2026-27 Premier League Season Preview

If you missed it, check out Part I of the Kwestthoughts season preview

We are about to embark on one of the most unique Premier League campaign that I can think of. For most of the Premier League’s history, the title race has been defined by a managerial rivalry at the top: Ferguson vs Keagan, Ferguson vs Wenger, Ferguson vs Mourinho, Mourinho vs Pep, Pep vs Klopp, and if we want we can even throw Pep vs Arteta up there.

It’s a completely different story now. Pep Guardiola is gone. Jugen Klopp is too - as are nearly all the Liverpool players from his era. The only manager to have won the league is Mikel Arteta. I can’t remember a period as wide open as this one since the three seasons after Sir Alex Ferguson retired. The teams that won the league in those years? Manchester City, Chelsea, and… Leicester City.

There may not be Leicester City like underdog but if ever there was a year for it, it’s this one. The 2026-27 Premier League seems more wide open than ever.

I’ve been writing my season preview post for several years now. I write it from the angle of “Manchester United are going to be all right.” United have a bunch of question marks around their squad coming into the season, but so do their rivals!

For as good as the top Premier League clubs are, every squad has major questions or flaws that could derail their season(s). Let’s dive in.

There was a period back in April where it looked like Arsenal might actually throw away the league (again). Had they done that, I’m not sure this group would have ever been able to come back and win it.

Once they did win it I thought they’d done the hardest part. They conquered whatever mental block was in their heads and proved to themselves they knew how to get the job done. Back in May I thought now that Arsenal had gotten over the hump they’d simply roll through the league again this year given how everyone else is in a state of transition.

That was in May. Then the World Cup came around and something became very apparent - Arsenal played a lot of football last season. Not only did they play a lot of football, they played a lot of hard football. 18 of their games last season were decided by one goal - only Newcastle had more. That’s a lot more matches than any of the previous champions over the last five years.

Week after week Arsenal had to play at 100 percent for the full 90 minutes. Rarely did they get to take their foot off the gas and just “see out” the final 20 minutes of a match. They went all the way to the Champions League final and that game went all the way to penalties. Then, many of them went to play prominent roles in the World Cup.

These guys are knackered. Bukayo Saka was barely fit during the World Cup. Who the hell knows what kind of state Declan Rice is in, while William Saliba is actually injured and set to miss a few months.

There’s a decent chance this all catches up to Arsenal and they just have the season from hell. There’s also a good chance they manage to weather this storm but get a few fewer bounces here and there. The margins in this game are so tight though, if they get three fewer bounces, that could mean six fewer points.

The signing of Bruno Guimarães does a great deal to offset that. This might be one of the best fits of player to club this summer. For anyone else £70m would be a lot to pay for a 28 year old. It’s an extremely win-now move that won’t be good long term but, Arsenal’s window is right now. That’s the type of deal they should be pursuing.

With Rodri seemingly on his way to Real Madrid Manchester City have almost completely moved on from the team that dominated the Premier League from 2018-2023. They’ve replaced those with very good players but not quite as good as the previous generation. Now they need to replace Pep Guardiola too.

The question is, how much of an impact on City’s points total did Pep have over the past two years? Even the best coaches tend to only be worth a few points over the course of the season. If we’re polite we can say the best of the best might be worth as many as eight points in the final table.

The question for City is, was Pep Guardiola figured out over the last two years? Did the league eventually catch up to him and subsequently evolve past him leaving Pep struggling to keep up? Or was he still the best manager in the game at the top of his powers, still worth eight points a season?

City will be hoping the answer is yes to the former and no to the latter of those questions. Otherwise it would mean that City were essentially a 70 point club last season, dragged to 78 points by Pep’s greatness. Now he was leaving this side with an inferior manager, how are they going to get back into the title race?

The optimistic case for City is that at Leicester City Enzo Maresca did show that he can win when he has the best players in the league. Despite this version of City not being as good as their last generation, they still are a top two squad in the league.

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There are so many questions about Liverpool. Whose team is this? Are they going to be built around Alexander Isak? Florian Wirtz? How are they going to replace Mohammed Salah? How will Hugo Ekitike return from his injury? Will they get anything out of him?

Last season was always going to be difficult as it was a major transition year. On top of that Mo Salah fell off a cliff while the new signings never really settled. They actually did pretty well to finish 5th1.

Nevertheless when it comes to the squad, that’s still a lot of questions to not have the answers to after one year.

Then there’s new manager Andoni Iraola who has no shortage of questions of his own. Can he handle the jump from tiny Bournemouth to a much bigger club in Liverpool. The list of managers who have moved from mid table size to the Premier League and failed is very long. How will he handle the demands? How will he handle dealing with a higher caliber player? How will he handle the logistics of playing in Europe? Will his playing style - one that requires a lot of running - translate to playing twice a week? I’m sure you’ll hear plenty about how Iraola’s style suits Liverpool well because it’s similar to Jurgen Klopp’s style but that ignores the fact that nearly all the players from the Klopp era are gone!

There’s a very talented team here but lord are there so many unknown variables about these guys.

Chelsea nabbed one of the hottest managers on the planet in Xabi Alonso this summer. If you know me, it should come as no surprise that I’m not quite convinced Xabi Alonso is all that special.

I’m of two thoughts on Xabi Alonso.

Scenario 1: As with every coach, timing is everything. Xabi Alonso arrives right when Bayer Leverkusen bring in some really talented players. He catches lightning in a bottle with Florian Wirtz going full Timo Werner at RB Leipzig supernova powering Leverkusen to an insane, and completely unsustainable, run of scoring late goals2 to pull off an improbable title campaign. That makes him the greatest manager? The greatest Premier League upset was pulled off by Claudio Ranieri, who was promptly sacked the next season. He runs it back the next year and finishes second, but with 21 fewer points. He goes to Real Madrid, where he’s dealing with an entirely different caliber of player, and flops. He lasted just six months at the Bernabeau. Now he’s going to Chelsea, a club that recently have been nothing short of a circus themselves.

