they won it. It may have been a slog towards the end, but at times in their campaign they were irresistible.
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I loved 2025-26 because every club got to have their own, gripping narrative arc. There was, and I mean this literally, something for everyone. Tales of greatness – both sudden and long-planned – and of absolute, breathtaking incompetence.
There was a real title race, so nearly to the final day. And there was a relegation scrap that ran into the final minutes of Sunday afternoon, between two clubs whose financial might should make this impossible – but instead made it spectacular.
Bournemouth finished sixth and will play in Europe for the very first time. A club with a stadium capacity of 11,000, like Luton Town, they were bottom of League Two in 2009. Andoni Iraola’s approach to management should be being taught.
Might Chelsea redistribute funds to a lesson? Four places below, with nothing meaningful to show for £1.5billion spent in four years of BlueCo ownership, the club’s coked-up uncle vibes have been largely amusing, unless they’re your team.
Aston Villa, meanwhile, built from their stint in the Championship to earn their Champions League place twice this season. Algorithm fans’ favourite club Brighton return to Europe for only the second time, earning Conference League football. Depending on how they manage their inflated match schedule, this is a tournament they could win. It’d be their first-ever major trophy. They should talk to Crystal Palace, who are making a habit of them.
And how about Sunderland? After promotion from the Championship via the play-offs had started to look as though it was a one-season thing, the Black Cats put together a season almost without precedent. They qualified for Europe in seventh and, perhaps more importantly for their fans, finished above Newcastle.
The neat wrapping of narrative threads is so strong, it feels like the end of a very successful Netflix series. One a few seasons down the line, perhaps the sixth, beginning after Leicester won the league.
Manchester City is the troubled, brilliant lead embodied by their manager Pep Guardiola, the passionate hero who changes all around him, winning success beyond all others except season four’s Scottish daredevil Sir Alex.
Pep’s the headline but in case you missed the era-defining nature of his departure, John Stones and Bernardo Silva go too: the latter the perfect Pep player, the former the last remaining starter from his first City team.
The 115 charges must be the narrative thrust for season seven, episode one at least – and they might mean another character grabs the spotlight. Could it be Arsenal?
Title-winners they may be, but they’ve not been driving the plot. Their role is as a slightly evil Neville Longbottom. Hard-working, long the butt of the joke, they got fit in sixth form. Have they got main-character energy? Shooting begins in August.
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