Premier League winners and losers: Amorim, Arsenal, Wolves, Leeds, Frank, West Ham | OneFootball

We’re in the second half of the season now with the first full round of new year fixtures in the books. It’s been a pretty much perfect start to 2026 for Arsenal, and the early days of the new year are already better for Wolves than the final months of the old.

Some clubs are still basically the same as ever – Spurs, West Ham, we’re looking at you really quite crossly – and of course we’ve already had manager chaos in the first week of the year.

There are, essentially, winners and losers absolutely bloody everywhere.

Premier League winners

Arsenal

That’ll do nicely. We really weren’t ever quite sure how they were only two points clear of City in the first place. It never really felt like Arsenal had done enough wrong or City enough right for the gap not to be the eight or so points that felt like a fairer reflection of the season to date.

But that very injustice also left us fearing for the Gunners. They’ve been here before, and we know what happened next. The sight of City sneaking up on their shoulder would be enough to vex anyone connected with Arsenal. We simply don’t trust anyone who would claim they weren’t flustered by it.

But this does seem to be a very different kind of Arsenal. They’ve not been flawless since the defeat at Villa, but their results have been. And that’s what separates them from good Arsenal teams we’ve seen before.

Not since The Invincibles were getting it done have Arsenal felt more compellingly like a champion football team. It really is theirs to lose now the gap has been stretched back out to six, which feels fare more reflective of the evidence laid out before us over the last five months.

Declan Rice

Doubled his goal tally for the season with a pair of crucial second-half strikes in the Bournemouth comeback. With goals from recognised forwards still the one conspicuous failing of this Arsenal team, a return to form for Rice really could help keep the pressure off.

Gabriel Magalhaes

Reliable Arsenal goalscorers from outside the traditional goalscoring positions, did you say? Look who’s back with two goals in his first two starts after six weeks on the sidelines. What a Christmas present that is for the Gunners, by the way.

Wolves

A win! An actual for real Premier League win! Sure, it’s against West Ham, but let’s not sully this moment with such dreary reality checking. We’ll get to the rotting carcass of the Hammers in due course, but for now let’s celebrate this moment. Because in that first half especially, Wolves were really good. Like… really good.

We know, we know: teams always think their system has finally ‘clicked’ but actually they’re just playing West Ham. But they were really good!

And it’s not like this win fell entirely out of a bright blue sky, either. There was enough about narrow defeats at Arsenal and Liverpool even before a draw at Old Trafford to suggest Wolves were at the very, very least getting slightly less bad.

Is it enough to think an unlikely bid for survival could be launched? Surely not. But Burnley, West Ham and Forest do all look quite bad themselves right now.

There’s a trip to Everton – who’ve lost four of their last six at home – next before an FA Cup interlude and then hosting an inconsistent Newcastle who have been flaky travellers. They could at the very least now give the other stragglers some pause for thought. Before still going down.

Aston Villa

Back to winning ways after the wild dream surely died at the Emirates. Getting straight back on the horse was vital, because there is still a rich prize on offer – one beyond all pre-season expectations – for Villa even if it probably won’t now be the actual title.

The sight of City, Chelsea, Liverpool and Man United all dropping points as the second half of the season got under way was a reminder that there absolutely are not four better teams than Villa this season, and the Champions League beckons whether they win the Europa League or not.

John McGinn

Only his second brace in 311 appearances for Aston Villa – the first also coming against Nottingham Forest, in the Championship back in 2019.

Brentford

The 4-2 humping of Everton also made it back-to-back away wins for a team whose fine season had previously been built on the back of mighty impressive home form.

Also now currently taking their turn to be at the top of the great mass of teams between seventh and 14th. Love that for them. Love that for Keith Andrews.

Expect half the Big Six to be fighting over him this summer.

Igor Thiago

A hat-trick at Everton to continue a spectacular season. Erling Haaland has been a runaway leader at the top of the goalscoring charts all season long, yet Brentford’s main man now sits as close to Haaland’s tally of 19 goals as anyone else in the league does to him.

