Premier League winners and losers: Manchester City, Arsenal, West Ham, De Zerbi, Thiago, Rosenior | OneFootball

Liam Rosenior is destined for the sack after his Jurgen Klopp comments, while Mikel Arteta and Arsenal are creating their own problems.

There is praise for Manchester City, West Ham and Europe-adjacent Brighton.

But Rosenior and Arsenal are joined in the losers by Eddie Howe and Roberto De Zerbi.

Andoni Iraola

Rarely has a winning streak of one Premier League game seemed quite so irresistible. Manchester City smell blood and few teams hunt that down quite so relentlessly at this stage of a season.

The Carabao Cup final has brought everything into sharper focus. Before that, Manchester City had lost both legs of a Champions League tie with Real Madrid, managed only to draw with relegation-battling sides in West Ham and Nottingham Forest and beaten only Newcastle in the Carabao Cup since the beginning of March.

With trophies appearing on the horizon they have already secured one, are in the final four of another competition and have wrestled control over their own fate in the Premier League title race.

It is all about bottle: Manchester City have it, the wonderful Rayan Cherki is flipping them during routine victories over ostensibly good teams and fans are drinking the imaginary tears of those emblazoned with an Arsenal badge. This is a Guardiola team in full April flow.

West Ham

In one of their biggest games of the season, West Ham avenged one of their heaviest defeats by recording their biggest win.

Their matches against Wolves provide a neat snapshot of how the January transfer window can transform a club. When they lost 3-0 at Molineux in their first game of 2026, West Ham were deeply and miserably ensconced in the relegation zone, closer to 19th than 17th, four adrift of safety.

A 4-0 victory over the same side 12 games later has lifted them out of the bottom three for the first time since early December, the mood having been entirely transformed.

Taty Castellanos is not the perfect striker but clears the bar comfortably in terms of work ethic and makes those around him better. Axel Disasi has kept four more clean sheets than Chelsea since he joined and is challenging Tomas Soucek and Jesse Lingard for the title of most beloved Hammers loanee ever.

Only Manchester City and Crystal Palace outspent West Ham in January but backing Nuno Espirito Santo has potentially saved their season.

While that injection of impetus has defined their last few months, the relative inaction of other teams has been equally damning and decisive.

When West Ham were beaten by Wolves on January 3, they were 12 points behind Spurs. They are now two above a side whose technical director rejected the idea of making mid-season “stress purchases” because “there was simply not many available players across the whole marketplace in January”.

How foolish the Hammers must feel for panicking.

Igor Thiago

Thiago has beaten the career-best Premier League seasons of Michael Owen, Nicolas Anelka, Dimitar Berbatov, Mark Viduka, Jermain Defoe and Dennis Bergkamp already. Brentford can and will keep getting away with this.

Brighton

The form team in the Premier League, even with the shame of losing to this atrocious Arsenal side in that run.

Fabian Hurzeler deserves the utmost credit for turning things around. He “is not the biggest fan of talking about Europe” and feels that is “for the media side”, so we might as well oblige.

Brighton are ninth, two points off Chelsea and six behind Liverpool, with momentum on their side and an injury record currently among the best in the division.

And their run-in looks awfully kind: Spurs, Chelsea, Newcastle and Wolves sides in various states of peril, then Leeds away and Manchester United at home.

Just keep that European qualification tab open and keep doing what you’re doing.

Crystal Palace’s two mutineers

“As soon as it was clear that he had to stay at Crystal Palace, he said: ‘OK, I will work very, very hard to come back and help the team win,’ and to help us achieve all our goals,” said Oliver Glasner of Jean-Philippe Mateta.

The three goals the Frenchman has scored since returning have been valuable enough: one to kickstart a comprehensive Conference League victory over Fiorentina, before two off the bench helped Palace leapfrog Newcastle.

And with that, a tarnished reputation has been almost completely restored.

For Glasner’s man-management to be so central to that redemption arc is fitting. His own relationship with the Palace fanbase has suffered massively this season, with the perceived disrespect felt among the supporters from a figurehead who seemed to no longer want to be there causing a rift that felt irremediable, at least without the healing qualities of time.

But with the transfer window closed and that bone of significant contention no longer a factor, Glasner has engineered a run of one defeat in 10 games to take Palace to the brink of a European semi-final and within five points of continental qualification in the league. It is a far fonder farewell than could possibly have been envisaged a couple of months ago.

David Moyes

As the former Everton manager who once perhaps justifiably referred to them as “probably a centre-forward away from being contenders for the Premier League” during his first tenure, Moyes will at least be used to an overachieving Toffees side sharing the goal burden.

Beto and Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall both have seven this season, having pulled one clear of Iliman Ndiaye and Thierno Barry with equalisers in the Brentford draw.

Tim Cahill – who remains the only player to score more than 50 of Moyes’ total 1,006 Premier League goals – and Marouane Fellaini shared the honour of Everton’s top league scorer in 2008/09 with just eight goals apiece when they finished fifth. The vibes do feel similar; Dewsbury-Hall surely hates corner flags and Beto probably has remarkable chest control.

Liverpool

Their current dalliance with the Champions League is likely to end in misery but it probably is necessary for Liverpool to qualify again, just in case they do eventually dispense with Barnsley manager Arne Slot.

And while Rio Ngumoha never quite scored the second goal needed to match James Milner as the highest 16-year-old scorer in Premier League history, he is finally off the mark to challenge Wayne Rooney’s six goals as a 17-year-old.

Sunderland

In only three Premier League seasons have Sunderland ever accrued more points than their current 46; they have six games left to surpass 2010/11 (47), 2000/01 (57) and 1999/2000 (58).

