Spurs replacing Ange Postecoglou with a Premier League coach, Trent Alexander-Arnold leaving Liverpool and Manchester United going down is in store for 2025.

10) Southampton break the Derby points record
It stands alongside Chelsea’s record for fewest goals conceded in a season as an untouchable Premier League bar – although Jose Mourinho and friends set it impossibly high while the combined efforts of Billy Davies and Paul Jewell placed theirs unfathomably low.

Since Derby accrued 11 whole points in the 2007/08 campaign, there has been an element of intrigue as to whether that perfect storm of awfulness can ever be recreated, albeit with slightly 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.

Southampton really do stand every chance of making their misery forever historically relevant. Only two sides have ever had fewer points than six at the halfway stage – lockdown Sheffield United and a deducted Portsmouth – and Ivan Juric has arguably inherited a situation even worse in an on-pitch sense.

9) Fabian Hurzeler leaves Brighton
Without anyone really noticing, Brighton appear to have misplaced their golden touch. It is entirely possible that Chelsea have cleverly poached it and brought the Seagulls’ seemingly inexorable rise to a grinding halt.

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.

8) The Champions League glass ceiling is smashed again
The Champions League format expansion has coincided with a drastic change in Premier League qualification habits. What was once a ringfenced VIP area has been gatecrashed by those without an invite as unexpected clubs have snatched a seat at the top table: your Newcastles, your Aston Villas, your Manchester Uniteds.

From Everton’s brief Pierluigi Collina-cursed foray in 2005 to Newcastle’s small step for Saudi Arabia 18 years later, four of the same old Big Six Premier League clubs qualified for the Champions League with one small exception. Leicester’s discovery of a gap in the glass ceiling only led to it being reinforced.

The Foxes themselves tested the structural integrity of that in recent successive seasons and there are echoes of their Midlands upstart brilliance in Nottingham Forest. Nuno Espirito Santo’s side are maintaining a fierce pace and Chris Wood is uniquely determined to be pointing to a third star above that tree soon.

If they do drop off, Fulham are unbeaten in seven and waiting to capitalise on any slips from the few teams above them, while Bournemouth are the current model for sustainable, scalable and achievable excellence.

7) Spurs replace Ange Postecoglou with Andoni Iraola
A crucial tenet of that Bournemouth template was the refusal to be careful what they wished for. There cannot exist a soul still offering that warning after examining the current status of the Cherries and former manager Gary O’Neil.

It was a brutal and ruthless decision to part with an obviously talented coach after O’Neil far surpassed his objective of survival in difficult circumstances, but Iraola represented the promise of something far greater. He has delivered on that in spades thus far to establish Bournemouth as a genuine Europe-chasing force.

In many ways they are what Spurs should be: attacking, energetic, dynamic, assertive, but not so bizarrely wedded to one philosophy or style of play as to hold them back. Bournemouth are even dealing with an injury crisis better, adapting to adversity instead of trying to plough through 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.

6) Chelsea fail to qualify for European football
For a while there it looked as though Behdad Eghbali, Todd Boehly and their Clearlake friends had cracked the football code. The apparent madness of chopping and changing managers while selling all your academy-developed superstars to afford the best young available players from other clubs had a method all along.

Enzo Maresca was probably right that Chelsea weren’t in a title race, but they were on the right track and in a Champions League spot again.

A draw and two defeats over Christmas has forced a significant rethink. The game management of a coach with fewer than 100 first-team games in the dugout has been questionable and despite rampant recruitment and investment over the past couple of years, glaring holes in the squad remain.

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.

5) Manchester City end the year top of the table
The champions can be filed squarely in the ’emerging from their own difficult runs with shoots of promise’ section, having just about limped through a victory over relegation-battling Leicester to stem a miserable tide.

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 noise coming out of Manchester City is that their next two transfer windows – the last of Txiki Begiristain and first of Hugo Viana – might be approached with all the ruthless precision of the summer 2017 Etihad squad cull. Combine that with easing injury problems and the juggernaut will rise again within the year.

4) Arsenal fail to win a trophy
It does remain a bit funny that Arsenal placed themselves so perfectly to capitalise on a Manchester City slip until the precise point they didn’t. Had Guardiola’s side displayed even a fraction of their current vulnerability in either of the last two seasons then the Gunners would have ended their long wait for a title. The second they did, the foibles in Mikel Arteta’s machine showed themselves too.

