Last season, the Premier League was arguably more competitive than it has been for years. While the 65 points between champions Arsenal and bottom side Wolves was around the average for a 38-game season (63), a real revolution took place in mid-table. Since the league was reduced to 20 teams in 1995-96, the gap between the top four and the bottom three – between what has often been the Champions League and the Championship – had been increasing as the seasons went by, with the 'bigger' clubs profiting from their European adventures and the extra money they earned by regularly finishing higher in the table.
But last season, the gap between the 'haves' and the 'have-nots' of the Premier League dropped from 44 points in 2024-25 to just 26 points – the smallest distance for 23 years (since 25 points in 2002-03). The European places were more attainable than they had been for years. Despite taking a point fewer than when they finished seventh the season before, Aston Villa clinched Champions League qualification by finishing two places higher.
While Liverpool took the 'bonus' Champions League place by finishing fifth, their points total of 60 was the lowest by a side finishing there for 19 years and would have put them ninth in 2024-25. Bournemouth and Sunderland also took full advantage of needing fewer points than normal by qualifying for European competition for the first time ever and for over half a century respectively. Meanwhile, the teams in the bottom half finished with more points than they had in years, meaning that judging them simply by their position in the table is perhaps a little harsh.
Everton may have been underwhelmed with their 13th-place finish but it was the most points a team in that position had finished with since the Toffees themselves did it at the turn of the millennium. The points of the four places below them were all the highest they have been in the Premier League for 23 years and West Ham can consider themselves unlucky to have gone down with the highest points total for an 18th-placed side since 2010-11. Overall, 13 of the 20 teams finished with between 40 and 60 points last season – the most in a Premier League campaign since 2003-04 (also 13).
Was the Premier League so competitive in 2025-26 because the quality of the 'lesser' teams got better or the top teams got worse? It is hard to know for sure. Given how savvy smaller clubs like Brighton, Brentford and Bournemouth are, the vast amounts of money that enable even bottom-half sides to poach the best talent from abroad and the Premier League's current dominance of the Europa League and Conference League, it would seem to be the former.
However, the fact that promoted play-off winners Sunderland were able to finish above 13 teams in their first season back suggests the league was maybe not as strong as we think. What we do know is that whether because they got worse or their opponents got better, four of the sides that finished in the top seven in 2024-25 – champions Liverpool, Chelsea, Newcastle and Nottingham Forest – took 79 points fewer between them last season. While Forest's decline was perhaps expected given their incredible seventh-place finish in 2024-25 and their journey to the Europa League semi-finals last season, the others were far more surprising.
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