Just four
points separate fourth from 12th in the Premier
League after 15 matchdays of the 2025-26 season. The race for
Europe is on course to be the tensest
ever.
If there’s one aspect of the 2025-26 Premier League season that
most accurately sums up the action to date, it would be how
significantly a single result can change perceptions.
It’s fair to say the table doesn’t really hold huge importance
during the early weeks, but with every team now having played 15
matches, we’re well past the point when the standings usually begin
to take on some meaning.
Only, the Premier League table is so congested this
season that a team can feasibly go from being on the verge of a
crisis one week to pushing for Europe the next. Honestly, it’s
difficult to keep up with.
Manchester
United are a good case in point. They went into their MD15 trip
to
Wolves 12th in the table – a shock defeat would’ve meant not
only the ignominy of being the first team to lose to Wolves this
season, but also remaining as far down the table as that.
As it happened, a cohesive second-half display at Molineux saw
them win 4-1 and, just like that, they shot up to sixth, level on
25 points with Chelsea
and just a point off fourth.
Sure, it could still be better, but following their dismal
2024-25, if you’d have told any Man Utd fan at the start of the
season they’d have as many points as Chelsea after 15 matchdays,
most would’ve been pretty encouraged.
Obviously the table’s instability isn’t relevant to just United.
Tottenham
and Newcastle
ended the matchday 11th and 12th, respectively, much lower than
they’d probably expect to be. But Spurs could climb up to fifth at
the weekend if results go their way – Newcastle could too with a
significant goal swing. At a snapshot, your season looks rather
better if you’re fifth or sixth as opposed to mid-table, doesn’t
it?
Liverpool
are, of course, a slightly different case in that their campaign
would surely still be regarded as disappointing even if they were
as high as fourth or fifth – but again, they’re only three points
off fourth, which seems remarkable for a team who’ve won just two
and lost six of the past 10 league games.
Chelsea, who just a couple of weeks ago were being widely hyped
as Arsenal’s likeliest challengers for the title, have dropped to
fifth after a three-game winless run.
This allowed Crystal
Palace – at the centre of discussions around fatigue as
recently as last week – to go fourth. It’s the first time they’ve
ever been in the top four of the Premier League after MD9.
Their hold isn’t exactly secure, though. The gap from fourth to
12th is just four points – and you’d be right to think this race
for Europe is unusually tight.
In fact, there’s never been as few as four points between 12th
and fourth in the Premier League table at this stage of a campaign
(after MD15). Call it inconsistency or the difference in standard
from team to team not being as pronounced as it once was; either
way, only a brave person would try to predict who’ll finish in the
European places come the end of the season.
So, is this season an anomaly or a continuation?
Some might remember there was a point last season when the
Premier League seemed ridiculously unpredictable, with the table
taking a while to settle.
We covered that very phenomenon at the time, when just four
points separated third from 13th after 11 matchdays. That was also
the tightest such gap between those positions at that stage of a
Premier League season.
Over the following few matchdays, that gap grew to seven points
by the end of MD15. That was still comparatively small,
however.
With all the discourse over the past few years about the
collective standard of the Premier League improving as its
financial power becomes ever greater, even last season’s gap of
seven points from 12th to fourth after MD15 was quite unusual.
The last time it’d been lower was 2006-07 (5 points). The
2020-21 season also had a seven-point gap after MD15, though
there’s an argument it ought to be disregarded because the campaign
was largely played behind closed doors due to the COVID-19
pandemic.
Either way, the average gap from 12th to fourth through MD15
across the last nine seasons prior to 2025-26 was 10.2 points,
hitting double digits in six of those; it only reached 10+ points
in four of the 24 campaigns before that, stretching back to the
start of the Premier League era.
As alluded to before, prior to this season the smallest the gap
at this stage had been five points, in both 2000-01 and
2006-07.
In 2000-01, it was Leicester City who were flying high in
fourth, but only five points ahead of Charlton Athletic, who sat
12th. The Foxes couldn’t maintain that position, though, eventually
finishing 13th.
