4 Talking Points for the New Premier League Season
2025/26 will have striker wars, Top Six strife and Jack Grealish at Everton.
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The Premier League season is upon us once again, 2025/26, a crazy set of numbers if you ask me. It’s now 19 years that I’ve been watching the English top flight, ever since I caught a few matches at the 2006 World Cup (OK, every single one, it was on all day on ESPN and I didn’t have a job) and I contracted the bug.
It wasn’t Thierry Henry’s very best tournament, but he played in a French team full of swagger and technical class, and it reminded me that growing up we’d play FIFA at my friend’s house and he would always pick Manchester United. Naturally, I was always going to choose Arsenal.
Across close to two decades as a fan, I’ve come to appreciate the football club I support as a beacon of refined technical football and a symbol of London cosmopolitanism, a vessel carrying a certain vision of British life and what it ought to be mean to be British. They didn’t always put silverware in the cabinet — OK, they’ve won just four FA Cups in my tenure as a fan and only sporadically competed for the Premier League or the Champions League — but they at least handled themselves with class in many senses of the word. They played stylish football. They honored and respected great figures of the club’s past and tried to consider their supporters and the local community in most things. They basically tried to do what’s right.
Which is why the Thomas Partey affair has been so damaging for the club. It’s a stain, no doubt about it, and some Arsenal fans will probably never look at their club the same way again.
I could pretend otherwise, but I think we’ll all be cheering just the same if Arsenal can finally get across the finish line in one of those two major competitions: the Champions League, in which they registered just their third semifinal appearance in club history last term, or the Premier League, which they haven’t won for two decades. Does Mikel Arteta’s job depend on it? Probably not, unless they’re really off the pace. But this is surely do-or-die time for the club.
OK! Enough of the home team stuff. Here are four talking points for the Premier League season 2025/26 …
1. The Striker Sweepstakes
Manchester United, Liverpool, and Arsenal have all made high-profile center forward acquisitions: Benjamin Šeško (£73.5 million), Hugo Ekitike (£79 million), and Viktor Gyökeres (£63 million plus £8.6 million in add-ons).
Which of these marksmen will find their footing in their first season? Who will put up the best numbers among them? And will Ekitike be competing for minutes up front at Liverpool with Alexander Isak?
It was wild to watch the Reds splash the cash this summer, but they haven’t yet succeeded in adding the Newcastle United forward to the spree and I get the feeling he might just stay on Tyneside. The age of player power this may be, but Nottingham Forest have shown that committed owners can block a move with the stick and the carrot (a simple “no,” and a big bag of silver). Where will the Swede be scoring goals come September? Will he really refuse to pull on the black-and-white shirt ever again?
Meanwhile, Manchester City have a striker on the books who scored 82 goals across the two seasons before last, and another forward who had 27 in all competitions across England and Germany last term. Could Erling Haaland or Omar Marmoush find the inside track and take the scoring title come May?
2. Top Six Returns?
Manchester United and Tottenham lost an astonishing 40 league matches combined in 2024/25. They played 76 games! Another season that’s half as bad and you could hardly call either of them members of the “Top Six.”
As a football club, Chelsea is preparing itself for a title challenge, even if this writer doubts their credentials to be there in April. They’ll almost certainly stay in the Champions League places, but Newcastle are destabilized, Aston Villa are hamstrung, and Nottingham Forest lost Anthony Elanga to Newcastle.
It feels like Tottenham are better prepared to get their ship in order than United, though new manager Thomas Frank has never before been asked to lead a campaign at the top end of the Premier League. Ruben Amorim has been in Manchester since November and aged 14 years in that time, though United have signed a couple of sharp Premier League forwards1 and a major wild card in Šeško, whose signature they beat out Newcastle to secure despite the Magpies offering Champions League football.
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3. Relegation: Three Up & Three Down?
We all know the story in recent years: three teams come up from the Championship, and after nine months they go right back down where they came from. Will it be the same old song for Sunderland, Leeds United, and Burnley?
Brentford have been stripped for parts this summer and might struggle with the reset. Wolverhampton Wanderers have been circling the drain for years now, but the newly promoted teams usually out-lose them. West Ham have lost Mohammed Kudus, and there’s risk that his output won’t be replaced by Callum Wilson and El Hadji Malick Diouf (no relation to Bolton legend2 El Hadji Diouf).
12 months ago, Everton were in this conversation. But now…
4. Jack Grealish at Everton’s brand new stadium
The Narrative writes itself: Jack Grealish, once among the most joyful and exhilarating players in English football, went to Manchester City and won everything but lost his joy. He eventually lost his minutes, too, and he needs some of those if he wants to be on the plane to North America with the English national team for the World Cup next summer.
And where does he land, with a chance to discover his most formidable form for Aston Villa3, but at Everton?
The Blues of Merseyside have had a torrid time in recent years, but David Moyes righted the ship in the spring to see Goodison Park off with style, and now they’ll line up on Matchday Two at a gleaming new stadium on “the royal blue Mersey.”
Is this a serendipitous meeting with the potential for greatness?
Extra Point: Refereeing Nonsense
To return to homer mode as we wave goodbye, I look forward to the new PGMOL mandates being handed down heavily on Arsenal for a few months. Place your wagers now on David Raya giving away corner kicks for holding the ball longer than eight seconds, and Arsenal non-captains getting lots of yellow cards for talking to the ref.
Does everybody feel this way? That their team gets particularly poor and inept treatment from the referees? One of football’s great mysteries, like how semi-automated offside arrived in Matchweek 32 last season.
Matheus Cunha and Bryan Mbuemo are giving Europa League in my view, but United’s decision-makers seem to think they’re the ones — with Šeško — to power the club back into the Champions League. Rasmus Højlund and (to a lesser extent) Joshua Zirkzee seem to be out of the project at Old Trafford.
Would Bolton fans agree with this? Diouf in the white kit is serious Barclays.
He was great in City’s 2022/23 treble campaign, too, though his game just wasn’t as fun as it was at Villa.