Just four points separate fourth from 12th in the Premier League after 15 matchdays of the 2025-26 season. The race for Europe is on course to be the tensest ever.
If there’s one aspect of the 2025-26 Premier League season that most accurately sums up the action to date, it would be how significantly a single result can change perceptions.
It’s fair to say the table doesn’t really hold huge importance during the early weeks, but with every team now having played 15 matches, we’re well past the point when the standings usually begin to take on some meaning.
Only, the Premier League table is so congested this season that a team can feasibly go from being on the verge of a crisis one week to pushing for Europe the next. Honestly, it’s difficult to keep up with.
Manchester United are a good case in point. They went into their MD15 trip to Wolves 12th in the table – a shock defeat would’ve meant not only the ignominy of being the first team to lose to Wolves this season, but also remaining as far down the table as that.
As it happened, a cohesive second-half display at Molineux saw them win 4-1 and, just like that, they shot up to sixth, level on 25 points with Chelsea and just a point off fourth.
Sure, it could still be better, but following their dismal 2024-25, if you’d have told any Man Utd fan at the start of the season they’d have as many points as Chelsea after 15 matchdays, most would’ve been pretty encouraged.
Obviously the table’s instability isn’t relevant to just United. Tottenham and Newcastle ended the matchday 11th and 12th, respectively, much lower than they’d probably expect to be. But Spurs could climb up to fifth at the weekend if results go their way – Newcastle could too with a significant goal swing. At a snapshot, your season looks rather better if you’re fifth or sixth as opposed to mid-table, doesn’t it?
Liverpool are, of course, a slightly different case in that their campaign would surely still be regarded as disappointing even if they were as high as fourth or fifth – but again, they’re only three points off fourth, which seems remarkable for a team who’ve won just two and lost six of the past 10 league games.
Chelsea, who just a couple of weeks ago were being widely hyped as Arsenal’s likeliest challengers for the title, have dropped to fifth after a three-game winless run.
This allowed Crystal Palace – at the centre of discussions around fatigue as recently as last week – to go fourth. It’s the first time they’ve ever been in the top four of the Premier League after MD9.
Their hold isn’t exactly secure, though. The gap from fourth to 12th is just four points – and you’d be right to think this race for Europe is unusually tight.
In fact, there’s never been as few as four points between 12th and fourth in the Premier League table at this stage of a campaign (after MD15). Call it inconsistency or the difference in standard from team to team not being as pronounced as it once was; either way, only a brave person would try to predict who’ll finish in the European places come the end of the season.
So, is this season an anomaly or a continuation?
Some might remember there was a point last season when the Premier League seemed ridiculously unpredictable, with the table taking a while to settle.
We covered that very phenomenon at the time, when just four points separated third from 13th after 11 matchdays. That was also the tightest such gap between those positions at that stage of a Premier League season.
Over the following few matchdays, that gap grew to seven points by the end of MD15. That was still comparatively small, however.
With all the discourse over the past few years about the collective standard of the Premier League improving as its financial power becomes ever greater, even last season’s gap of seven points from 12th to fourth after MD15 was quite unusual.
The last time it’d been lower was 2006-07 (5 points). The 2020-21 season also had a seven-point gap after MD15, though there’s an argument it ought to be disregarded because the campaign was largely played behind closed doors due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Either way, the average gap from 12th to fourth through MD15 across the last nine seasons prior to 2025-26 was 10.2 points, hitting double digits in six of those; it only reached 10+ points in four of the 24 campaigns before that, stretching back to the start of the Premier League era.
As alluded to before, prior to this season the smallest the gap at this stage had been five points, in both 2000-01 and 2006-07.
In 2000-01, it was Leicester City who were flying high in fourth, but only five points ahead of Charlton Athletic, who sat 12th. The Foxes couldn’t maintain that position, though, eventually finishing 13th.
But the big difference between that campaign and this at the MD15 stage is the fact Manchester United were already well on course to win the title that season with a 10-point lead. In 2025-26, however, Arsenal’s lead is just two points.
The other instance of just five points separating 12th and fourth at this stage of a Premier League season came six years later, with Bolton Wanderers – spurred on by the excellent Nicolas Anelka – pushing for Champions League football. Manchester City were 12th at this point, with their transformational takeover still a couple of years away.
