It’s too early in the season to be making many conclusions, but that isn’t stopping us. We’re back for our third instalment of knee-jerk reactions to the Premier League in 2025-25.
Three games into the 2025-26 season, the Premier League table is starting to take shape. Champions Liverpool are top and, erm, Fulham, Aston Villa and Wolves are in the bottom three.
It might be too early to draw too many conclusions from what we’ve seen so far, but we are ploughing ahead nonetheless with our weekly column of knee-jerk reactions to what we’ve just watched.
Here are five hastily-made conclusions from the last round of Premier League fixtures.
All Three Promoted Clubs Could Survive
The fear before the season started was that the Premier League was becoming too difficult for promoted teams to establish themselves in. You may be aware that for the first time ever, all three promoted teams have just been relegated in successive seasons. There was reasonable concern that it was going to happen again.
But after a win for Sunderland against Brentford, an impressive draw for Leeds against Newcastle, and Burnley only missing out on a point at Old Trafford after Manchester United were handed a last-gasp penalty thanks to a controversial late VAR review, there’s reason to believe any of them could survive.
They have 13 points between them already when last season, the three promoted teams managed 59 points all campaign. That means the 2025-26 contingent already have 22.2% of their total points in just 7.9% of this season.
All three head into the first international break safely outside the relegation zone, each already having shown they have the potential to win games at this level.
It hasn’t actually been all that long since all three promoted clubs survived; the last occasion was 2022-23, the season before this current run of all the promoted teams going down. However, it’s only happened four times in Premier League history. Could this season’s bunch make it five?
West Ham are Fine as Long as They Have Bowen
There has been an awful lot of negativity around West Ham of late.
After starting the new season with a 3-0 defeat to newly promoted Sunderland and a 5-1 thrashing at home to Chelsea, they had shipped eight goals in their first two games of a top-flight campaign for the first time in their history. Many were already writing them off for the season.
Few would have expected Sunday’s 3-0 win at Nottingham Forest, but West Ham fully deserved the three points against one of last season’s best teams, even if they only properly turned it on late in the match. They broke the deadlock in the 84th minute but the final score reflected their dominance, particularly in the second half. It was the second latest into a Premier League match that a team have gone 1-0 up and ended up winning by 3+ goals, after Manchester United vs Everton in October 2002 (86th minute).
Key man Jarrod Bowen scored their opener with a pinpoint finish, and he very nearly added a sensational second, only denied when teammate Callum Wilson took the ball off his toe as he was about to shoot after he’d dribbled through the heart of the Forest defence.
After losing Mohammed Kudus in the summer, there is even more need for Bowen to produce moments like that, and he showed on Sunday that he is more than good enough to do so, though there were positive signs from a couple of new players in El Hadji Malick Diouf and Mateus Fernandes in particular.
With Bowen playing like this, West Ham will be fine.
Spurs Need an Upgrade on Palhinha
Tottenham‘s start to life under Thomas Frank made João Palhinha look like a very, very good signing. When he left the pitch in the European Super Cup against PSG, Spurs were 2-0 up, before collapsing once he’d gone off, and then he played a key role in a 2-0 win over Manchester City last week. A Spurs defence that had been horribly leaky last season appeared to have plugged the gaping hole in front of it.
Palhinha was exceptional in both of those games, but crucially, on both occasions, Spurs had less of the ball than their opponents and the former Fulham man was able to focus on what he does best: winning the ball back – something he helped do to devastating effect high up the pitch for his goal at City.
But against Bournemouth this weekend, Palhinha was found wanting for his ability, or lack thereof, on the ball.
Spurs just could not play through Bournemouth’s press at all, and Palhinha not being able to take the ball on the half-turn while under pressure was a persistent problem. Just about every time he got the ball off the defence, he played it straight back to them. Just look at his pass map from his 54 minutes on the pitch.
The graphic showing his forward passes shows precisely how little he helped his team progress play through the middle of the pitch.
Spurs’s first shot of any kind came after Palhinha had been subbed off, managing five shots in the 36 minutes without him. It was a dreadful and blunt display all round from Spurs, though credit should certainly go to Bournemouth for playing in such a way that completely negated any Tottenham threat.
Worst of all, though, against the transitional threat of Andoni Iraola’s side, Palhinha didn’t even provide proper protection for the Spurs defence. Bournemouth racked up 1.59 xG to Spurs’ 0.19, had three big chances to Spurs’ zero and should have won by a more comfortable scoreline than they did.
Spurs needed more from their number six in this game, and there isn’t much reason to believe he can provide it.
Wolves Are Down
There isn’t a great deal for Wolves to smile about at the moment. Three games into the season, they are bottom of the table and are the only team yet to pick up a single point. They have the joint-worst defensive record in the league, having shipped eight goals, while only Burnley (5.9) have allowed their opponents a higher non-penalty xG total than them (5.7).
They did finally score their first goals of the season this weekend, but they still shipped three and fell to defeat to Everton. Having lost key men in Rayan Aït-Nouri and Matheus Cunha this summer, they look a shell of the team that Vitor Pereira had firing on all cylinders last term.
They desperately need Jørgen Strand Larsen to stay, but even if he does, the early evidence from this season suggests they don’t have enough in their squad to replace what Aït-Nori and Cunha provided. It could be a very long year.
Palace Can Still Thrive Without Eze
Crystal Palace have just lost one of the most talented and exciting players they’ve ever had. Eberechi Eze was the driving force behind their run to FA Cup glory last season, and when he played, just about everything they did in attack went through him. And understandably so.
So, when he joined Arsenal this summer, there was a fear that everything manager Oliver Glasner had built would crumble. A first ever European adventure felt rather more daunting without Eze.
But Glasner’s Palace are built on strong foundations, and they were exceptional in winning 3-0 at Aston Villa on Sunday night, in the process proving they can survive without Eze.
They are now unbeaten in their last 14 matches across all competitions (W6 D8), which is the longest run as a top-flight team in the club’s history.
Palace have plenty of other quality players, not least Jean-Philippe Mateta who, now on 11 goals for the year, has only been outscored in the Premier League since the start of 2025 by Mohamed Salah (13).
Ismaïla Sarr also got on the scoresheet at Villa, meaning he only has one goal involvement fewer (16) than Eze (17) in the Premier League since the start of last season. Sarr has also created more open-play chances (45) than Eze, too (39).
Their latest performance shows that there’s no need to fear life after Eze.
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