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The Athletic’s 2025-26 Alternative Premier League Awards
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The Athletic’s 2025-26 Alternative Premier League Awards
No Premier League team improved their points tally from the previous season more than Manchester United in 2025-26 Steve Bardens/Getty Images
By Mark Carey
May 25, 2026 Updated 8:06 pm GMT+7
The silverware is being dished out, with Arsenal lifting the Premier League trophy for the first time in 22 years after pipping Manchester City to the title in the penultimate gameweek of the season. It is the first time that Pep Guardiola has gone two consecutive seasons without a league championship in a senior managerial career that began in 2008.
Individually, Brentford’s Igor Thiago pushed Erling Haaland of City all the way, but the Norway international regained the Golden Boot award in 2025-26 as the Premier League’s top goalscorer with 27 goals — clinching the honour for the third time in his four years in England.
Manchester United’s Bruno Fernandes was the runaway leader for the Playmaker award with a record-breaking 21 assists in a single campaign, with the Golden Glove going to Arsenal’s David Raya for the third consecutive year after recording 19 clean sheets for the title winners.
What You Should Read Next
The Athletic’s end-of-season awards, 2025-26: Men’s football
We reveal the winners of The Athletic's end-of-season awards for 2025-26, covering the Premier League, Championship and Europe
That’s the main honours out of the way, which allows us to pick out some fun, quirky statistics that are a little more off the wall. Stable squads, compact blocks, and the league’s most entertaining side are all up for grabs in this year’s edition.
Welcome to the Alternative Premier League awards…
Most improved team: Manchester United
It is now tradition to begin by looking at which club made the most improvement in their points tally compared with the previous season.
Given their 15th-place finish in 2024-25, it was difficult for Manchester United to go anywhere but up the table, but the difference in their performance has been stark. Michael Carrick’s side are a full 29 points better off today than at the end of that catastrophic campaign under Ruben Amorim — comfortably the biggest uptick of any side in the Premier League.
Incidentally, United are the only team to improve by more than 12 points this season. By contrast, five sides have dropped their haul by more than 15, which highlights how much underperformance has rippled through the league.
Newcastle, Chelsea (both -17), Nottingham Forest (-21), and Wolves (-22) all experienced notable drops in their final tally, but the biggest underperformers were champions Liverpool.
Arne Slot’s side posted one of the poorest title defences in Premier League history, scraping to a fifth-placed finish with 60 points — 24 worse off than 12 months earlier. There can be some mitigation in the drop in performance after the tragic loss of Diogo Jota last summer, but Liverpool’s entire season can be filed as forgettable for players and fans alike.
Most points dropped from winning positions: Newcastle United
It might not be an award they will want to receive, but no Premier League club gave up more points from winning positions this season than Newcastle’s 27.
Eddie Howe’s side were not able to sustain much consistency across the campaign as they juggled four competitions domestically and in Europe, with a drop in intensity meaning they were not able to protect their leads anywhere near as often as they would have liked.
“Certainly, from my side, there’s no part of me that ever wants to take the lead and then to sit on a lead. The opposite — we want to go for more goals,” Howe said in March after a 2-1 derby loss to Sunderland in which Newcastle led until the 57th minute. “But we haven’t been able to maintain that, for whatever reason. We’ve become very passive and quite reactive, and we were again today, and it’s a huge disappointment.”
Scoring first and protecting a lead was a hallmark of Nottingham Forest’s success last season, and they were equally as strong on the occasions they did go a goal ahead in this one — drawing five and never losing across those 16 occasions.
It has been a chaotic campaign at Forest, with four permanent head coaches being utilised across the season, but the last of them, Vitor Peirera, can be encouraged that his side do not crumble when they do find themselves in a winning position. That is a strong platform for them to take into next season.
For those wondering, Aston Villa scoop the (more positive) sister award to Newcastle’s points lost, with a league-high 23 points won from losing positions.
It was a fitting end to their campaign after a much-changed Unai Emery side came back to beat hosts Manchester City 2-1 on Sunday after falling behind in the first half. A Europa League trophy and a spot in the Champions League next season show just how resilient Villa have been.
Stoppage-time entertainers: Liverpool
Newcastle’s woes were not helped by the fact that their opponents scored eight goals in stoppage time, with no side other than Leeds conceding more after 90 minutes.
Liverpool were the side who scored the most goals after regulation time — 10, while conceding seven times. It was an early theme of their season as Slot’s side pushed until the very end to get a winner.
Teenager Rio Ngumoha netted a notable 100th-minute goal to beat Newcastle in the opening weeks of the campaign, but sucker-punches soon followed at the other end — with Eddie Nketiah (Crystal Palace), Estevao (Chelsea), Amine Adli (Bournemouth), Erling Haaland (Manchester City) and Andre (Wolves) all finding the net in added time to consign Liverpool to defeat as they themselves chased victory.