The Arteta trophy narrative still seems a bit disingenuous considering the sheer state in which he found Arsenal, but there is a point at which his fine work needs to be backed up by something tangible. That his only trophy after five years remains a lockdown FA Cup won with Arsene Wenger and Unai Emery’s team is a curious quirk.

And the “The Charity Shield as well twice, no?” shtick, while performative Born Winner nonsense and very possibly delivered with more than a hint of irony, did not really help.

Arteta basically finds himself in the Mauricio Pochettino spot of having inherited a mess of a club with grand ambitions, before rebuilding it so phenomenally in his own image as to bypass the point at which a domestic trinket can properly satisfy the 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 it Arsenal in 2025. Yet the odds remain that the most consistently excellent team nevertheless again ends empty-handed, even with their absolute gimme of an FA Cup third-round tie.

3) Newcastle end their trophy drought
That Arsenal theory might be proven hilariously wrong in short order. There was no good draw for them in the Carabao Cup semi-final – the best team in Europe, their most bitter rivals or just a right arse of a side to play – but Newcastle have hit their stride at the worst possible time for an illustrious opponent.

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 fancy their chances in the second leg at St James’ Park if they can emerge from the Emirates on January 7 in decent shape. A final with Liverpool or Spurs would await and Newcastle have already faced both this season without losing, while they definitely don’t have very recent previous for falling painfully short on the Wembley stage.

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.

2) Liverpool win the Premier League but lose one of the Contract Three
It took Jurgen Klopp not far off a decade to run out of the requisite “energy” to keep the Liverpool motor running. Arne Slot might expend his personal resources fielding the same remarkably tiresome questions at press conferences and post-match interviews.

The Dutchman has sidestepped queries over the futures of Mo Salah, Virgil van Dijk and Trent Alexander-Arnold with the same masterful poise as he has approached this season in a tactical and footballing sense. Liverpool are top of the Premier and Champions League tables but the usual Quadruple chat has been derailed by talk of the Treble: can the Reds keep their imminently uncontracted three?

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 stay to cement his Liverpool legacy with another trophy or two, before instantly tarnishing it in the view of a deranged few by sacrificing his career to join the 15-time European champions.

1) A Premier League ever-present goes down
From the ‘different ball game’ of Anders Limpar being served breakfast in bed and Vinnie Jones showering with Tim Sherwood, to 427 different kick-off time slots and a small loan being required to afford the myriad different subscriptions to actually watch the games, the Premier League has always found an anchor in its six ever-presents.

Aston Villa were the last team to leave that group when they dropped down to the Championship in 2016. Before then it was Southampton in 2005, then Leeds a year prior.

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.

Yet the responsibility for this prediction does not lay solely with them. A couple of places higher in the Premier League table are Manchester United, for whom a future in the Championship is realistic enough for their manager to openly discuss without fear of rebuke.

It sounds ludicrous but the numbers are stark and the records are tumbling. Since Amorim was appointed, Manchester United have only accrued more points (7) than Leicester (4) and Southampton (2), and financial incompetence has made January signings difficult to fathom.

There is a general acceptance that things might well get worse before they improve at Old Trafford, but perhaps not yet a realisation about just how bad ‘worse’ really is. The good news for Wayne Rooney is that he might have his pick of interim Championship jobs soon.

Ruben Amorim has had a rotten start as Manchester United manager but still retains the support of ‘most players’, according to Manchester United expert Andy Mitten.

The founder of the United We Stand fanzine has impressive contacts within the club and he claims that Amorim enjoys ‘support from fans and from most players who welcomed his arrival, openness and enthusiasm’.

He does not mention the names of those who do not support Amorim but that usually means those players who are out of the first-team picture, with most reports suggesting Marcus Rashford, Antony, Christian Eriksen, Casemiro, Joshua Zirkzee and Victor Lindelof are all available for transfer.

The possibility of Amorim being sacked – despite him being high in the Sack Race – are probably slimmer than the possibility of them being relegated in 2025.

But even Mitten admits that Amorim ‘needs wins and no manager can continue to lose every week, especially at a giant club such as United’; being 14th in the Premier League table is unacceptable.

