Advertisement League of Ireland Horse Racing TV Listings GAA Fixtures The Video Review Sport meets news, current affairs, society & pop culture Rugby Weekly Extra Dive into all the news and analysis 3 times a week The Football Family Weekly insights from the week’s big talking points Advertisement More Stories Contenders' spending and uncertainty sets up most decadent but intriguing PL season in years We preview the new Premier League season. 5.01pm, 14 Aug 2025 Share options Gavin Cooney The contenders. THE PREMIER LEAGUE is decadent and depraved but it’s intriguing nonetheless. Approaching a new season, it’s rare that the biggest sides promise to look so different without needing to change their managers. If Arne Slot won the title last year with Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool, then this is the first season in which he is meeting English football on something approaching his own terms. Recent transfer window temperance has prefaced an outright binge this summer, with spending already at £250 million and likely not at an end. Florian Wirtz is the kind of megastar signing the Premier League hasn’t had since Erling Haaland, while they have restocked at full-back and added Hugo Ekitike to boot, with Alexander Isak potentially still to come. For all their spending, the squad looks a little thin, and extra cover up front and at centre back is a necessity to sustain domestic and European challenges this summer. But while Liverpool may have won the transfer market, that doesn’t mean they are a guarantee to defend their title. If Wirtz is to shoulder the burden of creativity without Alexander-Arnold, this will be a seismic change that throws up major questions. How integral will Mo Salah remain without Alexander-Arnold behind him? And will they remain as defensively robust with Wirtz swapped in for a slightly more defensively-minded midfielder? There also lingers the appalling question as to how the squad will continue to deal with the loss of Diogo Jota, a fact that feels trivial and disrespectful to pose in a piece such as this, but will be sadly relevant over the season. But if the question is whether Liverpool have changed too much, the reverse can be asked about the league’s bridesmaids. Have Arsenal changed enough? While injuries offer a measure of mitigation, last season was undoubtedly chastening for Mikel Arteta. Having shadowed City for two seasons straight, they were nowhere when City finally blew up. Much of last season was scored to wails as to their lack of a striker, and thus Viktor Gyokeres has arrived from Sporting. The final piece of the jigsaw? Hardly. Arsenal’s issues last season were not really poor finishing. They didn’t create enough in the first place. Their total xG of 60 last season was fully 22 less than Liverpool’s, and was bettered by all of Bournemouth, Chelsea, Man City, and Newcastle. Advertisement So while Gyokeres gives Arsenal more potency on the counter this season – the aspect of the game in which they most miserably compared to Liverpool – a lingering doubt is whether Arteta has done enough in the off-season to improve his side’s attack. Viktor Gyokeres.Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo Has Arteta done enough to raise his side’s ceiling, or is he just yet again inching their floor higher? Spending £50 million on Noni Madueke point to the latter: he’s a pricey means of giving Bukayo Saka a rest without coming close to transforming the meagre output of the left-hand side of Arsenal’s attack. Eberechi Eze may yet arrive to bolster Arsenal’s creativity, but reports suggest they first need to sell players to be able to buy Eze. If that’s the case, prioritising Madueke looks nonsensical. Should he not deliver either the title or a European Cup final this season, Arteta will find himself under intense pressure. Meanwhile, Pep Guardiola finds himself in the very rare position of being somewhat doubted on the eve of a new season. Man City’s four-in-a-row exploits caught up with them last season, with Rodri’s injury the tipping point. Worryingly, Rodri won’t return until after the international break, having picked up another injury upon his return at the Club World Cup. Having spent the GDP of a small country in January, City have further bolstered with the arrivals of Rayan Ait-Nouri, Rayan Cherki, and Tijani Reijnders. The latter two can be cast as effective successors to Kevin De Bruyne and Ilkay Gundogan, while Ait-Nouri is a pretty traditional full-back in a position Guardiola has often played a centre-back. This season’s innovation may be a journey back to the future, with an emphasis on traditional, raiding full-backs. He has changed his coaching staff, too, hiring Kolo Toure and Pep Lijnders. The latter was assistant to Jurgen Klopp and his growing influence at Liverpool coincided with a more chaotic era, in which they became more vulnerable on the counter. Given City were already showing these malign signs last season, it’s a trend to watch this year. But if City can improve on turnovers, then they clearly have the firepower to recapture the title. They must also contend with being behind schedule in the early weeks of the season owing to the Club World Cup. Chelsea are in the same boat, though that crushing final win over PSG means they should be feeling good about themselves. On paper, their squad is good enough to win the league. Moises Caicedo was imperious last season, while Enzo Fernandez has finally been integrated in an effective manner. Summer arrivals Joao Pedro and Liam Delap