It would have been naive to take your eyes off Liverpool before the final whistle, but late drama was in lower supply at Villa and Forest. While the two Europa League semi-finalists had contrasting fortunes in the league, they only saw 12 stoppage-time goals between them this season.
Set-piece dynamos: Arsenal
Set pieces dominated the 2025-26 Premier League, with almost every club benefiting from the low-hanging fruit that such closed-skill routines can offer.
The share of corners played as inswingers reached 70 per cent this campaign as teams fired the ball into the melee of bodies surrounding the opposition goalkeeper — a significant increase from just 41 per cent in 2018-19.
Accounting for the volume of opportunities in both boxes — by measuring output per 100 set pieces taken and conceded — we can see that Arsenal edge it as the strongest team in attack and defence. Who would have guessed it?
It is worth noting that Manchester United had the strongest attacking numbers this season, with 8.2 goals scored per 100 set pieces. However, Arsenal’s superior defensive record (3.3 goals conceded per 100 opposition set pieces) means their overall goal difference (4.3 per 100) tops the league.
In truth, the graphic above shows a lot of bunching within the league, owing to just how much the teams have cancelled each other out from dead-ball situations.
It has made for plenty of discussion and some agricultural football at times, but when the dominant set-piece side is also the title winners, it is hard to argue against.
Box-throw bandits: Crystal Palace
Long throw-ins were an interesting subplot of the set-piece debate, as the copycat behaviour rippled through the league.
Treated as an opportunity to maximise the opportunity as a set play, more teams elected to hurl the ball into the penalty area after winning a throw-in in the final third — and the results were seismic.
Crystal Palace: love a long throw Glyn Kirk/AFP via Getty Images
A total of 43 goals were scored after an attacking throw this season, more than double last season’s figure (20) and more than 2023-24 (nine), 2022-23 (nine) and 2021-22 (seven) combined. Brentford have long been the advocates for a ball flung into the box, but Palace edge them out as the side who utilise this approach more when given the opportunity.
Despite their inclination, Palace have not maximised their opportunities in these situations as much as others — a total of 22 shots from attacking throw-ins being half that of league-leading Brentford (47).
Six goals scored from long throws is also the best in the division by Keith Andrews’ west London side, but credit must also go to Sunderland and Leeds, who have been intelligent in their set-piece approach since arriving from the Championship last summer, netting five and three goals respectively from launched balls into the opponents’ box.
Skewed crossers: Spurs and Bournemouth
Speaking of sticking it in the mixer, we can explore which teams rely on a specific flank when crossing the ball into the penalty area.
By this measure, Tottenham leaned to the right side most often (59 per cent), with right-back Pedro Porro delivering the most open-play crosses of any player in the Premier League this season (155). Second to him in the Spurs’ squad was Mohammed Kudus, even though he suffered a season-ending injury in January — but it highlights just how much the right wing was a focus from which to channel their attack.
The next busiest open-play crosser was Adrien Truffert (139), which explains why Bournemouth’s crosses skew as 60 per cent to his left flank. Bournemouth have arguably upgraded at left-back since the departure of Milos Kerkez to Liverpool last summer, with Truffert’s energy to overlap and underlap providing the foundation to get himself into excellent positions to deliver a ball into the box.
Unpredictability from each flank has also been productive, with Villa being the only side with a 50-50 split in their crossing tendencies.
Most stable squad: Everton
Injuries, fixture schedule and team form can influence how stable a manager’s squad selection is each week.
Here, The Athletic calculated a “squad stability rating” that measures how reliably each club distributes their minutes across starting players and substitutes within a season. A higher figure indicates a more settled side, a lower one suggests the boss is chopping and changing his players more frequently.
Everton clinch the award by this measure, with David Moyes making the fewest weekly changes to his starting line-up (1.5 per game), averaging the fewest substitutions (3.4 per game) and averaging the latest substitutions made (76th minute).
Moyes has often taken this approach across his lengthy managerial career, trusting the core players he has while being uncompromising in saying when others need to step up. When he has turned to the bench, strikers Beto and Thierno Barry have been the men he has looked to the most — with the pair swapping out for each other more than any other starter-substitution combination in the division this season.
At the other end of the chart, the instability swirling around Chelsea is reflected in the distribution of player minutes on the pitch. An average of 3.2 line-up changes per game points to their inflated squad and disruption in the dugout as two permanent managers — and one interim (who had two stints in charge) — looked to pick their best XI.