MORE MAN UTD COVERAGE ON F365…
👉 Postecoglou sacked, trophyless Arsenal, Manchester United relegated and other football predictions for 2025
👉 Ten Manchester United moves for Ruben Amorim’s perfect January transfer window
👉 Man Utd: Ruben Amorim told Red Devils star will ‘never trust or respect him again’

Amorim has made it clear that he will not budge from his preferred formation, even though it is reaping really quite terrible results.

“Playing with three is more or less the same thing as playing with four,” he said.

“We can change the characteristics. If we play with Amad on the wing it could be a little bit different. We had some games that we were pressing 4-4-2 so I don’t see it that way. Of course, I didn’t choose the players specifically for that position but that I already knew.

“But I have to sell my idea if I’m going to change all the time it is going to be even worse. But I understand that they have a lot of difficulties because they spent two years playing one way and then they are playing another.

“With a lot of losses, it is really tough on them and you can feel it during the game. So even today when we tried to score and we are near to scoring, it was more from them then the organisation, so you can feel it, I can feel it. But I have to sell my idea. I don’t have another one.”

But pundits are turning on Amorim, with Danny Murphy writing in the Mail: ‘Most matches are won or lost in midfield. Managers have drilled that into players and it’s still the case today.

‘Few teams ask two players to go up against three when they aren’t equipped for the job and don’t get any help, so I found it bizarre Ruben Amorim did it against a side as athletic as Newcastle on Monday night.

‘I was at Old Trafford and could see the problem within a few minutes. By the time the Manchester United boss reacted, his team were 2-0 down and it was game over.

‘It was football suicide and unless Amorim changes either his system or the personnel, performances and results aren’t going to change – particularly worrying as United are down in 14th.’

Ruben Amorim is in the troubling position of desperately needing to add to his ailing Manchester United squad in January but having no money to make those changes.

The club needs to buy in order to sell, with loan moves the other avenue the Red Devils are sure to pursue in a bid to turn their season around.

We’ve come up with 10 player moves – six exits and four arrivals – which we reckon is the best Amorim can hope for in the winter window in the hope of avoiding further gut punches in 2025.

Marcus Rashford out
We wonder whether Rashford had a slightly elevated opinion of his appeal when he announced he was keen on a “new challenge”. If he expected a flood of post-bombshell calls to his agent he was alone in thinking that and sorely mistaken. There’s been a lot of water under the bridge and far too few goals and assists since the £100m links with Paris Saint-Germain, when Barcelona would have been making the offers rather than the other way round.

There’s a very decent chance that Manchester United are the problem and not him. Jadon Sancho is having a good go at proving that very case at Chelsea this season. And while there was recent evidence of Sancho’s worth after what he achieved in the Champions League with Borussia Dortmund last term (while there’s been very little from Rashford to hang one’s hat on), there will definitely be managers confident in their ability to reignite the career of a footballer who’s devastating when on song.

Rashford’s refuted reports that he’s ‘stepped up his bid to quit’ Manchester United, perhaps concerned by what it will do to his reputation if he looks to force his exit, fails to find a club in Europe willing or able to sign him and has to stay at the club he clearly can’t wait to leave. Finding a buyer should be a top priority for United too, as he will command a reasonable amount of sweet pure profit, which can presumably be immediately used to sign new players so Sir Jim Ratcliffe doesn’t need to take more toys away from children.

Antony out
We can’t help but laugh when reports still reference the possibility of his £82m transfer ‘rising to £86m’. It’s not going to rise anywhere, is it? What were those add-ons? Please say it was a Ballon d’Or clause.

We can debate whether it was the worst transfer in Premier League history – it would be in anyone’s top three – but there’s little doubt it’s the funniest. The fourth-most expensive in history at the time, which is great, but much, much better because Ajax actually rejected a £76m bid for actual Antony a couple of days before United got the deal over the line, with that rise in cost effectively ruling them out of the running to sign Cody Gakpo. It’s all good stuff.

Real Betis are supposedly interested in a loan where they’ll pay the majority of his £200,000 per week wages, which is about the best United can hope for.