are upgrades on Christopher Nkunku and Nicolas Jackson, and they should allow for the total liberation of Cole Palmer, who has the capacity to do for Chelsea what Salah did for Liverpool last season. Dealing with the injury loss of Levi Colwill and the errors endemic in their goalkeeper’s game will determine whether they can win the league, but having finished with the second-highest xG in the league last year, they are genuine contenders. The Carabao Cup victory and their Champions League qualification should have meant this was a statement summer from Newcastle United, but instead it has become one long episode in humiliation. With Isak desperate to leave and few potential replacements showing an interest in coming, Newcastle are approaching the new season looking painfully light. Like Arteta, Eddie Howe has improved on what Newcastle already do well by recruiting Anthony Elanga, but this lack of variation along with the demands of European football means they will do well to merely match last season’s finish. It won’t take much for Tottenham to improve on last season – 17th flippin’ place – but Spurs fans are hardly dreaming of anything greater than mid-season mediocrity under Thomas Frank. Spurs fans have seen the binning off of their beloved Ange and the exit of the legend Son, and have been given Frank, Mohammed Kudus, and Joao Palhinha in return. They’d be forgiven for feeling it was a raw deal. Ruben Amorim.Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo Now, Manchester United. Ruben Amorim has survived last season’s shambles, but has continued to talk of the reality of suffering as often as a Catholic priest. Jim Ratcliffe has managed to find a hundred million quid down the back of the couch to retool the United attack. It seems Benjamin Sesko, Matheus Cunha, and Bryan Mbeumo are enough to placate the masses, given a planned fan protest against Ineos this weekend has been called off. United’s striking trio are pricey but they will make them better – not hard, sez you – but they remain painfully limited and unbalanced in midfield. There remains a sneaking sense that the squad is still better suited to playing a system other than Amorim’s. Few sides managed to come away from facing United with regrets last season, though Aston Villa are one of them: their final-day defeat at Old Trafford meant they missed out on the Champions League and have thus been condemned to a summer of relative austerity, with striker Evann Guessand their sole headline signing. This may be the season in which they are detached from the elite. Perhaps nobody has changed as much in the off-season as Brentford, now they’ve been officially rebranded as Keith Andrews’ Brentford. It will be fascinating to see how Andrews does, and his brief should be to avoid relegation. Losing Mbeumo and likely Wissa are body blows, and so Kevin Schade and the oft-injured Igor Thiago must step up in their absences. Nathan Collins has been promoted to captain following Christian Norgaard’s exit, while Caomihín Kelleher is going to be made to compensate for being under-worked at Liverpool: he might be the busiest keeper in the league. Keith Andrews.Alamy Stock Photo Alamy Stock Photo The three promoted sides have been relegated for two straight seasons, and while Burnley already look fairly doomed having lost goalkeeper James Trafford, Leeds and Sunderland have flung money at the problem of establishing a foothold among the elite. If either are to stay up, you’d imagine they will have Keith Andrews’ Brentford in their sights, along with Wolves and West Ham, both of whom have been circling the drain for some time. Everton, meanwhile, have someone escaped from the disastrous Farhad Moshiri era in a new stadium and with reasonably healthy finances, so this should be a season of stress-free consolidation. While David Moyes sounded off about their slow recruitment only a couple of weeks ago, the recruitment of Jack Grealish has the potential to be a masterstroke. Seamus Coleman goes again for Everton this season, and it would be a fitting honour if he can lead the club out for their first game of the new season. Injury has sadly curtailed his recent seasons, but at least Jake O’Brien is in a position to excel in his absence. It’s going to be a season of diminished Irish influence on the pitch. Of the 13 Irish players who clocked the highest number of Premier League minutes next season, seven were relegated, and have this year been replaced by Josh Cullen and Burnley and Alan Browne at Sunderland. (Keep an eye on Sunderland left-back Dennis Cirkin: he is eligible for Ireland and plays a position in which we painfully lack depth, but he’s yet to firmly throw his lot in with the FAI.) With Evan Ferguson now in Rome, it will fall to Matt Doherty, Collins and Kelleher to provide the bulk of the Irish minutes this season. But these tales of diluted Irish impact are well-told at this point. Roll on a Premier League season that is looking happily unpredictable. Gavin Cooney Viewcomments Send Tip or Correction Embed this post To embed this post, copy the code below on your site Email “Contenders' spending and uncertainty sets up most decadent but intriguing PL season in years”. Recipient's Email Feedback on “Contenders' spending and uncertainty sets up most decadent but intriguing PL season in years”. Your Feedback Your Email (optional) Report a Comment Please select the reason for reporting this comment. Please give full details of the problem with the comment... 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