Premier League - The big show is back!

Slot has a harder job this time with four in frame for the title

Premier League returns with new thrills and a new threat 

Clubs are spending like there’s no tomorrow, from Sesko to Wirtz and Gyökeres, but who can say yet who has found the right chemistry?

United will as ever exist in their own group of one, simultaneously epic and brittle

15 Aug 2025 - The Guardian

Barney Ronay

And I heard, as it were, a sound of thunder. I heard multitudes marching to the big kettle drum. Not to mention, it should be said, even larger multitudes talking on the wicked and unholy internet about agent sightings, failed herewe-gos and the Alexander Isak wheel of global conspiracy.

Let he that hath understanding count the number! Because, let’s face it, it really is an absolute beast of a number, 215 live Premier League games on Sky Sports alone, an endless rolling debauchery of games, of graphics that go whoosh, of arguments by the lighted dias.

Welcome to the start of the Premier League season 2025-26. It is, as ever, a thrilling prospect. The opening round of fixtures will play out across this long weekend with the familiar sense of unspent energy, shapes, tides, narratives that will reveal themselves only in the slog through winter into spring.

There are very good reasons why this thing has become the world’s dominant pop cultural stage. It works. No matter how sated you might have become by the end of the last one, there is always renewal and fresh hunger. Albeit with an even stronger sense this time of shifting planes, hard lines dissolving, a Premier League that is, for the first time in some time, a little menaced by omens, portents and notes of horn-parping rapture.

Two significant things have happened this summer. First, Premier League clubs have spent like the world is on fire. The running total on basic transfer fees is more than £2bn with two weeks to go, already the second-largest ever, with a shot at beating 2023’s all-time high, post-Covid.

This has been classic muscle-flexing Big Window Energy. Nine clubs, according to Transfermarkt, have ticked up more than £60m on ins minus outs. Manchester United and Arsenal are more than £200m. Liverpool, the champions, have spent £253m gross in regearing the starting XI, part of a wider trend of genuine churn, book-balancing and headcount shift. If this feels a little wild in places it is perhaps a reflection of that second element, the feeling of rumblings  off stage, other powers rising, a war in heaven about to break. There are good reasons Sky has chosen to gorge itself on English football this season, recentring on its key asset.

This has been the founding commercial relationship for both parties, and a relatively simple dynamic. Put on the show. Sell the show to people whose business is screwing metal dishes to a wall, who can then sell it on to an audience watching a screen from its sofa. Defined territories. Easy to defend from outside interference. That model has been screwed into place for 35 years now, its coherence a key source of the league’s global power.

It is already being disrupted. This summer FIFA gouged its fingers into domestic football, juicing up its invitees to the Club World Cup with vast amounts of Saudi-backed money, skewing the domestic balance of income, focus, internal tension. Behold the bald Swiss power broker on his great white throne, saying “I will make all things new”. These structures, these watertight shapes, are not football’s final form.

There are signs of the times everywhere, indicators of control being ceded in plain sight. The expanded Champions League is already having a similar stratifying influence. Regulations feel more mutable and vulnerable to challenge, unless you’re Crystal Palace and forgot to play the game. La Liga is playing matches overseas. The Premier League is launching a Netflix-style app. A baby has been born in Germany speaking only in Thierry Henry memes. That golden ladder is reaching down. Flick forward five years. How much longer can the centre hold?

In the meantime we have more boom times, a fever of commerce. Buy, spend, shore up your place in the new heaven and earth. It makes the current season feel both oddly reassuring and safe in its August-to-May routines, but also hard to read.

In recent years there have been three distinct Premier League tiers: the lanterne rouge, the back-markers; the well-run middle; and the overclass. But even within this who can say who is good right now, who is healthy, who has found the right chemistry?

Partly this is related to the excitable nature of much of the team building. What kind of signings are the current wave of US-facing, entertainment product owners most likely to go all in for? The answer seems to be whizzy attackers with resale value. Florian Wirtz for £116m, Hugo Ekitiké £79m, Benjamin Sesko £73.7m, Viktor Gyökeres £63.5m. These are all exciting and unpredictable additions. Nobody knows how they will fall, who will fire, which of these variables will resolve itself.