Casemiro out
Incredible that he’s started 10 of United’s 19 Premier League games this season, with the peak of bewilderment reached last time out, when Amorim handed three points on a plate to Newcastle by pairing Casemiro with fellow infirm, once-great midfielder Christian Eriksen.

He doesn’t need this sh*t and is apparently keen on reuniting with Cristiano Ronaldo at Al Nassr, which we suspect will be a rather more relaxing experience, and may mean United can receive a half-decent fee.

Christian Eriksen out
There’s no Manchester United player we feel more pity at having to play for Manchester United than Christian Eriksen. The way Bruno Guimaraes and Sandro Tonali were popping the ball around him on Monday night was frankly harrowing to watch.

Even Eriksen at his best would have hated playing in that deeper midfield role, and we can’t remember the last time he played a pass worth commenting on or did anything approaching the genius things he used to do with a football because by the time he gets it he’s completely f***ed from the shadows he’s been chasing in the preceding lung-busting minutes.

There is no role suited to him in Amorim’s formation, so please just let him leave now so we can enjoy him doing Eriksen stuff rather than all of the distinctly un-Eriksen stuff he’s been made to do for the last year.

Victor Lindelof out
Frequently accused of Not Quite Being Good Enough For Manchester United, but we would counter that by arguing those accusers have maintained a two-decade old view of what Manchester United were, when what they are is exactly as good as Victor Lindelof.

Newcastle, West Ham and Leicester are all said to be interested in the Sweden international, whose somehow only 30 despite being at Old Trafford forever, and we wouldn’t put it past him being really rather good for whichever club lands him.

Joshua Zirkzee out
The mixture of joy and disbelief at being handed the Man of the Match award after marking his debut with the winner against Fulham makes the fans jeering him off the pitch in defeat to Newcastle all the more depressing. It really does take a special kind of pr*ck to join in with that small-minded attack on your own player.

Those so-called fans should be ashamed of themselves and while we completely understand Zirkzee’s desire to return to Serie A, or at least be anywhere else other than the Premier League, we would take great pleasure in him joining say, West Ham, and thriving in full view of those supporters who castigated him.

Serie A looks much more likely though, with Napoli and Juventus supposedly interested, and there’s a good chance United will recoup some if not all of their £36.5m, as that was something of a bargain buy courtesy of his Bologna release clause.

READ MORE: Zirkzee nightmare proved Man Utd fans are not actually a uniquely tolerant, civilised breed

Andreas Christensen in
We can imagine the crestfallen reactions of Manchester United fans clicking on links tipping a Barcelona star to be the marquee first addition under Amorim and discovering that man is Andreas Christensen. Understandable but a tad unfair.

He’s been injured this season but was more or less a mainstay for Barcelona last term, and an attractive signing in that he can operate both at centre-back and in defensive midfield. Cheap given his contract expires in 2026 (possibly even free as Barca look to trim the wage bill), he has lots of experience, both in the Premier League and in Europe, though with enough left in the tank as a 28-year-old.

Christensen has also crucially played plenty of football in a back three, Amorim’s preference, having come into the Chelsea team after Thomas Tuchel took over from Frank Lampard before playing a key role in their Champions League win. It makes total sense for Amorim to have ‘given the green light’ for his transfer.

Ben Chilwell in
Paraguayan teenager Diego Leon has agreed a £3m move but won’t arrive until the summer, and whether he proves to be a genuine solution to their left-back woes or not, United really need another option in that position now.

Amorim has apparently already fallen into the This Is Manchester United trap with everyone else in believing that Nuno Mendes – one of the best young left-backs in world football – will leave PSG to join a club closer to the relegation zone than European football. It’s good to have Top Targets, but Manchester United may well have to settle for middling or even low targets right now.

Hello, Mr Chilwell. Enzo Maresca doesn’t fancy him, with one possibly explanation for his Chelsea snub being that he is far more suited to playing at left wing-back rather than left-back. Hello, Mr Amorim.

There will be concern over signing another injury-prone England international to cover for Luke Shaw, but we actually quite like the idea of Manchester United with Shaw on the left of a back three and Chilwell raiding down the wing beside him.

Chilwell’s also pretty good at football, y’know. Him not playing is quite a weird reason to dismiss him, given that’s entirely to do with his unsuitability to the Chelsea system, while Amorim’s 3-4-3 is made for him, as he showed under Thomas Tuchel.

