Spurs replacing Ange Postecoglou with a Premier League coach, Trent Alexander-Arnold leaving Liverpool and Manchester United going down is in store for 2025.
Since Derby accumulated 11 complete numbers in the 2007/08 campaign, it has been an intrigue detail about whether this best horror typhoon can be recreated, although with a little less Eddie Lewis.
The closest any side has ever come is Huddersfield in 2018/19 and Sheffield United last season, both of whom finished on 16 points but passed Derby’s tally in February of their respective campaigns.
Actually, Southampton has each and every one of the possibilities of making its anguish traditionally relevant. Only two teams have had less than six problems at the midpoint (the SHEFFIELD United’s blockade and Portsmouth) were deduced, and it could be said that Ivan Juric inherited an even worse scenario in a certain way. spot.
There is no shame in sitting 10th but a handful of similarly-sized clubs have leapfrogged them. A run of seven games without a win contributed to an inadequate 2024 in which £200m was spent and talented but ultimately flawed managers swapped for more points than only Brentford, West Ham, Wolves and Everton of Premier League ever-presents in the calendar year. Their most important player also seems to be a 34-year-old Danny Welbeck.
Something of a divide has emerged in the fanbase between Fabian fanatics and Hurzeler haters. The German’s style is less ambitious and effective than that of his predecessors, there has been an understandable struggle in getting the many new fragments of his squad to gel and his public comments and personal disciplinary record suggest problems of a different nature.
Brighton’s upward trajectory was only ever going to be able to sustain regular visits from the vultures for so long. That document on Paul Barber’s laptop is not infallible. There was a general mutual acceptance between Brighton and Roberto De Zerbi that a split was best for all parties and the same conclusion will soon be reached with Hurzeler.
From Everton’s brief foray in 2005 to Newcastle’s small stop in Saudi Arabia 18 years later, four of the same former Premier League big six clubs have qualified for the Champions League with one small exception. Leicester’s discovery of a hole in the glass ceiling has grown louder.
The foxes have tested the structural integrity of that for beyond the few successive seasons and there are echoes of their Midlands brilliance in Nottingham Forest. Third star on this tree soon.
If it comes forward, Fulham will be unbeaten in seven matches and will be hoping to exploit any slip-ups from the few groups above them, while Bournemouth are the existing blueprint for sustainable, scalable and achievable excellence.
It was a brutal and ruthless decision to share tactics with an obviously talented trainer after O’Neil had far surpassed his purpose of surviving difficult circumstances, but Iraola represented the promise of something much greater. So far, he has largely kept his promises. make Bournemouth a real force in the quest for Europe.
In many ways, that is what spurs should be: attacking, energetic, dynamic, assertive, but not so strangely married to a philosophy or a taste of the game that holds them back. Bournemouth even cope better with an injury crisis, adapting to adversity rather than looking back. plow it
There is sympathy for Ange Postecoglou in what he has to deal with: those injuries, the decline of Heung-min Son, the loss of Harry Kane, the presence of Daniel Levy. But this really has been substandard for too long with no suggestion that things are about to get consistently or sustainably better. The manager speaks of wanting to entertain but too often that comes at the expense of his side, players and fans.
It is slightly depressing to be hawking the services of a manager out to a team four places and six points below his current employers but that is the nature of the football food chain and Iraola, already high in the running to replace Postecoglou, does feel like a potentially perfect fit at Spurs.
Enzo Maresca probably wasn’t in a name race, but they were on the right track and again in a Champions League position.
A draw and two defeats at Christmas forced them to rethink the situation. The control of the game by a coach with less than a hundred first-team games on the bench is questionable and, despite rampant recruitment and investment over the past two years, glaring shortcomings persist in the squad.
With momentum finally squandered, the wisdom of building a side lacking seniority and leadership might well be exposed. The five teams immediately below them are all either in wonderful form or emerging from their own difficult runs with shoots of promise. It would be a genuine achievement in the Europa Conference era but Chelsea will slide back into that mid-table morass and miss out on continental football again.
It is worth mentioning that Manchester City’s recent historic ineptitude has left them an entire eight points off Arsenal, a position to which they have grown accustomed in the previous two seasons. The only difference is that with half a season remaining they are staring at a climbable mountain to second; the brilliance of Liverpool can and has ruled out another successful defence of their Premier League title.
