Premier League winners and losers: Wolves, Tudor, Raya, Pereira, Man City, Newcastle, Manchester United | OneFootball

Manchester United have somehow set the bar for unbeaten runs, while David Raya is literally single-handedly following Mikel Arteta’s orders.

It is funny, meanwhile, to think that at least one and possibly both of Igor Tudor and Vitor Pereira will get survival bonuses.

Glance at the Premier League table before cracking into 2,500 words of piping hot nonsense, won’t you?

Premier League winners

Wolves

What can no longer be described as possibly the worst season in Premier League history has become a campaign underpinned by aspirational levels of hating.

Under Rob Edwards, Wolves have helped get Ruben Amorim sacked and forced the demise of Sean Dyche with humiliating draws, while harming the title bids and Champions League qualification charges of Arsenal and Aston Villa respectively.

The irony in Wolves realising that if they can’t have fun then no-one else should is that it has helped them exponentially enjoy what should be forlorn months heading towards an inevitable relegation.

Rob Edwards

At least temporarily rises above Vincent Kompany (0.63) to become the third-worst manager in Premier League history based on points per game from at least 25 matches.

It will be a hell of a Champions League final between Bayern Munich and a Real Madrid side led by Edwards (0.66) next season.

His dressing-room celebrations and the nature of the win itself did have massive first three paragraphs of a ‘How Rob Edwards rebuilt Wolves’ promotion long read energy.

David Raya

“That’s what we need from players, we need those performances in the key moments,” said Mikel Arteta after Raya produced a stunning save to see out a win over Brighton in December.

There is no-one better at producing them for Arsenal right now. The pressure is telling on certain members of the squad but not a keeper often overlooked when naming the best in the Premier League, let alone Europe.

It is a conversation Raya certainly deserves to be a part of, especially after helping Arsenal get the job done.

Manchester City

They have a good record without Erling Haaland, do Manchester City: 14 wins, two draws and two defeats in Premier League games he has missed since joining shows that other players can and do step up when needed.

Their top scorers in those games were Phil Foden, Kevin de Bruyne (both six), Bernardo Silva, Julian Alvarez and Jack Grealish (all four). Three of those players have left the club, one was an unused substitute and the other watched on as captain while Antoine Semenyo duly outlined his own main character credentials in this attack.

Manchester United

No club has put together a longer unbeaten run in the Premier League this season than Manchester United. It seems bizarre to say, and cannot even be attributed entirely to the impact of Michael Carrick seeing as the first four of these 11 games were overseen by Ruben Amorim and Darren Fletcher.

It does confirm the infuriating notion that Manchester United were deliberately being made to look far worse than the sum of their parts through nonsensical, self-harming tactics.

They have a solid keeper, a decent defence, a fine midfield, a brilliant attack and a wonderful captain leading by an example his team-mates are finally good enough to follow.

And it is genuinely good enough to make them the third-best team in the country.

Jordan Pickford

Liverpool

There was a definite Mitchell and Webb flavour to Liverpool struggling in open play but trouncing an opponent through set pieces. Arne Slot stopped short of asking whether they were the baddies but did openly revel in dead plays being “the reason we won” against West Ham.

It raises questions of his condemnation of Newcastle and general sneering at a crucial aspect of the game Liverpool had no handle on whatsoever through the first half of the season.

But it is a sign that Liverpool are moving very vaguely in the right direction and have addressed their biggest shortcoming, with the difference in their effectiveness from corners, free kicks and long throws not the best reference for ousted set-piece coach Aaron Briggs.

There remain a great many issues for Slot to sort, like Mo Salah’s ongoing existential crisis, the open-play creativity void where Florian Wirtz once was, and his own unerring inability to handle the media duties that come with managing Liverpool without saying something quite silly.

But it’s dead ball season, baby, and Liverpool are finally indulging.

Fulham

The only club with a perfect Premier League record against that entirely doomed sub-30-point bottom five. Fulham have learned from the draws home and away with Ipswich last season to maximise those games against relegation fighters more than anyone.

Fulham can emulate that league double over Spurs in their next three games against West Ham, Nottingham Forest and Burnley. They will certainly be favourites in each and would be catapulted into European contention if they continue with that unblemished run against the very worst the division has to offer.