Randal Kolo Muani in
Kylian Mbappe’s gone and the poor b*stard still can’t get a game at PSG. He’s started more games for France this season (5) than his club (2), with Marco Asensio of all people usually keeping him out of the team.

United haven’t got the cash to sign him in January but reports suggest PSG would listen to loan offers with an option or obligation to buy. Sounds as though it makes sense for all parties, particularly as Kolo Muani is well versed in Amorim’s 3-4-3 having played in that formation at Frankfurt, both as the central striker and in the two inverted wing positions.

Dani Olmo in
Olmo’s agent says he’s “not considering any option other than Barcelona” and while we’re amused by reports claiming he would prefer not to play football at all for the next six months rather than move on loan to Manchester United, there’s a hint of kicking while down clickbait there and we can’t see the Spain international sitting and watching for half a season in his prime years.

More likely Olmo would rather move to one of the other clubs queuing up to sign him on a temporary basis and there will presumably be a host of them keeping tabs as Barcelona struggle to reach an agreement with La Liga over his registration in the new year.

Calendar year stats. Hmm. Not a thing, are they? In football? We don’t work in calendar years in football, do we? We’ve got a little thing we like to call seasons. There’s a bit of grey area around when precisely one ends and the next starts but we can all agree it’s not bloody January. It’s in the summer, isn’t it? The football seasons? Not January.

However. Do you know when calendar year stats are a thing? When they are funny. Because that trumps all. And you know what’s funny? Big football clubs showing the absolute entirety of their arse. And that happened in 2024, didn’t it?

So for that and no other reason other than the fact it’s now somehow 2025, here are the worst ever calendar-year efforts from Big Six clubs in the Big Six era. Shout at us if you want, but that era begins here in 2009, because that was the first time the Big Six were the top six in a calendar year, and despite the notable efforts below that has generally remained the case in most years since.

7) Arsenal 2020 – 52pts at 1.53pts per game
P34 W15 D7 L12 GD +9

Perhaps harshly included here because the points-per-game isn’t horrendous in that Covid-impacted year but the overall number of points is still very bad and placed Mikel Arteta’s side below both Southampton and Everton in the annual table.

Arsenal were actually unbeaten in the league in 2020 up until the pandemic paused the action in March, but having begun the year with a win over Manchester United, had drawn far too many winnable games against your Palaces, your Burnleys and your Sheffield Uniteds.

Project restart began with defeats at Man City and Brighton with further losses at Spurs and Villa as the Gunners limped home in eighth. But they did win the FA Cup, which remains for now Arteta’s only silverware for all his good works.

That trophy success didn’t translate instantly to improved league form, though, with the delayed start of the 2020/21 season featuring eight defeats in 16 games for the Gunners before the turn of the year.

6) Tottenham 2019 – 56pts at 1.47pts per game
P38 W16 D8 L14 GD +13

A seismic year for Spurs, but in hindsight it turns out to have been for all the wrong reasons. The first half of the year was spent bantering their merry way to the Champions League final while somehow winning an embarrassingly inept fight with Arsenal for fourth place.

Details of Arsenal’s own effort in that particular scrap will come soon enough, but at the risk of spoilers the sheer incompetence of that Arsenal run-in is really best summed up by the fact Spurs managed just 11 points from the last 12 games of the season and it was still enough. Seven of those final 12 games were lost in amongst all the various nonsenses from the Champions League run.

But that miserable league form, and defeat to Liverpool in Madrid, would bleed into the following season. Come the November international break, Mauricio Pochettino’s side had won just three of their opening 12 games to sit 14th in the table. Out went Poch, in came Jose Mourinho, and nothing has ever quite been right with the world ever since.

Spurs have tried more Born Winners, Unapologetic Entertainers and Nuno Espirito Santos in various desperate attempts to find a manager who could work with Daniel Levy the way Pochettino could. No luck so far.

5) Arsenal 2019 – 56pts at 1.47pts per game
P38 W15 D11 L12 GD +6

For all its faults, 2020 still marked a year of progress for Arsenal compared to the previous year’s efforts, at least on a points-per-game basis. Which is very much the least unfair basis.