This is now already the second best league campaign of his career and, with all due respect to the Jupiler Pro League, definitely the most impressive. Even if he doesn’t score another goal all season. Which, on balance, seems unlikely.

Not a new observation, but Brentford’s ability to unearth elite goalscorers needs studying.

Brighton

The most mid-table team in the Premier League’s most mid-table season, straight back to winning ways at the start of January after failing to register a single victory in December, and with it back into 10th place in the table. All is again right with the world.

Brian Brobbey

A man who deals exclusively in meaningful goals, which you have to respect. May only have three to his name in the Premier League, but that’s now two late equalisers against North Londoners and the winning goal to turn a 2-0 deficit into a 3-2 win over Bournemouth.

Calum McFarlane

A proud unbeaten record as Chelsea manager begins and, until the next time, ends.

Leeds

It’s a different vibe for the promoted teams this year, but when a draw against Manchester United feels like a missed opportunity and there are at least four easily identifiable teams definitely worse than you are, then that has to count as a win.

Enzo Fernandez

Chelsea’s best player against City proved their saviour in stoppage time with one of the more gloriously scruffy finishes you could ever hope to see. Few things more satisfying than a really messy injury-time equaliser.

Harrison Reed

One thing that might be more satisfying than a really messy injury-time equaliser is perhaps, we concede, the sh*tpinger injury-time equaliser.

Ben Davies

Tottenham’s leading goalscorer of 2026 netted his eighth goal on his 244th Premier League appearance for the club. He sits now just inside the club’s top 10 Premier League appearance makers, nestled in between Sol Campbell and Ian Walker.

You want further evidence of his longevity? He also played in Spurs’ last Premier League game against Sunderland – another draw – nine years ago this month alongside such Tottenham luminaries as Victor Janssen and Michel Vorm.

We do also wonder if he might now be in position to be the new Ryan Mason when caretaker managers are required. And we might find out quite soon.

Premier League losers

West Ham

Not just beaten but utterly destroyed by a team doubling their season’s points tally in one January afternoon. West Ham have had some low points, but there have been actual relegations less embarrassing than this. And the actual relegation is in the post anyway.

An utterly miserable all-round performance in a relegation six-pointer, one lacking even the most non-negotiable basics of effort and endeavour. There really was something genuinely unnerving and alarming about watching an established Premier League side full of established Premier League players being quite this startlingly bad.

Nuno Espirito Santo

Surely cannot survive this. Since going into the November international break on the back of two morale-boosting home wins over Newcastle and Burnley – and the Newcastle performance in particular really was genuinely good – Nuno’s West Ham have managed only another four points (all from draws) in their last nine games to plunge deep into icy relegation waters.

We’re barely halfway through the season and it feels inevitable that both Nuno and West Ham will soon be seeking further change in what for both is already the second gig of the season. It’s no life, that, is it?

Ruben Amorim

A stark reminder of what will actually get you sacked by your modern football clubs. A year of largely dogsh*t football, full of illusory corners turned and blind alleys and humiliating defeats and 16th place finishes and sidelining beloved homegrown players to purely detrimental effect? Fine.

Mildly question the infallibility of the great and all-knowing Jason Wilcox? Get out.

Very modern football. And somehow, in a way, the sheer ridiculousness of the crime for which he’s finally been caught has allowed possibly the worst Manchester United manager of all time to sneak out with reputation intact.

He might actually be under the wrong heading here.

Manchester City

Had momentum and history on their side when cutting Arsenal’s Premier League lead down to a couple of points, and it felt like there was every chance that over the course of this week they might even get their noses in front.

Two frustrating and uninspiring draws later, and the gap is up to six and Arsenal’s belief and confidence have been entirely restored.

On balance it’s hard to argue the current gap isn’t a fairer reflection of the season’s events than the two-point deficit, but that only hammers home what a chance City have spurned to really test Arsenal’s title-winning minerals.

Especially as they seemed to have landed teams at a decent time, too, with an AFCON-hit Sunderland and managerless Chelsea.

The harsh truth is that it now feels like City have exhausted one of Those Runs they go on without actually making any overall dent in Arsenal’s superiority and advantage. It really could be a one-horse race now.

