We return for another round of knee-jerk reactions to a single round of Premier League fixtures. Is the title race really over?
Every week following the latest round of Premier League fixtures, we at Opta Analyst make some hasty calls that should probably be reserved for the tabloids. The kind of click-baity, attention-grabbing, headline-making conclusions that, as a data-powered website, we shouldn’t really come to. Welcome to Knee-Jerk Reactions.
Some of these prove to be nothing more than our own headline suggests: knee-jerk reactions. However, as time goes on, some end up becoming the start of a trend. For example, our Matchday 1 offering concluded both that Forest were “ready for another Champions League challenge” when they quite clearly weren’t, but also that “we’ve got a relegation battle”, which we very much do.
So, here are our five reactions to Matchday 9 in the Premier League that may or may not prove correct.
Arsenal Will Dominate This Season Like Prime City
Nine games into the 2025-26 season, the title race is concerningly lacking in competition. Top of the pile, Arsenal are looking like they could be very hard to catch.
Mikel Arteta’s side appear unbreakable. Crystal Palace managed a shot on target on Sunday, but they only had one, and that was the first time any team had troubled David Raya in a Premier League game since the win at Newcastle three games earlier.
They have conceded just three goals all campaign, and are on course to break Chelsea’s 21-year-old record of 15 goals conceded in a Premier League season.
Meanwhile, everyone around them is failing. Manchester City, Liverpool and Chelsea, the only three teams who, realistically, have any chance at all of challenging Arsenal, all lost on the same matchday for the first time since December 2015.
2015 – Chelsea, Liverpool and Manchester City all lost this weekend, the first time all three sides have lost on a Premier League matchday since MD15 in 2015-16 on the weekend of the 5th/6th December. Unexpected. pic.twitter.com/aSo1ktDKNI
— OptaJoe (@OptaJoe) October 26, 2025That was the season in which Leicester City won the league. They did so with only 81 points, and were 10 points clear of their nearest challengers.
We’re not saying this season is going to be like that one, nor that Arsenal are anything like Leicester. But the chasing pack, like in 2015-16, looks weak. Bournemouth, Tottenham and Sunderland make up the top four, and while there’s a chance they’ll be there in May, surely none of them are strong enough to put any real pressure on Arsenal.
We’re still in October, and the title race might be over.
Aston Villa Are Arsenal’s Only Remaining Threat
Aston Villa are a little further back, but they are rising up the table quickly, having won four games in a row. It’s the second-longest winning streak by any team in 2025-26, after Liverpool’s run of five wins at the start of the season.
On recent form – particularly given everyone else’s inconsistency – Villa could easily be in the top three in a couple of weeks’ time. They are very unlikely to challenge for the title given they are are seven points off Arsenal and the Opta supercomputer gives them just a 1.5% likelihood of winning the league. However, they could be a worry for Arsenal in another way.
Villa came from 2-0 down at the Emirates in January to draw 2-2 and put a huge dent in Arsenal’s title challenge last season, while they did the double over them in 2023-24, when Mikel Arteta’s men lost out in the title race to City by two points.
Villa are hitting form now, and they face Arsenal twice in the next two months.
In their last two league games they have won at Spurs and ended City’s better run of form with a wonderfully resolute defensive display. Villa blocked 10 shots on Sunday, their highest tally in any Premier League game in the last five seasons.
They are very, very difficult to beat, and they could have a say in Arsenal’s fate this season.
Dyche Can’t Fix Forest
Nottingham Forest tried to quickly go from Nuno Espírito Santo’s counter-attacking football to Ange Postecoglou’s possession game mid-season, and it failed spectacularly.
They are now trying to veer the other way and go back to direct football with the appointment of Sean Dyche and, dare we say it, this might not work either.
At Bournemouth on Sunday, their approach was unsurprisingly different to what had come before, but the result was very much the same. Forest played 16.8% of their passes long, their highest rate in a Premier League match this season, but still lost 2-0.
Dyche could point to the fact that Bournemouth’s two goals came from a combined total of 0.03 xG, with Marcus Tavernier scoring direct from a corner (which shouldn’t have been a corner in the first place) and Eli Kroupi firing in from the best part of 30 yards. But a Forest critic could respond that the visitors managed just 0.37 xG all game, the 11th-lowest total by any team in a Premier League game this season.
Defensive soundness is very much needed at Forest, and Dyche could be forgiven for prioritising that after the madcap football of Postecoglou when they were far too open, but the evidence of this weekend does not suggest another big jump between different styles of football is what is needed.
Forest are in the relegation zone and haven’t won since the opening day of the season. It’s starting to look very bleak, so Dyche will need to work some magic to fix his players’ ruined confidence.
United’s Front Three Have Clicked
It would be perfectly understandable if Manchester United’s expensively assembled new front three took a full season to find their groove, but any optimists at Old Trafford on Saturday may come away from this weekend’s football suggesting it has already happened.
After Matheus Cunha opened the scoring against Brighton with his first goal in United colours from his 25th shot (having previously been the player to have taken the most shots without scoring in the Premier League this season), Benjamin Sesko set up Bryan Mbeumo to score United’s third, and the former Brentford man added another late on. All three got a goal involvement as United won a third consecutive Premier League game within a single season for the first time since February 2024.
United are hitting form and are now only two points off second place. Their front three are starting to look the part, and that could mean a charge for Champions League qualification that looked very unlikely only a few weeks ago.
Mbeumo, with four goal involvements in his last three United games, is in the best form of the lot, and if he continues to perform, United have every chance of extending this purple patch.
An upcoming run of six games against Forest (A), Spurs (A), Everton (H), Palace (A), West Ham (H) and Wolves (A) isn’t exactly easy, but every one of those is winnable if United’s front three play as they can. Might it be time to get excited?
Kroupi Will Cost a Champions League Club £70m Before Long
Not many had heard of Eli Kroupi a few weeks ago. Now he is a future star.
With four goals in his last three appearances, the 19-year-old Frenchman has made a name for himself in England already, and he could soon prove to be the latest money-making gem to pass through Bournemouth.
He scores poacher’s first-time finishes (see his brace in the 3-3 draw at Crystal Palace last week) but can also hit rockets from distance (see his strike against Forest this weekend).
Whatever the situation, he is ruthlessly clinical; nobody has outscored their xG by a larger amount in the Premier League this season than Kroupi (+2.4), and he is scoring goals more often than any other player with 50+ minutes to their name, averaging one every 41.3 minutes.
Bournemouth’s reinvention this term has been absolutely remarkable. They are second in the table despite selling three of their first-choice back four, as well as a key forward in Dango Ouattara, in the summer. They are doing a very good job of buying players cheap, developing them and turning them on for huge profit.
It all means they won’t fear losing anyone, and they can simply enjoy Kroupi’s rise without worrying about how much interest his run of scoring will soon whip up.
Knowing how much success Bournemouth have had selling players of late, they’ll be licking their lips at the prospect of how much they could make from Kroupi in no time at all.
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Five Knee-Jerk Reactions to the Premier League Matchday 9 Opta Analyst.
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