Wolves, Palace and even Spurs were among the teams to outperform the Gunners in 2019, with a classic late-season collapse seeing Unai Emery’s side miss out on the Champions League with a run of three straight defeats to Palace, Wolves and Leicester allowing Spurs to stumble over the line for fourth despite their own antics (see above).

A frustratingly draw-laden start to the 2019/20 season did for Emery, who was replaced by Freddie Ljungberg initially and Mikel Arteta more permanently. He began, fittingly, with two more draws and a defeat to round out a miserable year for the Gunners.

4) Liverpool 2010 – 52pts at 1.44pts per game
P36 W14 D10 L12 GD +12

Rafa Benitez’s side had finished second in 2008/09 but seven defeats in the first half of the 2009/10 season had them well out of contention.

Despite that, they actually began 2010 in fine fettle, winning four and drawing two of their first six games of the year before a narrow defeat at Arsenal.

Further losses at Wigan and Manchester United and a costly home defeat to Chelsea on the penultimate weekend saw a team that began the year in a lowly seventh finish 2009/10 in the same spot.

Benitez left in the summer, and in came Roy Hodgson. This, it would be fair to say, would turn out to have been a mistake for all involved.

The stagnation of the previous season gave way to genuine peril, with Liverpool winning just one and losing four of their opening eight games of 2010/11 to find themselves in the actual relegation zone for a spell. A three-game winning run put paid to fears of the drop at least, but it turns out that ‘avoiding a relegation battle’ doesn’t really count as an achievement when you are Liverpool manager, and Hodgson’s team were soon back to their miserable worst anyway, losing four of their last six games of the year to sit 12th as 2011 began.

Hodgson somehow made it out of 2010 with his job intact. He did not make it out of January 2011.

3) Tottenham 2024 – 51pts at 1.38pts per game
P37 W15 D6 L16 GD +13

Are you not entertained? Spurs’ struggles this season really shouldn’t have been a huge surprise, representing as they do simply a continuation of a formline that was long established after the first quarter of the 2023/24 season, in which Ange Postecoglou so magnificently hoodwinked us all by winning a whole bunch of games before succumbing to his own nonsense.

The first few months of 2024 were actually Postecoglou’s best since that initial 10-game burst back in the autumn of his opening season. Spurs lost only twice in 11 games at the start of 2024 and their wins included a memorable 4-0 dismantling of Champions League rivals Aston Villa.

Then it all went horribly wrong, with a 4-0 defeat at St James’ Park – the scene of so many recent Spurs horrors – precipitating a season-ending run of five defeats in seven games in which the only bright spots came against relegated pair Burnley and Sheffield United as the Champions League dream died.

And there has been no real improvement in the first half of 2024/25, a Spurs season thus far marked out by frequent stupidity and a total absence of consistency. You simply cannot trust a side that in the space of 19 games has won games 5-0, 4-0, 4-0, 4-1, 4-1 but never 1-0 or 2-1 and has also contrived to somehow lose nine times. As well as the 6-3 nonsense against Liverpool, Spurs have completed the neat trick of managing to lose games 1-0, 2-1, 3-2 and 4-3 already this season. A 5-4 defeat is only a matter of time.

The best stat about this season, though, is that it is now officially Tottenham’s worst half-season start to a Premier League campaign since 2008/09, a year when they infamously had only two points from eight games and things got so bad they had literally no choice but to appoint Harry Redknapp.

2) Manchester United 2024 – 51pts at 1.38pts per game
P37 W14 D9 L14 GD -1

And yet somehow, Spurs managed not to be the worst Big Six team in 2024. A genuinely heroic effort from Manchester United, this, begun by Erik Ten Hag and really quite magnificently carried on by Ruben Amorim, all with Sir Jim Ratcliffe being the most crudely-drawn ‘evil billionaire’ supervillain imaginable in the background. Superb stuff.

Lots of these terrible years seem to have begun deceptively well, and this is another. United started with a 2-2 draw against Spurs – surely neither could have fully predicted the misery in store over the 12 months to come – and then a run of four straight wins in February.

Defeats to Fulham, Man City and Chelsea soon arrived to dispel the notion that United might actually be good, and a hefty defeat at Palace followed by a grimly predictable home loss to Arsenal left United mired in eighth and relying on the FA Cup for salvation.

