For our weekly column
of knee-jerk reactions, here are five conclusions we’ve come to
from across the latest weekend of action in the 2025-26 Premier
League.
Here at Opta Analyst, we like to take our time over
things. We like to use a lot of data to back up our findings. Most
of the time, anyway.
In this weekly column of knee-jerk reactions, however, we don’t
do things in our usual way. Instead, we look over the weekend’s
results and make some, erm, knee-jerk reactions based on this week
alone.
The thing is, a deeper look into the data often shows that there
might in fact be good reason to come to these hastily made
judgements. Sometimes, though, they are exactly what they claim to
be: knee-jerk.
Here are five conclusions we’ve come to about the Premier League
after watching the action on Matchday 12.
Any Real
Premier League Title Race Hinges on Chelsea vs Arsenal
Game
After weekend defeats for Manchester
City and Liverpool,
Chelsea
became the closest rivals to Arsenal at
the top of the Premier League table following their
2-0 victory at Burnley on Saturday.
The six-point gap to Mikel Arteta’s side could become just three
next weekend, as Chelsea host Arsenal in the pick of the Matchday
13 games.
Chelsea will have to end their pretty dire recent record against
Arsenal in the Premier League, having won just one of their last 11
against them (D3 L7). But, as Enzo Maresca’s side proved in the
summer when they won the FIFA Club World Cup against the odds, they
can mix it with the very best when on form. And that form has seen
them win five of their last six Premier League games, with three
successive wins to nil for the first time since March 2022.
History suggests the gap can be overturned, even if it’s been a
rare occurrence since the Premier League began in 1992. Only five
teams have been trailing the Premier League leaders by six or more
points after 12 games and managed to come from behind to win the
title that season, and only four of those have come in 38-game
campaigns.
The last team to do this were Manchester City in 2013-14, with
Manuel Pellegrini’s side six points behind Arsenal after 12
matchdays before going on to win the title by two points. The
Gunners ended up finishing fourth, seven points behind City.
Getting ahead in matches has helped Chelsea in recent weeks, and
putting Arsenal under pressure by going 1-0 up on Sunday would
undoubtedly help their cause. It’s now seven games in a row that
the Blues have gone 1-0 up in a Premier League match, but on the
last occasion they went on such a run (April 2024), they ended up
losing their next game 5-0… to Arsenal.
If Arsenal go on to win again
against Chelsea, they will be a minimum of seven points clear after
13 games. With the Opta
supercomputer already bullish about their chances of title
success this season (76.1% at the time of writing), every neutral
fan should be hoping Chelsea can stop the Gunners from running away
with it.
Bleak November for Bottom Three Suggests It Might
Stay That Way
It’s been a terrible November for the current bottom three
sides. Across the last three matchdays, Burnley,
Leeds
United and
Wolverhampton Wanderers are the only teams who have failed to
pick up a single point.
Nottingham
Forest and West
Ham, who ended October inside the bottom three, have turned
their form around after making managerial changes and both won
seven points from three games across November to move up the
table.
While Wolves are hoping for a new manager bounce themselves
following the appointment of Rob Edwards, he couldn’t orchestrate
any change in fortune in his first game, going down 2-0 at home to
Crystal Palace on Saturday. That leaves Wolves with an appalling
two points from 12 games this season – only two teams in top-flight
English league football have done worse: Sheffield United in
2020-21 and Manchester United in 1930-31 (based on three points for
a win).
While we absolutely aren’t hoping any Premier League manager
loses his job, Daniel Farke might be pushing his luck at Leeds. An
expert in Championship promotion he may be, but both his win ratio
(14.8%) and points-per-game record (0.61) are the worst of any
coach to have taken charge of 50+ games in Premier League
history.
Scott Parker doesn’t fare much better in those rankings, winning
just 18.8% of games, the fourth-worst rate of managers to take
charge of at least 50 matches in the competition.
Picking on Burnley might be a little harsh considering two of
their three games this month have come against the current top two
in Arsenal and Chelsea, but they have only beaten fellow strugglers
Wolves and Leeds across the last 10 matchdays and have looked poor
in attack all season.
They are the only team to have attempted fewer than 100 shots in
the Premier League this term (98), while their xG total (8.74) and
tally of touches in the opposition’s box (185) are also league
lows. No team on record have averaged fewer shots per game in a
season (since 2003-04) than Burnley in 2025-26 (8.2), which is not
a good sign for a side needing to get out of trouble.
Liverpool Could Be the Worst Champions
Ever
Liverpool
cantered to the title last season, to such an extent that they
could afford to let their form drop off a cliff in the last four
games of the campaign.
Unfortunately for them, they haven’t really stopped falling
since.