Erling Haaland

It’s only three games since he scored twice in a 3-0 win over West Ham. For a normal player, you’d barely even register that as a blip never mind an actual goal drought.

But Haaland isn’t a normal player; this is a man who failed to score in only two of his first 20 games this season for club and country. Three games without a goal is a chasm and, as in previous years when this kind of sticky spell arrives, he starts to look like an active drain on the team.

We all know by now that he often isn’t widely involved in build-up play, but there come times when he’s in this kind of minor funk where the compulsion to actively seek him out rather than consider better or easier alternatives in the moment becomes highly irritating.

Thomas Frank

Another day, another small-timed point against teams who Spurs don’t necessarily need to be beating – certainly not in their current reduced status – but do at least need to be seen to consider it a plausible outcome. And not just by a cling-on-for-dear-life 1-0 margin.

We do have to grudgingly hand it to Frank to find new and exciting ways to rile up Spurs fans within the rigid framework of his unwatchable dreck. After getting a point against Brentford by refusing to ever let a game of football break out at all, he got another one against Sunderland by cruelly teasing Spurs fans with a first half that didn’t have much quality but did at least contain trace levels of ambition and intent and invention, before taking them all away to spend the second half camped in their own defensive third and hoping for the best, with entirely predictable consequences.

Nottingham Forest

That’s four straight defeats since a brilliant 3-0 win over Tottenham made it four wins in six games – including one by the same scoreline at Anfield – and suggested Sean Dyche would soon ensure relegation fears were but a distant memory.

Forest aren’t the only team currently enormously relieved about the existence of West Ham, but they’re in the top one.

Sean Dyche

It’s fellow sinkers West Ham next for Dyche, then Arsenal, and then a trip to a Brentford side beaten at home by only Man City this season. Throw in the most high-profile banana-skin of an FA Cup tie imaginable at Wrexham and an owner not renowned for either his sense of humour or patience, and it’s not now hard to see how this season’s managergeddon could soon claim another victim in Nottingham.

West Ham v Nottingham Forest

Tuesday night might just bear witness to the most beleaguered fixture in Barclays history.

Everton

That’s now four defeats in the last six games at their shiny new home, one that we still refuse to call the ‘Hill Dicky’ because we are very sensible grown-ups.

Three of those four defeats have been uncomfortably bad, as well. Everton have gone down 3-0 to Tottenham, 4-1 to Newcastle and now 4-2 to Brentford, all of whom are fellow members of the Premier League’s vast peloton of mediocrity.

The 1-0 defeat to Arsenal looks positively impressive by comparison, in every way.

Crystal Palace

A timely reminder for Oliver Glasner of the risks involved should he be tempted by any of the shinier, greener-grassed, theoretically more prestigious jobs currently or soon to be available. Because you won’t get away with seven-match winless runs at your Chelseas, or your Man Uniteds or the Tottenhams of this world as quietly unnoticed by the football world at large as he’s managed to do so at Palace.

He couldn’t even get anything out of an appointment with Dr Tottenham over Christmas, and Palace were alarmingly second best at Newcastle.

Every chance this gets worse before it gets better as well – in the league at least – with Villa up next, followed by a trip to the Stadium of Light fortress and then Chelsea before the potential respite offered by Nottingham Forest.

Bournemouth

Eleven matches without a win on the back of a run of five wins and three draws in their previous eight. It’s spectacularly Andoni Iraola, it’s none more Bournemouth.

There is at least some consolation to be found in the fact they actually played quite well against Arsenal and could have got a point. Unlike Palace, they do now appear capable of accepting the benefits of an impending visit from the Good Doctor.

Liverpool

The topsy-turvy 2-2 draw at Fulham simply provides further fuel for our burgeoning theory that Liverpool have been playing at precisely the same level all season, a fact that has been masked for both good and bad by random, freakish streaks of misleading actual results.

Cody Gakpo

Shirt off for a late ‘winner’ followed by an even later equaliser? Congratulations, you are now Richarlison.

Burnley