While United’s lead at the top this time was much smaller, it’s fair to say the top two were in something of a league of their own.
The figures of this season and 2024-25 do, then, look rather more typical of a bygone era – albeit still extreme. And although it’s obviously far too early to suggest this is some kind of new normal, the competitiveness this phenomenon hints at is what’s defined 2025-26 to date, suggesting we’re in store for the tightest European race ever.
After all, the only two positions in the table separated by more than four points are 20th and 19th, which is heavily influenced by Wolves being on course to post the smallest tally in Premier League history.
There’s a chance the race for Europe could get even tighter over the next month or so, too, when you take a few things into consideration.
Firstly, Aston Villa are third and in great form, but we also shouldn’t forget their fixture schedule and that the expected points table suggests they’ve won considerably more points than they should have.
In terms of fixtures, when we looked at all teams’ schedules until the halfway point last week, Villa had the toughest run. Now, they’ve done pretty well since then, beating both Arsenal and Brighton, but their next four outings include United at home and trips to the Emirates and Stamford Bridge.
As for expected points – which simulates results based on xG (expected goals) data from every match played – the degree to which they’ve overperformed is astonishing, as the table below highlights.
xG isn’t without its drawbacks. For instance, the data doesn’t reflect dangerous periods that don’t lead to shots or general dominance, but it is a decent barometer of how teams are performing in terms of chance creation and prevention.
So, maybe Villa are the real deal, but there’s also the possibility the numbers balance out and they fall a few places.
Meanwhile, fourth-placed Crystal Palace are doing exceptionally well, but it’s widely known they don’t have a huge squad – their own manager has been at pains to point this out.
Fatigue has already been raised as an issue for them amid their first ever European campaign in the Conference League, with Oliver Glasner recently criticising the club for not doing more in the summer transfer window.
It’s something their opposition have noticed, too, with Ruben Amorim referencing Palace’s tiredness after seeing his United team come from behind to earn a 2-1 win at Selhurst Park on 30 November.
They’ll have to continue juggling European and domestic football into January. And while they can of course bring in reinforcements next month, the winter transfer window is never regarded as ideal for squad integration, so there’s no guarantee signings will have an immediate impact.
A broader complication that’ll affect numerous teams is the Africa Cup of Nations, which will run from 21 December to 18 January, with most players set to depart after this weekend.
Beyond Ismaila Sarr (if he is even deemed fit enough to join up with Senegal after sustaining an ankle injury), Palace’s starting XI probably won’t be impacted much, though another couple of fringe players may be involved – and as we’ve said, their squad isn’t big.
Other starting XIs will be tested more, though. Man Utd’s entire first-choice right flank will be decimated, for instance, with Noussair Mazraoui, Bryan Mbeumo and Amad Diallo all heading off to Morocco – it would be quite an achievement if they manage to ride that out without it affecting results.
Among clubs in the crowd between fourth and 12th, Everton, Tottenham, Brighton, Aston Villa and Liverpool will all expect to lose at least one player, while Sunderland could be without as many as seven.
Until now, the table has been forgiving. Teams’ inconsistencies are letting others off the hook, only to be thrown a lifeline again the next week.
For now, the tensest tussle for European qualification ever appears on the cards – and that’s saying something considering how engrossing the same battle was last season.
The next couple of months will have a massive say in whether that ultimately comes to fruition, but for now we’re embracing the chaos.
Subscribe to our football newsletter to receive exclusive weekly content. You should also follow our social accounts over on X, Instagram, TikTok and Facebook.
The Premier League’s European Race Has Never Been More Open Opta Analyst.
Hence then, the article about the premier league s european race has never been more open was published today ( ) and is available on The Analyst ( Middle East ) The editorial team at PressBee has edited and verified it, and it may have been modified, fully republished, or quoted. You can read and follow the updates of this news or article from its original source.
Read More Details
Finally We wish PressBee provided you with enough information of ( The Premier League’s European Race Has Never Been More Open )
Also on site :
- China's First Domestic Anti-CTLA-4 Monoclonal Antibody, Innovent's TABOSUN® (Ipilimumab N01 Injection) Received NMPA Approval
- Prominent Canadian Musician Says Gig Was Cancelled After Google AI Overview Wrongly Branded Him Sex Pest
- Goldman Sachs expects layoffs to keep rising—and says investors are punishing the stocks of companies that slash staff