The Premier League is all over for another season. The title, European places and relegation spots have been decided.
Managers have come and gone, expensive signings have shone and disappointed, and now it’s on to transfers and the World Cup.
But first… The Athletic’s Premier League season grades. How did your club perform? Is their grading harsh or fair? Let us know in the comments below.
Arsenal
Grade: A*
After three straight seasons of finishing second, the sole objective for Arsenal this time was to finally win the Premier League. This title will not only be significant for this year, but for those who have been and gone throughout the 22 years since the club were previously crowned champions.
Every man, woman and their dogs have a view on the quality of football Arsenal have played this term, but none of those opinions matter now. Their attack has not been as free-flowing as in previous seasons, but the defensive foundations and innovations at set pieces that have made them such consistent title contenders have finally secured the trophy.
To accomplish this despite the number of injuries they have suffered across the team also deserves recognition. Manager Mikel Arteta knew that the size of his squad would be just as important as the quality within it, and recruited accordingly last summer.
Art de Roché
Aston Villa
Grade: A*
It has been a weird campaign.
Arguably, Villa have had their worst season, performance-wise, of the four under Unai Emery’s management, with their points tally reflecting this in being their lowest of his three full seasons. Form has been wildly fluctuating and has led to some infuriating, passive displays.
Yet, when all is said and done, Villa have managed to qualify for the Champions League and win the Europa League, in defiance of concerns about the strength and depth of their squad. They could not have wished for any better results.
Europa League success for Emery and Villa (Yasin Akgul/AFP via Getty Images)
Jacob Tanswell
Bournemouth
Grade: A
Replacing three of the back four and your goalkeeper in the summer? Selling your best attacker in January? Impending managerial departure? No sweat for Andoni Iraola’s side, who have qualified for Europe for the first time in club history. To have not only maintained their performance levels amid so much turnover but risen, again, to a sixth-place finish is remarkable.
The smooth replacement of key players, including Antoine Semenyo and Dean Huijsen, suggests Bournemouth’s hierarchy know their stuff when it comes to succession planning, and Iraola’s exit this summer does not need to precipitate a massive drop-off.
The only reason Bournemouth do not have an A* is because they just missed out on Champions League football — and the fact that can be the standard they are held to is intended as a huge compliment.
Caoimhe O’Neill
Brentford
Grade: B+
Lots of people predicted this would be the season Brentford came crashing back down to earth after a near-constant upward trajectory since they were promoted from the Championship in 2021.
Rookie head coach Keith Andrews defied all the doubters who questioned the wisdom of promoting him after spending last season in charge of their set pieces. The sales of Bryan Mbeumo, Yoane Wissa and Christian Norgaard last summer should have caused more damage, but Igor Thiago stepped up, along with new signings Dango Ouattara and Jordan Henderson.
A six-game winless run across March and April halted their momentum and is probably the main reason they narrowly missed out on qualifying for Europe for the first time. That is a shame, but they have still exceeded expectations.
Jay Harris
Brighton
Grade: B
The table suggests regression, points-wise, compared to head coach Fabian Hurzeler’s 2024-25 debut season (61 points in finishing eighth then versus 53 in the same position now), but that is misleading.
There have been more recruitment misses than is normally the case with the club across his time in charge. Hurzeler also watched Joao Pedro leave for Chelsea in the summer, and three of the key players last season (Carlos Baleba, Georginio Rutter and Kaoru Mitoma) have either been off the pace or affected by injuries.
Hurzeler is also still learning at 33 years of age and after only two seasons of top-flight management.
Europe again for Brighton and Hurzeler (Justin Setterfield/Getty Images)
The recovery from their winter blues of one league win in 13 games and being in 14th place was handled impressively, despite limping over the line into the UEFA Conference League.
Andy Naylor
Burnley
Grade: E
There was optimism entering the campaign that promoted Burnley had learnt lessons from their previous Premier League campaign of 2023-24, which saw them relegated under Vincent Kompany with 24 points. They were going to do things differently, from a more balanced recruitment strategy to a style of play under Scott Parker that was more pragmatic and would make them harder to beat.
The early signs were positive, but a 3-2 win against Wolves in October was followed by a run of just one more victory in the remaining 29 league matches. The squad lacked quality and the tactics deployed by Parker, who was sacked last month after relegation was confirmed, were uninspiring and ineffective.
Failing to beat already-down Wolves at home on the final matchday meant Burnley finished on an even lower points total (22) than two seasons ago.
Andy Jones
Chelsea
Grade: E
What a disappointment it has been.