Scenario 2: Going undefeated over an entire season is not nothing! That doesn’t happen by accident. The team lost one game in all competitions and that was the Europa League final. He was never going to succeed at Real Madrid. You could see that coming from a mile away, a terrible marriage of managers tactics with the players currently there. Now he goes to a Chelsea team that while yes a circus there is talent there. And while Chelsea have something like 50 players registered to their first team squad they do give the manager the freedom to narrow it down as much as he likes.

If Xabi Alonso can identify who the best 16-20 players are and pick his team based on that, this Chelsea team has a lot of potential. No Europe and only playing once a week will help too.

I will also add that I love the signings of Danny Welbeck and Jordan Henderson. Neither of these guys are coming in to be starters but they bring veteran leadership to a dressing room that lacks it.

The trouble here is Chelsea addressed this lack of experience problem in a rather extreme way. The squad now has a couple old guys, a lot of young guys, but still, (crucially), lacks guys in between the two ends.

It’s also hard to completely write off Xabi Alonso’s time at Real Madrid. After all, he was a player there. He knows what that dressing room is like and he still didn’t even try to adapt. Chelsea’s players are in between Real Madrid and Bayer Leverkusen and the quality of the Premier League is a step up from both Germany and Spain. He’ll have to keep everyone onside, which can get difficult when you have so many players and so few games.

I whiffed badly on Spurs last year when I thought they’d bounce back up the table. Lol.

I’m cautiously optimistic about them this year. I don’t think Roberto De Zerbi is the magical answer but he’s competent. Their summer signings so far have been good. Sure, they are very much over spending on certain players but they’re addressing the massive hole in the squad that was nobody can pass the ball. Now they have guys that can do that, while James Maddison also returns to the fold this year.

Those European spots are there for the taking this year, and while it might seem like Spurs were miles away last season they’re not far off. Sunderland and Brighton each won 14 games last season, that’s only four more than Spurs managed. Four more wins, achieve that and things are looking much different.

Everything about Aston Villa screams the regression monster is coming for them this season.

Villa finished fourth on 65 points last season. They owe nearly all of that to an insane run of 12 wins in 13 matches - a third of the season - in the fall. That banked Villa 36 points and vaulted them to the top of the table. On December 29th I said Villa had essentially clinched a top four spot - that they’d only need eight more wins in the second half of the season to finish in the top four. They only won seven more games (and still five points clear)!

Villa were spitting in the face of xG during the entire run. They couldn’t keep getting away with this and eventually they didn’t. They finished the season 13th in expected points.

A big reason Villa were so good at getting away with it was due to the long range shooting of Morgan Rogers, and to a lesser extend Youri Tielemans. Neither of them will be there this season. Villa might have planned on losing Rogers but certainly not Rogers, Tielemans, and Amadou Onana (the latter due to injury). That’s a lot to try and replace on the fly.

Another factor working against them. Those that have read my posts on substitution data know about the managerial +/- impact score. Last season Unai Emery boasted a score of +20 - the joint highest in the database. It’s an unsustainable score. The managers with the two closest scores to him were both sacked the following season3.

Villa and Newcastle have both fallen into a pattern of earning Champions League qualification one year then falling off the next. Villa are as close to a lock as you can get to continue their end of the pattern, while Unai Emery may not even last the season.

The Magpies are a bit of a s**t show right now. Everyone seems to be trying to flee Tyneside and I have no idea how committed their owners are actually are.

They (probably?) won’t be terrible this year, but they’re certainly not continuing the on again/off again pattern with the Champions League they’ve had recently.

We’re not going through all the other mid table clubs this year. Brighton are going to continue doing what they do. Bournemouth had some big losses but that club has been well equipped to deal with losses the last few years. Overall, after brief foray into midtable, these sides aren’t United’s competition anymore.

I’ve had four different drafts of this written. In one of them I had Arsenal, in one I had Manchester City, in one of them I even had Liverpool putting it together and winning. I just can’t make up my mind.

I can’t justify putting Manchester City on top without Rodri. Arsenal have the best shot at winning but I think they’re going to put their eggs in the Champions League basket this season and that might be enough to not get the job done. Do I truly believe Chelsea will do it? Not really, but we’re taking an outside shot here.

1. Chelsea

2. Arsenal

3. Manchester City

4. Manchester United

5. Liverpool

This might be the most wide open season we’ve had in quite some time, but that might be isolated to the title race. This feels like a season where the traditional “Top Six” reestablishes themselves as (almost) the Top Six, with all of them finishing in at least the top seven.

Brentford

Tottenham

I don’t see anyone crashing the party in the Champions League but Brentford can make it to the Europa League. Brighton, Bournemouth, and Sunderland are all slated to take a step back with also having to deal with European football and I have no faith in Newcastle. It’s wide open for a team that just missed last season and always seem to punch above their weight class.

Hull City

Ipswich Town

Sunderland

Hull were one of the worst teams in the Championship last year based on xG difference, it’s insane that they’re here. Ipswich are still not quite a Premier League team and I think the loss of Kieran McKenna is massive. That’s good news for everyone else as there’s only one slot left. Leeds were right there most of the campaign last season. Fulham and Aston Villa are in serious danger of “pulling a Spurs” and finding themselves much closer to the drop then they’d like, but no one is in more danger than Sunderland. The Black Cats were 18th in expected points last year. They somehow finished seventh. Add in having to play in the Europa League and thinks could get bad quick.

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