It still seems safe to say the league title will be divvied up between four contenders. Arne Slot has a harder job this season in some ways. Ticking over, rejigging, fixing the joins is one thing, and it was expertly done. What is required now is now an act of major, highintensity rebuild on the hoof. It is an entirely different kind of test.

Nobody knows whether Manchester City are back, half-back or non-back. Pep Guardiola talks only in prophecies and gospels and sooths these days. Some key expertise has left the club. Rodri and Tijjani Reijnders look a very good midfield. There is also quite a lot of filler around.

Arsenal will be fascinating to watch. Here are a team who already have the best defence. Add a new central midfield and a goalscorer with the nickname the Cannibal, and there really is nowhere to hide. This will not be a personnel issue or a stadium issue or a vibe issue. It will be an issue of will and nerve and the bravery to play on the edge, to take risks as well as squeeze.

Are Chelsea good now? Will they be exhausted or energised? They have a thrillingly strong midfield and a fresh cutting edge. They really should be title contenders.

In the tier below, Newcastle fans have finally found something objectionable about their owners, specifically the inability to run a successful player recruitment and retention arm. But the team are still very strong.

Aston Villa can get on with winning the Europa League. Manchester United will as ever exist in their own group of one, simultaneously epic, moreish, big-time, brittle, rickety and utterly brown paper and string. Sesko could be an excellent signing, and has the right élite vibes. On one hand there has to be an improvement. On the other the midfield is still two bad games from thawing out the cryogenic chamber and having another go with Casemiro.

In the middle range, AKA Brightfordmouth, the challenge is to resist the effects of being cannibalised and rebuild once more. Crystal Palace look strong and motivated. Everton could have their best season for a while. Fulham have failed to add much but should be fine because of Marco Silva + London stadium bonus + just enough good players. Nottingham Forest have the Europa League to cope with. A poor start could be a problem. Spurs could be anything, or simply Spurs. West Ham’s problem will be patience, letting Graham Potter’s influence swell like a tuberous root vegetable.

Burnley and Scott Parker will be a fascinating contrast, a far more defensively robust prospect than the Vincent Kompany job pitch project last time around, with its doomed brand-building style. Leeds have energy and a sense of collectivism at Elland Road, although somehow it is still hard to avoid the idea of Daniel Farke ruefully explaining things on Match of the Day. Sunderland will Sunderland. Wolves are going to have to do something surprising.

The end result is a notably rigid hierarchy of clubs, a league table that could well simply end up in the exact order listed here. But which still seems to be operating in a state of high-end jeopardy just off stage, bonds and structures being tested, a sense of some looming rapture yet to reveal itself.

Take your sickle and reap. Don’t get left behind. Reach up towards those new sources of light and heat. Chelsea are world champions. A dog with the head of Jamie Carragher has been found wandering the Mendip Hills talking about defensive body position. And now the thing that never ends is all set to start once again.

***

What goes up must go down: 

can top flight’s promoted clubs avoid relegation?

We assess the chances of Premier League’s new teams avoiding the same fate of promoted clubs for the past two seasons. Can Burnley, Leeds and Sunderland buck trend?

By Andy Hunter and Louise Taylor

The gap grows bigger each year, with promoted clubs at a disadvantage from the off owing to PSR

15 Aug 2025 - The Guardian

LT

Burnley 

Reasons to be cheerful

There are numerous reasons behind the growing trend of promoted teams going straight back down with a decreasing number of points. One – having to adjust from dominating possession in the Championship to seeing much less of the ball in the Premier League – may not trouble Burnley quite as much as their predecessors.

Scott Parker built the third promotion of his managerial career last season on the back of an outstanding defensive record along with a selfless, fierce team spirit. More pragmatic than Vincent Kompany, the previous manager to take Burnley up in convincing fashion, Parker is not as wedded to a style that can be found out at Premier League level without serious investment.

Burnley will be resilient, they have added experience in Kyle Walker and Martin Dubravka and they know what is in store. In Armando Broja, the club have acquired a talented striker determined to make up for time lost to injury.

Reasons to be fearful

Burnley spent about £100m after winning promotion under Kompany in 2023 and still went down with a measly 24 points. The gap grows bigger each year, with promoted clubs at a disadvantage from the off owing to the Premier League’s profitability and sustainability rules.

