For our weekly column of knee-jerk reactions, here are five conclusions we’ve come to from across the latest weekend of action in the 2025-26 Premier League.
Here at Opta Analyst, we like to take our time over things. We like to use a lot of data to back up our findings. Most of the time, anyway.
In this weekly column of knee-jerk reactions, however, we don’t do things in our usual way. Instead, we look over the weekend’s results and make some, erm, knee-jerk reactions based on this week alone.
The thing is, a deeper look into the data often shows that there might in fact be good reason to come to these hastily made judgements. Sometimes, though, they are exactly what they claim to be: knee-jerk.
Here are five conclusions we’ve come to about the Premier League after watching the action on Matchday 12.
Any Real Premier League Title Race Hinges on Chelsea vs Arsenal Game
After weekend defeats for Manchester City and Liverpool, Chelsea became the closest rivals to Arsenal at the top of the Premier League table following their 2-0 victory at Burnley on Saturday.
The six-point gap to Mikel Arteta’s side could become just three next weekend, as Chelsea host Arsenal in the pick of the Matchday 13 games.
Chelsea will have to end their pretty dire recent record against Arsenal in the Premier League, having won just one of their last 11 against them (D3 L7). But, as Enzo Maresca’s side proved in the summer when they won the FIFA Club World Cup against the odds, they can mix it with the very best when on form. And that form has seen them win five of their last six Premier League games, with three successive wins to nil for the first time since March 2022.
History suggests the gap can be overturned, even if it’s been a rare occurrence since the Premier League began in 1992. Only five teams have been trailing the Premier League leaders by six or more points after 12 games and managed to come from behind to win the title that season, and only four of those have come in 38-game campaigns.
The last team to do this were Manchester City in 2013-14, with Manuel Pellegrini’s side six points behind Arsenal after 12 matchdays before going on to win the title by two points. The Gunners ended up finishing fourth, seven points behind City.
Getting ahead in matches has helped Chelsea in recent weeks, and putting Arsenal under pressure by going 1-0 up on Sunday would undoubtedly help their cause. It’s now seven games in a row that the Blues have gone 1-0 up in a Premier League match, but on the last occasion they went on such a run (April 2024), they ended up losing their next game 5-0… to Arsenal.
If Arsenal go on to win again against Chelsea, they will be a minimum of seven points clear after 13 games. With the Opta supercomputer already bullish about their chances of title success this season (76.1% at the time of writing), every neutral fan should be hoping Chelsea can stop the Gunners from running away with it.
Bleak November for Bottom Three Suggests It Might Stay That Way
It’s been a terrible November for the current bottom three sides. Across the last three matchdays, Burnley, Leeds United and Wolverhampton Wanderers are the only teams who have failed to pick up a single point.
Nottingham Forest and West Ham, who ended October inside the bottom three, have turned their form around after making managerial changes and both won seven points from three games across November to move up the table.
While Wolves are hoping for a new manager bounce themselves following the appointment of Rob Edwards, he couldn’t orchestrate any change in fortune in his first game, going down 2-0 at home to Crystal Palace on Saturday. That leaves Wolves with an appalling two points from 12 games this season – only two teams in top-flight English league football have done worse: Sheffield United in 2020-21 and Manchester United in 1930-31 (based on three points for a win).
While we absolutely aren’t hoping any Premier League manager loses his job, Daniel Farke might be pushing his luck at Leeds. An expert in Championship promotion he may be, but both his win ratio (14.8%) and points-per-game record (0.61) are the worst of any coach to have taken charge of 50+ games in Premier League history.
Scott Parker doesn’t fare much better in those rankings, winning just 18.8% of games, the fourth-worst rate of managers to take charge of at least 50 matches in the competition.
Picking on Burnley might be a little harsh considering two of their three games this month have come against the current top two in Arsenal and Chelsea, but they have only beaten fellow strugglers Wolves and Leeds across the last 10 matchdays and have looked poor in attack all season.
They are the only team to have attempted fewer than 100 shots in the Premier League this term (98), while their xG total (8.74) and tally of touches in the opposition’s box (185) are also league lows. No team on record have averaged fewer shots per game in a season (since 2003-04) than Burnley in 2025-26 (8.2), which is not a good sign for a side needing to get out of trouble.
Liverpool Could Be the Worst Champions Ever
Liverpool cantered to the title last season, to such an extent that they could afford to let their form drop off a cliff in the last four games of the campaign.
Unfortunately for them, they haven’t really stopped falling since.