There is some mitigation. It was Enzo Maresca’s decision to leave Stamford Bridge at New Year, and that had a huge negative impact on the second half of Chelsea’s season. But the club chose Liam Rosenior to replace him, and that backfired badly. Calum McFarlane, employed to be their under-21s coach last summer, had two spells in interim charge of the first team. That says it all.
Over £100million of the summer budget was spent on Liam Delap, Jamie Gittens and Alejandro Garnacho, and they all failed to make an impact.
Qualifying for the Champions League via a top-five finish was seen as the bare minimum. But Chelsea’s hopes basically ended with a run of six straight league defeats across March, April and May — and only a spectacular late Joao Pedro strike late in the last of those matches saved them from losing six in a row without finding the net for the first time in their 121-year history.
Key players Enzo Fernandez and Marc Cucurella spoke out against the hierarchy, while a section of fans organised protests. A seventh successive domestic final defeat in the FA Cup against Manchester City, plus finishing among the also-rans in 10th, was a fitting way to end it.
Enzo Fernandez and Chelsea had an eventful season (Carl Recine/Getty Images)
Simon Johnson
Crystal Palace
Grade: B-
This will naturally be revised upwards if Palace defeat Rayo Vallecano in the UEFA Conference League final on Wednesday. But it is still that European competition which makes for a higher grade than it otherwise would have been.
It is hard to completely put aside departing manager Oliver Glasner’s emotional outbursts and an 11-game winless run either side of New Year which felt like it dragged on forever, but Palace have navigated a difficult season, their first juggling domestic matters and playing in a major European tournament, reasonably well, especially after selling Eberechi Eze last summer and then Marc Guehi in January.
They also began the campaign by lifting the Community Shield — the FA Cup holders beating league champions Liverpool at Wembley.
Overall, one to remember. A 14th straight Premier League campaign (and, hopefully, a second in a row in Europe) awaits.
Matt Woosnam
Everton
Grade: C
Manager David Moyes deserves credit for quickly stabilising Everton after his return to the job midway through last season, and for helping them get over some psychological hurdles away from home. Wins at Old Trafford, Villa Park and St James’ Park reinforced the sense of belief in the dressing room and among the fanbase. But there is a feeling Everton left something on the 2025-26 table, particularly with European qualification at one point a distinct possibility.
Expectations were raised by their early-season form, and there was a tangible sense of momentum in March after a 3-0 home win against Chelsea. Yet they finished the campaign with a whimper, going on a seven-game winless run after that day and squandering a succession of golden chances to take the next step.
Patrick Boyland
Fulham
Grade: B-
Fulham won just five of their final 15 matches. Having stabilised as mid-table regulars, this was an opportunity to capitalise on a muddled middle of the table.
Marco Silva seems to have taken this team as far as he can, with a decision looming over his expiring contract this summer. Should he leave, he does so with the team in good shape but Fulham need to nail his replacement early and be shrewd in the summer. Fulham’s player of the season, Harry Wilson, is an impending free agent too.
Key decisions await a team that have shown they can challenge the tier below the elite but do not yet have the consistency to do so for an entire season.
Anantaajith Raghuraman
Leeds
Grade: A
As with player ratings, you have to give yourself somewhere to go with grading seasons, because no club can be perfect, but Leeds could not have done much more with their 2025-26 campaign. Qualifying for European football as a promoted side? Reaching safety with four games to go rather than three? It’s nitpicking.
Since the start of last summer, everyone at the club has made consistently good decisions. At least seven of that window’s 10 arrivals have to be considered major hits, while the decision to keep their powder dry through November and December rather than sack manager Daniel Farke paid dividends.
Beren Cross
Liverpool
Grade: D
The campaign has been a huge disappointment as, despite heavy investment in the summer, last season’s Premier League champions finished 24 points worse off than a year ago, and in fifth place.
The only reason this grade is not lower is that they did secure Champions League football for next season — the bare minimum expectation — but did so with a whimper, amassing only 60 points.
Salah and Slot shake hands (Liverpool FC/Liverpool FC via Getty Images)
What can go wrong has gone wrong, and Liverpool are a shadow of the force they were last season. They became a soft touch opponents find easy to play against, wilting at any sign of adversity.
Andy Jones
Manchester City
Grade: A
They fell short in the Premier League in the end, but up until April, nobody expected them to even get that close.
Guardiola had to gel together a new, young team, featuring many players who were not immediately suited to playing his style of football. In pursuit of a refresh, he allowed Pep Lijnders to inject some energy into the side, which made them aggressive, less controlled and more of a threat on the break, but he eventually brought them back closer to his ideals.