Yes, they won their first five games in the league in 2025-26 as
they looked to defend their title, but they weren’t exactly
convincing doing so, and that lacklustre form caught up with them
in a big way as they began a run that now stands at six defeats in
their last seven.
They slumped to a new low on Saturday with a
3-0 home defeat to then 19th-placed Nottingham Forest. It has
some people calling for Arne Slot to be sacked, but given the wider
context around Liverpool’s season and obviously the fact he won the
league so comprehensively only a few months ago, that would be too
kneejerk even for this column.
Things must change soon, though. Liverpool have lost as many as
six of their opening 12 Premier League games of a season for only
the second time, after 2014-15 (also six). They are also only the
fourth defending Premier League champions to start the season with
six or more defeats in their first dozen outings, after Blackburn
Rovers in 1995-96 (six), Chelsea in 2015-16 (seven) and Leicester
City in 2016-17 (six).
This was also only the second time in Premier League history
that a team starting the day in the relegation zone has won by
three or more goals away against the reigning champions, with
Forest also responsible for the other, a 4-1 win at Leeds United
way back in December 1992.
Will they get back on their feet at West Ham next week? As
things stand, you’d be a brave person to bet they will.
Morgan
Rogers Should Start for England at the World Cup
With all the recent talk of Jude Bellingham and whether the Real
Madrid star should be in Thomas Tuchel’s England team at next
summer’s World Cup, the man who took his place for much of
qualifying has been somewhat forgotten.
Morgan
Rogers was one of only three players to play in all eight of
the Three Lions’ World Cup qualifiers – along with Harry Kane and
Declan Rice – as they strode to maximum points and zero goals
conceded, practically cartwheeling to the tournament in the USA,
Mexico and Canada.
He was in form for Aston Villa on Sunday, too, scoring twice to
help his side turn things around at Leeds United. Indeed, he became
the first Villa player to score a brace at Elland Road in the
Premier League since Tuchel’s predecessor as England boss, Gareth
Southgate.
Since his Premier League debut in February 2024, only Cole
Palmer (44) and Bukayo Saka (28) have had more goal involvements in
the competition while aged 23 and under than Rogers (27 – 14 goals,
13 assists). It should also be noted that none of Rogers’ goals in
that time have been penalties, whereas eight of Palmer’s have, as
have six of Saka’s.
After a deft flick to level things at Leeds, his winner was a
sublime free-kick, lifted over the wall from relatively close range
like a golf shot, dipping under the bar and past the flummoxed
Lucas Perri. It could be a criticism of the Leeds man, or a
compliment to Rogers’ technique that the goalkeeper seemingly
wasn’t expecting the ball to come over the wall and be on
target.
Remarkably, it was his first direct free-kick attempt in 87
games for Villa, and it’s no wonder he ran straight over to
celebrate with set-piece coach Austin McPhee having clearly been
something worked on in training.
There are strong arguments for Bellingham, or Palmer, or Phil
Foden, or Eberechi Eze to start as the number 10 for England next
summer, but Rogers already seems to have the trust of Tuchel, and
playing like this, it’s easy to see why.
Spurs Could Finish 17th
Again
One year ago today, Tottenham
Hotspur were sixth in the Premier League with 19 points from
their first 12 games of the 2024-25 season. They were just four
points off second and dreaming of another challenge for Champions
League qualification.
This time around, they are ninth after 12 games, one point worse
off than last season, but still only five points off second.
However, this season, getting back into the Champions League
feels really rather unlikely, at least in part because performances
have been dire, particularly in attack. For much of the season,
they have looked rather hopeless.
In
Sunday’s north London derby defeat to Arsenal, they had to wait
until the 55th minute – by which time they were 3-0 down – for
their first shot of the game. But for Richarlison placing that
effort from near enough the halfway line perfectly into the top
corner of the net, Spurs would have failed to score yet again. They
recorded a meagre total of just 0.07 expected goals – the lowest by
any team in a Premier League game this season.
In doing so, they broke the record for this season that they had
set just a few weeks earlier when they managed just 0.1 xG against
Chelsea. In just a few months under Thomas Frank, they have
recorded two of their three lowest xG totals on record (since 2012)
in the Premier League.
The expected points table can tell us a lot about the how teams
have really been performing, and it doesn’t make for good reading
for Tottenham. They are
18th according to our xPts model, suggesting that if every game
this season had seen chances finished in line with the rate they
would be expected to, Spurs would be in the relegation zone.
With a run of three games without a win, they have started to
slide down the table worryingly, and Frank acknowledged on Sunday
that there hasn’t been enough improvement. “We finished 17th last
year,” he said. “We’re trying to build something [but] today didn’t
look like we tried to build something.”
The bottom half of the table looms ominously.
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