So, that’s the 2024-25 Premier League final table set and locked into the records… a scenario that carries much more weight than that basic description might sound. The “imminent” outcome of the Manchester City hearing didn’t arrive, so its repercussions - whatever they might be - will not be felt until next season.
It remains remarkable we’re still waiting, although it consequently fits with a largely drab season that often felt like it was being drawn out. Even the brief civil war from City’s APT case petered out, the emotions put aside until “the big one”, as Liverpool cantered to their 20th top-flight title.
England’s most successful club winning ’20’ will be the main legacy of the 2024-25 season, to go with the sensational bottoming-out of the other record-holders: Manchester United.
There are some lessons from that, too. Aside from Arne Slot showing how a succession plan can properly work, even in an emotional sense, there was the science of it all.
A huge factor in Liverpool winning was they kept their best players fit, especially Mohammed Salah and Virgil van Dijk. That again might sound elementary, but it elevated them far above everyone, particularly rivals downed by a chaotic new European calendar, with Arsenal unable to endure a number of costly absences.
That was far from just luck. Liverpool are the best physically prepared team, which afforded them a decisive advantage. The managers of their closest rivals, Mikel Arteta, is known to have been monitoring this with interest.
It is at least possible the 2024-25 season becomes a watershed in that sense, as clubs finally realise the importance of being “performance-led”. In other words, allowing all major decisions to be dictated by the science and data. That may run alongside other evolutions, such as a leaning towards less intensive coaches who are willing to work in such systems, as well as a shift towards more pragmatic football. The age of the ideologue might be over, as coaches like Bournemouth’s Andoni Iraola seek to allow more individual expression in their tactics.
While much of this has been cast as a riposte to Pep Guardiola’s “positional game”, he is far from gone. The Manchester City manager didn’t end up suffering a “Mourinho season”, to use Antonio Conte’s mischievous description.
After an unprecedented winter crisis, his club went and spent almost a quarter of a billion to secure Champions League football. They did it with some comfort, in the end.
That illustrates one reason why this campaign did not ultimately see the rise of the middle classes, in the way that had excitedly been anticipated for many months.
All of Brighton, Bournemouth and Nottingham Forest ultimately faded away, while Aston Villa faltered in the final minutes, spurning a glorious chance to secure Champions League football despite the highly-controversial impact from referee Thomas Bramall.
The six clubs who have ultimately qualified for the Champions League are five former Super League members. Another is owned by a state.
There was at least a defiance and emotion to this specific Newcastle United team winning the Carabao Cup, but that points to how it was the cups that were left to carry most of the romance.
Crystal Palace’s FA Cup victory will go down as one of the great moments of modern football. Oliver Glasner has marked himself as one of the brightest coaches in the game, but any aspirations about rising up that league table might well be tempered by a complaint that many of those above them have: that congested European calendar.
There were also such complaints below them. In winning the Europa League, Tottenham Hotspur defied the modern perceptions of the club, but also their own atrocious league form.
The domestic collapses of Spurs and United still form one of the stories of the season, even though defeats became so routine that they were no longer any way surprising. There is still a case study there, and maybe more lessons.
Put bluntly, it shouldn’t be possible for clubs of such wealth to finish so low. It is almost reverse alchemy.
While Spurs have changed the entire tenor of the season through victory in Bilbao, defeat made it so much worse for United. It sets up an even more important campaign for the club next year, and one that could have bigger questions for Ruben Amorim, Sir Jam Ratcliffe and the Glazers.
Both Spurs and United could have been in proper trouble had it not been for an even more problematic trend from the season. The damaging nature of the financial gap between the Premier League and the EFL has now been emphatically proven. This is the first time that the three promoted clubs have gone straight back down for the second season in a row. The relegated sides accumulated a collective points total that has never been so low for the bottom three. You could say 59 is pitiful, except it isn’t really their fault. It’s the system. So many clubs coming up now are going to face the threat of doing “a Derby County”. The football governance bill passing through Lords can’t really have come at a better time, especially given the inability to strike a deal on the redistribution of some of the Premier League’s ample wealth to the EFL.
The regulator came out of the Super League, and the exact same issues have this season brought more fan protest both from those in the stands and on the pitch. The Ballon d’Or holder Rodri discussed striking before suffering a serious injury.
More absurdly, discussions have taken place about the prospect of legal action over refereeing decisions in the Premier League.
The David Coote controversy only escalated that situation, the some claiming the PGMOL were in crisis. “Refereeing standards” and VAR now dominate the debate, in a way that previously became synonymous in Italy and Spain. It all combines to fuel self-defeating hysteria. With the campaign concluding with an enormous refereeing error hurting Aston Villa and prompting them to register an official complaint.
So 2024/25 continued the trend of off-field conditioning overshadowing, at times, the action on the field. But ultimately it was about a sense of waiting for the big one.