With a domestic cup double and a credible league campaign, while trying to rebuild the team, you cannot ask for too much more, even if the Champions League exit was a low point.
Sam Lee
Manchester United
Grade: B+
A shaky first half of the season under Ruben Amorim saw United hover in and around the Europa League places, never quite capable of making a march on the top five. No European football and then first-hurdle elimination in the domestic cups meant they had their shortest campaign for more than 100 years at 40 matches, but things quickly turned around from January under Michael Carrick.
United finished third at a relative canter. Bruno Fernandes delivered his best season in a United shirt. Kobbie Mainoo has been brought in from the Amorim-era wilderness and restored at the heart of their midfield.
United are in a good place. Carrick has revitalised the atmosphere in and around the club.
Carl Anka
Newcastle
Grade: C-
An overall grade is very difficult (and many may view my choice as generous…).
In cup competitions, Newcastle warrant a B, given they reached the Carabao Cup semi-finals during a good defence of that trophy, and qualified for the Champions League’s knockout phase for the first time. Barcelona and Manchester City (in both domestic cups) were their elite conquerors in those competitions, though the 7-2 scoreline of the second leg at Camp Nou was embarrassing.
The Premier League, however, has been a different story. Newcastle lost more games (17) than they won (14) and finished in the bottom half of the table. Mostly, they stuttered through matches and also suffered disastrous home-and-away defeats to newly promoted arch-rivals Sunderland.
Chris Waugh
Nottingham Forest
Overall: C-
Nuno Espirito Santo: C — moved schools in September; Ange Postecoglou: E — obsessed with his previous school; Sean Dyche: D — too old-school; Vitor Pereira: B — extra credit for this former teacher.
The overall mark is boosted by getting to the Europa League semi-finals, but would be far lower without it and goodness knows what it would be without Pereira. His calming influence since being hired in February has changed the dynamic significantly.
Paul Taylor
Sunderland
Grade: A*
How could it be anything else?
Twelve months to the day after Sunderland sealed a late, unexpected return to the Premier League via the Championship play-off final, they followed it up with an achievement absolutely nobody would have predicted back then: next season, they’ll play in European competition, for only the second time in the club’s history.
Regis Le Bris addressed a crowd hopped up on glee and adoration after Sunday’s 2-1 win against Chelsea, and it is the Frenchman who deserves heaps of credit for what has unfolded on Wearside this year. He has been supplied with a remarkably well-put-together squad, spearheaded by the brilliant Granit Xhaka, but in just two years, the Frenchman has taken this club from a 16th-place finish in the 2023-24 Championship to the Europa League.
An outstanding season from all involved.
Chris Weatherspoon
Tottenham
Grade: E
In March and April, Spurs were destined to get a U (unclassified) here, but last-minute revision sessions with Roberto De Zerbi ensured they just about avoided that embarrassment.
Tottenham’s first game of the season was the UEFA Super Cup, as Europa League winners against Champions League holders Paris Saint-Germain. They were leading 2-0 that night under new head coach Thomas Frank before a late collapse. That performance offered encouragement, and certainly nobody at the time expected they would be fighting for top-flight survival on the campaign’s final day.
De Zerbi kept Spurs up (Alex Pantling/Getty Images)
There have been some painful defeats to Arsenal, Fulham and Chelsea, arguments between the players and the fans, and three different head coaches. But a miserable season is now over, and hopefully lessons will be learned for the future.
Jay Harris
West Ham
Grade: E
Similar to others, a U would probably be a more appropriate grade for West Ham’s season. A leadership void, lack of consistency and Nuno Espirito Santo’s abrasive approach have all contributed to the club’s relegation. West Ham, who will play in the second tier for the first time since 2011, could now be looking for their fourth manager in two years.
There have been many low moments from the opening-day defeat to Sunderland, a young supporter attempting a pitch invasion during the 5-1 home loss to Chelsea in August and the 3-0 away defeat to Wolverhampton Wanderers in January.
Roshane Thomas
Wolves
Grade: E-
It would be tempting to award Wolves a U (unclassified) as their season has been so horrific, but that would be letting them off the hook, almost pretending that the campaign didn’t happen.
But it did happen. The fans will testify to every dismal, embarrassing moment of it. This was a season that ticked every box for failure, from the dreadful, ill-conceived, poorly executed transfer window last summer, to the sacking of a head coach, the booing of another and players simply failing to perform.
Wolves’ defence has been bad. Their attack has been much worse. A truly abysmal 10 months.
Steve Madeley