But the big difference between that campaign and this at the
MD15 stage is the fact Manchester United were already well on
course to win the title that season with a 10-point lead. In
2025-26, however, Arsenal’s lead is just two points.
The other instance of just five points separating 12th and
fourth at this stage of a Premier League season came six years
later, with Bolton Wanderers – spurred on by the excellent Nicolas
Anelka – pushing for Champions League football. Manchester
City were 12th at this point, with their transformational
takeover still a couple of years away.
While United’s lead at the top this time was much smaller, it’s
fair to say the top two were in something of a league of their
own.
The figures of this season and 2024-25 do, then, look rather
more typical of a bygone era – albeit still extreme. And although
it’s obviously far too early to suggest this is some kind of new
normal, the competitiveness this phenomenon hints at is what’s
defined 2025-26 to date, suggesting we’re in store for the tightest
European race ever.
After all, the only two positions in the table separated by more
than four points are 20th and 19th, which is heavily influenced by
Wolves being on course to post the smallest tally in Premier League
history.
There’s a chance the race for Europe could get even tighter over
the next month or so, too, when you take a few things into
consideration.
Firstly, Aston
Villa are third and in great form, but we also shouldn’t forget
their fixture schedule and that the expected points table suggests
they’ve won considerably more points than they should have.
In terms of fixtures,
when we looked at all teams’ schedules until the halfway point last
week, Villa had the toughest run. Now, they’ve done pretty well
since then, beating both Arsenal and Brighton,
but their next four outings include United at home and trips to the
Emirates and Stamford Bridge.
As for expected points – which simulates results based on xG
(expected goals) data from every match played – the degree to which
they’ve overperformed is astonishing, as the table below
highlights.
xG isn’t without its drawbacks. For instance, the data doesn’t
reflect dangerous periods that don’t lead to shots or general
dominance, but it is a decent barometer of how teams are performing
in terms of chance creation and prevention.
So, maybe Villa are the real deal, but there’s also the
possibility the numbers balance out and they fall a few places.
Meanwhile, fourth-placed Crystal Palace are doing exceptionally
well, but it’s widely known they don’t have a huge squad – their
own manager has been at pains to point this out.
Fatigue has already been raised as an issue for them amid their
first ever European campaign in the Conference League, with Oliver
Glasner recently criticising the club for not doing more in the
summer transfer window.
It’s something their opposition have noticed, too, with Ruben
Amorim referencing Palace’s tiredness after seeing his United team
come from behind to earn a 2-1 win at Selhurst Park on 30
November.
They’ll have to continue juggling European and domestic football
into January. And while they can of course bring in reinforcements
next month, the winter transfer window is never regarded as ideal
for squad integration, so there’s no guarantee signings will have
an immediate impact.
A broader complication that’ll affect numerous teams is the
Africa Cup of Nations, which will run from 21 December to 18
January, with most players set to depart after this weekend.
Beyond Ismaila Sarr (if he is even deemed fit enough to join up
with Senegal after sustaining an ankle injury), Palace’s starting
XI probably won’t be impacted much, though another couple of fringe
players may be involved – and as we’ve said, their squad isn’t
big.
Other starting XIs will be tested more, though. Man Utd’s entire
first-choice right flank will be decimated, for instance, with
Noussair Mazraoui, Bryan Mbeumo and Amad Diallo all heading off to
Morocco – it would be quite an achievement if they manage to ride
that out without it affecting results.
Among clubs in the crowd between fourth and 12th, Everton,
Tottenham, Brighton, Aston Villa and Liverpool will all expect to
lose at least one player, while Sunderland could be without as many
as seven.
Until now, the table has been forgiving. Teams’ inconsistencies
are letting others off the hook, only to be thrown a lifeline again
the next week.
For now, the tensest tussle for European qualification ever
appears on the cards – and that’s saying something considering how
engrossing the same battle was last season.
The next couple of months will have a massive say in whether
that ultimately comes to fruition, but for now we’re embracing the
chaos.
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