Brentford

The highest-placed team to have more goals scored than points earned. It’s a remarkably prestigious honour befitting the best-coached attacking team in the league outside the elite.

Hell, those final three words often feel like a redundant qualifier when watching Brentford; their potency going forward is comfortably the most impressive in the top flight in relative terms, given what they have continually lost and reinvested.

The cycle will stutter and stall eventually as teams cannot seamlessly replace talent forever without eventually suffering the consequences. But Brentford’s forward line has been reimagined and repurposed a couple of times and has perhaps never been better than with Igor Thiago leading it, Mikkel Damsgaard supplying it and Kevin Schade supplementing it.

Eddie Riemer

It is impossible – and irresponsible – to assign one overarching motive to an entire body of dissenting football fans. Some at Elland Road might genuinely, as a great many Leeds fans have since suggested, have been affronted at the thought of Pep Guardiola using a stoppage in the game to his own team’s advantage rather than honouring its stated intention as a fasting break.

But it is equally naive and disingenuous to pretend that none of those supporters were booing for precisely the reasons most initially feared – that each of them was simply mindful of a repeat of the “fake injury” scenario from the reverse fixture at the Etihad.

So fair play to Leeds assistant manager Riemer for not shirking or hiding behind the badge and instead saying he was “disappointed” with those who chose to proudly wear their prejudice in that moment.

Blind allegiance and tribalism can be dangerous; for a club employee to challenge them is commendable.

Bournemouth

Exceptional work to construct two separate eight-game unbeaten streaks, interrupted only by an 11-match winless run in between.

Literally the only Bournemouth fixture not enveloped by those three sequences of results this season is the opening day ridiculousness against Liverpool.

Only Arsenal, Manchester United, Liverpool and Manchester City have gone longer without tasting defeat this season, while just Burnley and Wolves have gone longer without a victory.

“How’s the bacon, did you say?” Steve Bruce once asked. Andoni Iraola’s answer will always simply be “streaky”.

Marcus Tavernier

Sunderland

Still one of four Premier League clubs yet to lose from a winning position this season – and inevitably, obviously and understandably a different beast with Granit Xhaka.

Danny Welbeck

That Man instead of Dat Guy at 35, which is no bad thing at all.

Premier League losers

Igor Tudor

The improvement in results tends to be immediate. But for the first time in his seasoned firefighting career, Tudor has encountered a blaze he cannot handle.

In only one of his previous seven rescue jobs has he started with a defeat – and that was his first back in 2013. To open at Spurs with consecutive losses is indicative of how gargantuan this task is to simply save Spurs from themselves.

And already there are alarming signs that Tudor has poured petrol instead of water on those flames. It is mightily convenient to say this is “not about systems” after playing both Conor Gallagher and Xavi Simons as wide midfielders, with the latest deep end for poor Archie Gray to drown in being at left-back.

It is predictable to blame opposition “cheating” and a “home referee” when admitting in the same Moyes-at-Manchester-United-smelling breath that “we lack when we attack, we are lacking the quality to score the goal, we are lacking in the middle to run and we are lacking behind to stay there to suffer and not concede the goal”.

It is easy to say “the problems are much bigger,” as if you yourself were not appointed specifically as a short-term solution to them.

Tudor is far from the first Spurs manager to seemingly immediately regret and perennially lament the fact that he is the Spurs manager. But it is worrying that the fixer already appears to have been broken by what he was employed to mend.

Vitor Pereira

There probably hasn’t been enough made of how Evangelos Marinakis has placed Nottingham Forest’s Premier League status in the hands of a manager whose career record in the competition is barely above a point per game and is absurdly skewed by a six-game winning run born of equal parts quality and fortuitous timing.

Pereira is basically in a job because the supercomputer gave Wolves consecutive fixtures against the three relegated teams and three worst sides beside them not to go down last season.

The Portuguese has lost 13 and drawn three of his last 16 Premier League games. He was sacked earlier this season for practically relegating one club. And he might still keep Forest up without earning another point. What are we doing here?

Aston Villa

Morgan Rogers stopped just short of saying you get thrown in jail for scoring from range nowadays when he vented his frustrations back in January, but this was the concern with Villa’s underlying numbers and when those goals inevitably stopped coming off.