In James Trafford and CJ Egan-Riley, they have lost two key members of the defensive unit responsible for keeping 30 clean sheets last season and conceding 16 goals in 46 games – the best defensive record in English league history. Josh Brownhill, the captain and top goalscorer last term, has followed Egan-Riley in rejecting a new contract and leaving on a free transfer. Replacing the midfielder’s leadership and goals will not be easy.

Broja’s injury record has been a concern for several seasons and certain other new recruits are unproven or untested at Premier League level. (AH)

***

Leeds 

Reasons to be cheerful

They are no longer diminutive and a little lightweight; indeed at first glance neutrals may wonder whether they have got the class of 2025-26 confused with another club’s squad. In a physical sense at least, Leeds have morphed into a side of quite formidable stature with their eight summer signings averaging 6ft 2in. Leeds fans will not care too much about aesthetics if their team are able to muscle their way to survival, not to mention demonstrate much-needed improvement at set pieces. Among the arrivals is the 6ft 5in Brazil goalkeeper Lucas Perri, brought in from Lyon to replace the gifted, but erratic, Illan Meslier.

Perhaps equally important, last season’s Championship Golden Boot winner, Joël Piroe, has impressed in pre-season. Maybe, just maybe, the Dutch striker will shine in the Premier League. Behind Piroe, a central midfield featuring Anton Stach, Sean Longstaff, Ethan Ampadu and Ao Tanaka competing for places looks a reassuringly strong department in a division where Brentford, Wolves, Crystal Palace and West Ham look eminently capable of sliding into trouble.

Reasons to be fearful

There were genuine mitigating factors, but Farke endured immediate relegations after twice winning promotion with Norwich. Then there are the attacking gambles. Are Leeds really wise to place so much faith in the injury-prone former Everton and England centre-forward Dominic Calvert-Lewin and the similarly fragile former Wolfsburg and Germany striker Lukas Nmecha?

Not that the players have a monopoly on creaky, crumbling, joints. There are fears plans for the much-needed reconstruction and expansion of Elland Road may distract resources from the first team. Moreover, Leeds could well miss their former chief executive Angus Kinnear after his move to Everton. Kinnear was a very big Farke ally. Farke could also do with Manor Solomon still being in his side because the Israel international’s excellent wing play on loan was a big reason why Leeds won promotion. Solomon looks poised to leave Tottenham but, with the 26-year-old attracting interest from Premier League rivals and La Liga, enticing him back may be a losing battle. (LT)

***

Sunderland 

Reasons to be cheerful

They hold Enzo Le Fée’s registration. It is surely no coincidence the former Roma playmaker helped create all five goals Sunderland scored as they overcame first Coventry then Sheffield United to win promotion via the playoffs. His eye for a through ball promises to serve them well.

Sunderland are also dangerous and highly unpredictable down both wings, where Simon Adingra, a recent arrival from Brighton, promises to be a defender-destabilising opponent. Régis Le Bris is an excellent improver of young players and is no slave to philosophy. Expect Sunderland to alternate between counterattacking – arguably their strong suit – and a more considered passing approach this season.

Regardless of tactics, a central midfield that has, among others, Habib Diarra, Granit Xhaka, Le Fée, Dan Neil and Chris Rigg competing for places is not to be underestimated. Last season’s star midfielder, Jobe Bellingham, now at Borussia Dortmund, may not be missed too much.

Further forward, Marc Guiu, the 19-year-old Chelsea loanee striker and former Barcelona academy graduate, is regarded as being potentially very good. Some say a forward who combines imposing physicality with fine finishing really is the new Cole Palmer.

Reasons to be fearful

Chaos overload threatens tactical and emotional anarchy. Le Bris would not be human if he did not struggle to integrate 11 signings while maintaining squad harmony and constructing a cohesive XI. Xhaka apart, the imports are generally young and extremely light on Premier League experience.

Le Bris is also something of a novice at this level. He has never managed in England’s top tier and, at 49, the former Lorient manager is starting only his fourth season as a first-team head coach. When filled to 49,000 capacity, the Stadium of Light remains one of England’s most intimidating arenas. Unfortunately, not all players can handle the pressure that comes with wearing red-and.white stripes and performing in front of some of the country’s most partisan fans.

Deep down, even the most optimistic supporters know that while Sunderland played very well at times last season they were rarely able to control and dictate games and had an awful habit of conceding late goals and squandering leads. (LT)