Perhaps the corner has not properly been turned yet but it does feel as though the Guardiola resignation ship, a genuine prospect at one stage, has sailed and he will oversee at least the initial attempt at a rebuild.
The listener who leaves Manchester City is that his next two movement windows, the last of Txiki Begirista and First Hugo Viana, can approach with all the ruthless precision of the 2017 Etihad squad. The giant will return within the year.
The narrative of the Arteta Trophy is a bit false given the natural state in which he discovered Arsenal, but there is a point at which his fine paintings wish to be subsidized through anything tangible. The fact that their only trophy after five years is still an FA Lockdown Cup won with the team of Arsene Wenger and Unai Emery is a curious oddity.
And the “charity shield too twice, right?” The shick, although the winning nonsense of the performance and the maximum probably delivered with more than one trace of irony, did not help.
Arteta necessarily unearths himself in the Mauricio Pochettino spot of having inherited the mess of a club with big ambitions, before rebuilding it so phenomenal in his own symbol to get around the point where a domestic quirk can nicely satisfy critics.
Pochettino struggled with that dynamic at Spurs but his overall sentiment at the time rings true for Arteta and Arsenal now: “Our objective is to try to win the Premier League and the Champions League. For me, two real trophies. That can really change your life. And then the FA Cup, of course, I would like to win. I would like to win the Carabao Cup. But I think it will not change the life of Tottenham.”
Nor would he have Arsenal in 2025. Still, his chances of landing the top team come up empty-handed, even with his absolute gift of an FA Cup third-round tie.
Eddie Howe’s style is perfectly suited to games against sides of Arsenal’s calibre. Newcastle have won three and drawn one of their last six games against the Gunners, including a 1-0 victory in November, and their form in a wider context has catapulted them back into the Champions League qualification conversation.
The Magpies will be keen to see their luck in the moment at St James’ Park if they manage to leave the Emirates on January 7 in smart fashion. This season without losing, although they do not have a very recent precedent to fail painfully at Wembley.
Newcastle might be better off putting all their eggs in those baskets because Bromley and their big Ronnie Radford energy await in the FA Cup.
The Dutchman wonders about the future of Mo Salah, Virgil van Dijk and Trent Alexander-Arnold with the same masterful balance with which he has approached this season in the tactical and footballing sense. Liverpool are the best in the Premier League and Champions League table, but the usual exchange of words about the Quad has been derailed by the Treble statement: can the Reds keep their three players on close contract?
Van Dijk seems the safest bet to stay as captain who, while showing no signs of slowing down, is also in a position where age is not as defining a factor in terms of performance. That should be more the case for Salah but he is producing career-best numbers with ludicrous ease and it is not difficult to envisage a breakthrough, despite his regular pessimistic updates.
But the Alexander-Arnold needle has palpably shifted. Far younger than those two teammates, there is a sense that he has engineered this situation to benefit him and only him as an eligible 26-year-old bachelor. And as phenomenal as it is to realise there are genuine people out there who don’t think the pull of Real actual Madrid should turn the head of such a player, that is a lure the very best have always struggled to resist.
Alexander-Arnold will continue to cement his Liverpool legacy with the occasional trophy, before immediately tarnishing it, in the opinion of a little disturbed, by sacrificing his career to sign for the 15 European champions.
Aston Villa, the last team to leave this organization when they went to the Championship in 2016. Before that, it’s Southampton in 2005, then Leeds a year before that.
Everton have long flirted with that fate and Sean Dyche has been unable to steer them clear of those battles. Two points separate them from the relegation zone and Wolves below them look rejuvenated, while there is ample fight in both Ipswich and Leicester.
But the duty of this prediction is not just them. Some placed in the Premier League qualification are Manchester United, for whom a long race in the league is realistic enough for its manager to speak on that blatantly without worrying about the reprimand.
It sounds ridiculous, yet the numbers are stark and registrations are falling. Since Amorim appointed, Manchester United have only racked up more problems (7) than Leicester (4) and Southampton (2), and monetary incompetence has made the January signings difficult to understand.
There is a general acceptance that things can get worse before they get worse at Old Trafford, but perhaps it is not yet understood how bad “worse” is. The good news for Wayne Rooney is that he could soon have his selection of interim positions in the Championship.