Villa have yet to find a viable alternative since opponents focused on nullifying Rogers in those positions. They are flagging badly in the Champions League qualification race and need inspiration from somewhere.

Newcastle at St James’ Park

Eddie Howe blaming the distraction of “a deluge of games” for defeat to Everton was fun.

Nick Pope was obviously just focusing too hard on what he was going to pack for the upcoming trip to the Nou Camp when Dwight McNeil selfishly and tamely shot straight at him from 25 yards, with the Champions League Golden Boot race clearly playing on the mind of Anthony Gordon as he ambled on the ball in his own half.

This is Malick Thiaw’s fourth consecutive season of balancing domestic and European obligations but it all got a bit much so he grabbed the chance for a rest on the side of the pitch to let Beto in on goal. Sandro Tonali is a former Champions League semi-finalist and seasoned international but as Howe said, “the perils of Europe” are bound to be felt when trying to mark Jarrad Branthwaite from a corner at the weekend.

Newcastle’s home form is a bigger concern than their perennial struggles to thrive in multiple competitions. It is the first time they have lost three Premier League games in a row at St James’ Park since February 2021; Everton join Brentford, Leeds and Liverpool in scoring three away at the Magpies this season.

This is comfortably the worst Newcastle have been at home under Howe: 23 goals conceded at home in the Premier League is already more than in any of his three full seasons, and their PPG at St James’ Park in 2022/23, 2023/24 and 2024/25 was 2.05, 2.1 and 2 respectively. In 2025/26 it is a comparatively risible 1.64.

“We’re well aware of how much we enjoy playing here,” was another Howeism offered after the latest defensive debacle. Their opponents seem to enjoy it far more currently.

Burnley

Only slightly more remarkable than Ashley Barnes scoring a Premier League goal in big 2026 was that the great escape was on: at around 5pm on Saturday evening, Burnley were five points behind West Ham and within seven of Nottingham Forest, momentum firmly on their side having turned a three-goal half-time deficit into an almost unfathomable 4-4 draw.

It was snatched away far too many minutes later by a potent combination of an excruciating wait and inconclusive camera angles, with VAR’s pledge to correct “clear and obvious errors” and “serious missed incidents” with “minimum interference for maximum benefit” an eternal contradiction.

Scott Parker was typically magnanimous and deserves credit for passing up the open goal of laying into that decision, choosing instead to praise the spirit of his players after that turnaround. But Burnley having that hope eradicated, rekindled and then extinguished again would have felt worse than clawing back some pride after that first half with a straightforward meaningless consolation goal.

Crystal Palace

That record in Premier League games played immediately after Europa Conference League fixtures is now one win (at home to ten-man Wolves with a last-minute goal), one draw and six defeats.

They have been mildly shafted in those matches, facing Manchester United (twice), Arsenal, Manchester City, Leeds in an Elland Road evening game, Brighton and Everton.

But there is more than an element of a club understandably struggling to spin those plates.

Chelsea

As Liam Rosenior seems to have realised to his immense frustration, there is little point assessing Chelsea’s credentials as anything other than as ludicrous an institution on the pitch as off it until they address their “deep-lying” discipline problem.

He is probably right that it is “a focus and a concentration thing” rather than anything malicious. But why such issues should afflict Pedro Neto in his seventh season of Premier League football is a mystery.

Sanchez; Cucurella, Fofana, Chalobah, Gusto; Caicedo; Neto, Delap, Pedro should be the expensive makings of a ludicrously expensive but great team, not a daft list of Chelsea players to have been sent off this season.

It is such an obvious area to improve, and an interesting test of whether Chelsea are able to fix problems they cannot amortise or throw money at.

Mads Hermansen

An emphatic strike to halve the deficit in the ongoing Mads Hermansen Looking Eminently Reliable While Keeping A Clean Sheet v Mads Hermansen Looking Entirely Dreadful In Conceding Five Goals derby.

That scoreline is now 3-2 and the middle ground between those two extremes is infinitesimal. And Alphonse Areola might be back in, with Hermansen’s West Ham career destined to be comprised only of volatile runs of four starts before spending months of the bench.