As an extra nugget, the departing Pep Guardiola named an unchanged line-up on seven occasions at City this season, which is more than the previous five seasons combined. Where his unpredictable line-up selections were previously termed “Pep roulette”, the Catalan elected to stick more often than twist in what proved his 10th and final campaign in Manchester.
Most time spent in a low block: Sunderland
Low blocks have been another theme of the season, with certain managers and head coaches lamenting their opponents for having the cheek to sit in a compact shape when out of possession.
If you did want the poster boys for that, the winners would be Sunderland, who have been excellent upon their return to the Premier League. They might not have the most potent attack, but their success in finishing seventh and qualifying for the Europa League has been built on a foundation of defensive strength — shifting between a back four and a back five, resulting in them being undefeated at home until February.
Data from SkillCorner tells us Sunderland spent 28 per cent of their time in a low block out of possession, which was the highest rate in the league, but the compactness of that block was also the smallest of any side, per square metres.
Regis Le Bris’ side stuttered a little more in the second half of the season, but their defensive solidity will give them great encouragement for another campaign in the top division next time.
Most entertainment value: Bournemouth
Bournemouth secured European football for the first time in their history after an incredible undefeated run in the second half of the campaign, and Andoni Iraola’s side scoop this award by proxy, with two specific metrics at its core.
Perhaps the reason we have all enjoyed watching Brighton, Brentford and Bournemouth play this season is that there is a degree of peril to their style. Whether it is pressing high or hurling balls forwards in behind the opposition, their games tend to be frenetic — but all three have an attacking edge that has helped them fight for European spots this season.
That is borne out in the numbers, with the trio averaging the most possessions per game — i.e., how often the ball changes hands between teams. Despite this, Bournemouth retain their attacking potency with an above-average share of those possessions entering the opposition penalty area.
Combine the two, and you can see why Iraola’s lads have been such a great watch in his farewell season.
As shown by Arsenal’s placement on the graphic above, careful, low-risk football has its merits in reducing variance within a game. Still, for the neutral, you are more likely to get a greater unpredictability on the south coast than in north London.
OK. That gives us enough time to rattle through some individual awards, starting with…
Possession retained under pressure: Ezri Konsa
In a season where man-for-man pressing was commonplace for a team out of possession, looking after the ball has taken on a qualitative difference.
Central defenders and defensive midfielders must be even more comfortable retaining possession when a player is breathing down their neck, but who is the best at doing so? That prize goes to Villa’s Ezri Konsa, with a 94 per cent pass completion when under pressure.
Plenty of City players make up the top 20 list — which points to their wider team structure as much as their individual quality — so it is unsurprising to see Rodri, Nico Gonzalez, Bernardo Silva and friends high up on this table.
Most two-footed player: Rayan Cherki
Given such greater focus on one-v-one battles, a player who can wriggle out of danger off either foot is worth their weight in gold. Using data from Gradient Sports, we can measure the share of touches a player has made between their two feet — with those closer to 50 per cent shown to be the most ambipedal.
City’s Rayan Cherki is the most two-footed player in the league, with 57 per cent of his touches taken with his left and 43 per cent with his right. Cherki’s team-mate, Antoine Semenyo, is the closest to him by this measure, with a 65 per cent (right) and 35 per cent (left) ratio. Mapping the pair together highlights just how much they stand out from the rest of the division.
With the ability to drop a shoulder and be equally comfortable on either side of their body, it is little wonder why the pair both recorded one of the strongest attacking seasons of their respective careers.
Most active line-breaker: Adam Wharton
Football really is a simple game. The more you get the ball beyond the opposition, the greater chance you have of scoring a goal.
Using new Opta Vision data, we can see which players are particularly good at that skill by looking at the volume of defensive lines broken by their passes. Here, we have removed goalkeepers and defenders from the dataset to hone in on those crafty midfielders who deftly punch the ball through an opponent’s shape to find a team-mate ahead of them.
By this measure, Palace’s Adam Wharton scoops our final award with 17.8 defensive lines broken per 100 attempted passes. That is made all the more impressive when you look at the list of peers he beat to the title, ahead of Bruno Fernandes, Rodri, Casemiro and Martin Odegaard.
Wharton might be operating from a deeper position on the pitch than some others on the list, but the frequency with which he looks to find others ahead of him is a key part of his skill set.
“I always say if there’s a forward pass (option), then I’ll try and make it, because this is what helps the team score goals, create chances and get in good positions,” Wharton said in March. “I don’t really overthink it. If I take a touch and someone’s running in behind, I’ll try and play them in so we can score goals.”
A deserving winner to cap off our ceremony.
See you again this time, next year.
Mark Carey is a Data Analyst for The Athletic. With his background in research and analytics, he will look to provide data-driven insight across the football world.
Tagged To: sports data Premier League
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