Yes, they won their first five games in the league in 2025-26 as they looked to defend their title, but they weren’t exactly convincing doing so, and that lacklustre form caught up with them in a big way as they began a run that now stands at six defeats in their last seven.
They slumped to a new low on Saturday with a 3-0 home defeat to then 19th-placed Nottingham Forest. It has some people calling for Arne Slot to be sacked, but given the wider context around Liverpool’s season and obviously the fact he won the league so comprehensively only a few months ago, that would be too kneejerk even for this column.
Things must change soon, though. Liverpool have lost as many as six of their opening 12 Premier League games of a season for only the second time, after 2014-15 (also six). They are also only the fourth defending Premier League champions to start the season with six or more defeats in their first dozen outings, after Blackburn Rovers in 1995-96 (six), Chelsea in 2015-16 (seven) and Leicester City in 2016-17 (six).
This was also only the second time in Premier League history that a team starting the day in the relegation zone has won by three or more goals away against the reigning champions, with Forest also responsible for the other, a 4-1 win at Leeds United way back in December 1992.
Will they get back on their feet at West Ham next week? As things stand, you’d be a brave person to bet they will.
Morgan Rogers Should Start for England at the World Cup
With all the recent talk of Jude Bellingham and whether the Real Madrid star should be in Thomas Tuchel’s England team at next summer’s World Cup, the man who took his place for much of qualifying has been somewhat forgotten.
Morgan Rogers was one of only three players to play in all eight of the Three Lions’ World Cup qualifiers – along with Harry Kane and Declan Rice – as they strode to maximum points and zero goals conceded, practically cartwheeling to the tournament in the USA, Mexico and Canada.
He was in form for Aston Villa on Sunday, too, scoring twice to help his side turn things around at Leeds United. Indeed, he became the first Villa player to score a brace at Elland Road in the Premier League since Tuchel’s predecessor as England boss, Gareth Southgate.
Since his Premier League debut in February 2024, only Cole Palmer (44) and Bukayo Saka (28) have had more goal involvements in the competition while aged 23 and under than Rogers (27 – 14 goals, 13 assists). It should also be noted that none of Rogers’ goals in that time have been penalties, whereas eight of Palmer’s have, as have six of Saka’s.
After a deft flick to level things at Leeds, his winner was a sublime free-kick, lifted over the wall from relatively close range like a golf shot, dipping under the bar and past the flummoxed Lucas Perri. It could be a criticism of the Leeds man, or a compliment to Rogers’ technique that the goalkeeper seemingly wasn’t expecting the ball to come over the wall and be on target.
Remarkably, it was his first direct free-kick attempt in 87 games for Villa, and it’s no wonder he ran straight over to celebrate with set-piece coach Austin McPhee having clearly been something worked on in training.
There are strong arguments for Bellingham, or Palmer, or Phil Foden, or Eberechi Eze to start as the number 10 for England next summer, but Rogers already seems to have the trust of Tuchel, and playing like this, it’s easy to see why.
Spurs Could Finish 17th Again
One year ago today, Tottenham Hotspur were sixth in the Premier League with 19 points from their first 12 games of the 2024-25 season. They were just four points off second and dreaming of another challenge for Champions League qualification.
This time around, they are ninth after 12 games, one point worse off than last season, but still only five points off second.
However, this season, getting back into the Champions League feels really rather unlikely, at least in part because performances have been dire, particularly in attack. For much of the season, they have looked rather hopeless.
In Sunday’s north London derby defeat to Arsenal, they had to wait until the 55th minute – by which time they were 3-0 down – for their first shot of the game. But for Richarlison placing that effort from near enough the halfway line perfectly into the top corner of the net, Spurs would have failed to score yet again. They recorded a meagre total of just 0.07 expected goals – the lowest by any team in a Premier League game this season.
In doing so, they broke the record for this season that they had set just a few weeks earlier when they managed just 0.1 xG against Chelsea. In just a few months under Thomas Frank, they have recorded two of their three lowest xG totals on record (since 2012) in the Premier League.
The expected points table can tell us a lot about the how teams have really been performing, and it doesn’t make for good reading for Tottenham. They are 18th according to our xPts model, suggesting that if every game this season had seen chances finished in line with the rate they would be expected to, Spurs would be in the relegation zone.
With a run of three games without a win, they have started to slide down the table worryingly, and Frank acknowledged on Sunday that there hasn’t been enough improvement. “We finished 17th last year,” he said. “We’re trying to build something [but] today didn’t look like we tried to build something.”
The bottom half of the table looms ominously.
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Five Knee-Jerk Reactions to Premier League Matchday 12 Opta Analyst.
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