That duly came, but at the cost of allowing Ten Hag to survive the mortifying, confidence-shedding job review to which he was subjected in the summer.

But four defeats in the first nine games of the season finished him off, to the surprise of literally nobody not employed by Manchester United. And yet United have somehow already managed to lose more league games under Amorim than they did under Ten Hag this season.

1) Chelsea 2023 – 48pts at 1.12pts per game
P43 W12 D12 L19 GD -8

A genuinely wild year of managerial jiggery-pokery even by Chelsea standards culminated in 2023 delivering numbers that no Big Six team has come close to matching in the last 15 years. Although we do have high hopes for a particular pair of idiot clubs in 2025.

The year began with Graham Potter in charge, the former Brighton boss having replaced Champions League winner Thomas Tuchel in September 2022.

Desperate not to be seen to panic, Chelsea’s madcap new owners kept faith in Potter for far longer than was healthy for anyone involved, somehow not pulling the pin until a 2-0 defeat to Villa in early April that was already Chelsea’s fifth league defeat of the year.

Having been so desperate to avoid being seen to panic, Chelsea then leant fully into full-scale panic by inexplicably selecting Frank Lampard as the steady interim hand to steer them through the remaining weeks of the season. He lost six and won only one of his nine league games in charge.

Chelsea then appointed former Spurs boss – a nice twist on the usual order of things there – Mauricio Pochettino, a man who was always going to have a hard time winning over the fans at Stamford Bridge.

While he would eventually get the hang of it in the second half of the season – albeit not sufficiently to save his job – the first half of the season was distinctly choppy. Defeat at Wolves on Christmas Eve was Chelsea’s eighth in the first half of the season to leave them once again mired in mid-table as Auld Lang Syne rang out and the fireworks went off.

Former Manchester United coach Rene Meulensteen believes the Red Devils are “copying exactly what they did with Erik ten Hag” by appointing Ruben Amorim.

Amorim replaced Ten Hag in the United dugout in November but has failed to revert United’s slide into mediocrity; if anything they’ve got worse under the Portuguese manager’s stewardship.

Like Ten Hag when the Dutchman moved from Ajax, Amorim arrived at Old Trafford as one of Europe’s most highly rated coaches having reinvigorated a sleeping giant in Sporting.

READ MORE: Amorim leeway gone as ‘horrific’ Man Utd star spares him the entire blame vs Newcastle

Ten Hag retained his job in the summer despite leading United in their worst-ever Premier League and Champions League campaigns in 2023/2024, with the FA Cup final win over Manchester City doing just enough to stop new co-owner and head of football operates Sir Jim Ratcliffe from making a change.

But Ten Hag didn’t last long this season and Amorim has been left to pick up the pieces, with his change of style and formation proving difficult with little time for training in the relentless fixture schedule.

Meulensteen – who worked as Sir Alex Ferguson’s assistant from 2008 to 2013 – is a fan of Amorim’s style, but is concerned his former club are making the same mistake they made in appointing Ten Hag.

“It’s more to do with the appointment process than anything about his management style or coaching,” Meulensteen said.

“You look at when United went for Ten Hag. He was the manager at Ajax in a smaller league in Europe and did really well winning the league and did well in the Champions League.

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“It’s exactly the same pattern with Amorim in Portugal. Sporting, a smaller league, does well, wins the league, and does really well in the Champions League.

“He’s got a really nice football style about him; that’s where the similarities are. I think they’re two different characters with two different personalities.

“The way that Ten Hag communicated compared to the way that Amorim communicates, the way that Amorim likes to play his team in a 3-4-3 is different from Ten Hag.

“But that was the concern for me with United actually copying exactly what they did by appointing Ten Hag. They do exactly what they did with Amorim.

“Because Ten Hag had no experience in the Premier League, Amorim has no experience in the Premier League. When Ten Hag came in, everybody was keen because of the way that Ajax played.

“Man United never played anywhere near the same attractive style under Ten Hag with Ajax. Now, Amorim comes in, and he says very clearly, ‘This is the way I’m going to play’.

“But he’s got a completely different set of players, a completely different league, you know what I mean? So it is very hard for him to recreate that because it’s very different.”