Chris Wood

No-one won more aerial duels at The City Ground on Sunday than a 34-year-old making a 26-minute cameo on his first Premier League appearance in almost six months.

Premier League losers

Arsenal

The idea that Arsenal would be the only team capable of stopping Arsenal from achieving trophy-based success this season does seem to be coming to pass.

The disconnect between the club’s messaging and performances grows ever greater. Mikel Arteta talks about “beautiful” occasions but the players seem to shudder at the sight of themselves. His focus constantly centres on the emotion of the squad and the games, the “fire in the belly” and “poison in the tummy”, but would they not be better off trying to remove that aspect of the run-in from the equation rather than feeding into it?

More damaging still is the increasing detachment between the team and the fans. Arteta cannot implore the former to “bring your lunch, bring your dinner” for a “big day” that the squad barely turns up for before serving up something deeply inedible.

Before the game, Arsenal sent a message to fans pointing out that ‘lunchtime kick offs can sometimes be a bit low key in terms of noise generated in the stadium’, adding that ‘this is not an option for Saturday’. But when those on the pitch seemingly cannot withstand the volume the club turns up itself in the build-up, the onus cannot be on those sitting around the stadium to ‘drive the boys home’.

Arsenal have become masters at creating a tension and drama they do not need and cannot handle. Having lost just three of their first 49 games of the season when largely ignoring it, they have lost three of their last four when playing into it.

Eddie Howe

Having once again accepted a level of responsibility his players must shoulder far more often in defeat, Howe bristled somewhat at questions over his selection against Crystal Palace.

“I don’t pick the team based on transfer fees,” would be an absolutely fair comment from a manager who wasn’t so inextricably tied to those signings. But for a coach who recently stated that “when we recruit a player, what’s fundamentally important is that me and the coaching team like that player and can see a way that we can get the very best out of him in our team” – and whose nephew helped lead that process – it is remarkably damning.

Howe has complained about the shackles of PSR all season but his last four substitutes at Selhurst Park, in double changes after Palace goals in the 80th and 93rd minutes, were signed last summer, cost well over £200m and Howe has not come even vaguely close to getting “the very best out of” any of them.

Roberto De Zerbi

A single match into his £60m, five-year Spurs marriage, De Zerbi witnessed first-hand the sheer scale of the task facing him in north London.

Not to save Spurs from a ruinous relegation. No, as the Italian said, “the target now is to win one game”.

De Zerbi made reference to that apparent impossibility on numerous occasions after the Sunderland defeat, saying Spurs “have to work on one win”, that “if we are able to win a game everything will change” and at one point stressing the imperative to “win a game. One game. One game. One game”.

The Europa League champions have been reduced to giving someone almost £200,000 a week for the next half a decade to tell them they need to win.

There is no blame whatsoever attached here to De Zerbi, the second Spurs manager this season whose ‘bounce’ has resulted in defeat for a thoroughly and very possibly inexorably broken group of players.

But it is ludicrous that Spurs find themselves in this position, and that the potential momentum generated by De Zerbi’s parachuting into this mess has immediately been rendered obsolete.

Liam Rosenior

If you listen hard enough over the relentless bluster, the faint sound of a death knell can be heard. For no manager ever lasts particularly long after evoking the names of Pep Guardiola and Jurgen Klopp when desperately arguing for patience.

“Even someone as experienced as Pep or Jurgen Klopp when he won the titles he did at Liverpool, they had a year to sort things out. I’ve come in January,” Rosenior said after overseeing a fifth defeat in six games, with Port Vale at home the only exception.

And really there’s no need to point out the specific folly of the sort of argument that sustains doomed reigns like Ruben Amorim’s at Manchester United for months longer than is necessary; suffice to say that Guardiola and Klopp were given time because they earned it, both before coming to England and once they arrived.

“I think Pep was [at Manchester City] a year before they won anything, and then obviously Mikel [Arteta] and Jurgen [Klopp] took a bit of time,” said Graham Potter in January 2023, four months before he was sacked.

“It always takes time. Look at the project of Manchester City or Liverpool. It’s always about time. It’s about time and about a very clear leadership like Pep or Jurgen,” said Mauricio Pochettino in February 2024, four months before he was sacked.

Enzo Maresca was a deeply imperfect Chelsea manager – especially for this project – but knew better than to use such names in vain. Rosenior does not belong in the same conversations as Guardiola and Klopp and should be embarrassed at crowbarring himself into them.

A truly incredible head-loss from the great man.

Aston Villa

A solid draw all things considered, but that was Aston Villa’s oldest starting XI in a Premier League game David Ginola, Paul Merson and Ian Taylor dragged up the average age for a win over Ipswich in March 2001, and the second-oldest starting XI named by any Premier League side this season.

They need a decent summer with that Champions League money.

Fulham

Not the only team to lose after a three-week break, but now is not the time to be grouped in with Newcastle, Spurs, Burnley and Wolves.

Wolves

It is vaguely impressive that only six players have scored as many as two non-penalty Premier League goals against Wolves in 2025/26. But they have become gradually more absurd as the season has gone on: Erling Haaland, Zian Flemming, Yerson Mosquera, Keane Lewis-Potter, Taty Castellanos, Konstantinos Mavropanos.

Not sure which member of that list is more damning for Wolves – either West Ham player, or the one who actually plays for Wolves.

Wolves again

Let the ball bounce once, shame on you. Let the ball bounce twice, shame on me. Let the ball bounce thrice, shame on Wolves. Let the ball bounce four times – what the f*** are you even doing Hugo Bueno, Andre and Jackson Tchatchoua?