The dust is already beginning to settle on the 2025/26 Premier League campaign. With the North America World Cup set to kick off before we know it, there is barely time to catch our breath.
Arsenal won the Premier League title, ending their 22-year-long wait for top-flight glory. It was nearly the perfect season for them, with rivals Spurs going so close to relegation. There was a revival for Manchester United, a surprise relegation for the Hammers, and some remarkable performances by clubs that many fancied to end up in the bottom three.
We said goodbye to Pep Guardiola after a decade of success that brought 17 major trophies to the Etihad. We saw Bruno Fernandes (be he a donkey or a lion) break a longstanding assists record and various awards, both official and unofficial, have been handed out to the top flight’s best performers.
There will be more awards dished out in the days ahead as clubs crown their players of the season and different websites hold polls on matters such as the save of the season, best signings of the campaign and any manner of other things. Not all unofficial awards are quite so positive, though, and here we take a look at which club in the Premier League underperformed most spectacularly. Put another way, which club had the biggest negative gap between pre-season expectations and reality?
The Contenders
There were lots of overperforming teams in the 2025/26 Premier League season. Arsenal were a side without a title win in over two decades. They should, therefore, consider a championship victory by seven points with a Champions League final still to come as an incredible campaign and more than they could have hoped for.
However, the likes of Manchester United, who jumped from 15th last season to third, Sunderland, who were tipped for relegation but will play Europa League football next term, as well as Bournemouth, Leeds and others all made their fans very happy. The Cherries only missed out on Champions League football because Liverpool were so bad, while Leeds secured PL safety with room to spare and also made it to Wembley.
But enough about the good, what about the bad and the very ugly? Well, Liverpool have to be right up there. They secured Champions League football by finishing fifth, but were just three points above Bournemouth and only six better off than the Black Cats.
Chelsea finished 10th and will not play in Europe next season. Given their mounting financial pressures, the lack of European football could see them in even more trouble. On the plus side, after sacking two managers in 2025/26, they look to have made an excellent appointment in the shape of Xabi Alonso.
Newcastle had a poor campaign and finished 12th. The Magpies were closer to relegation (10 points) than Champions League qualification (11 points). In addition, like Chelsea, they were humbled in the Champions League round of 16, almost matching the Blues’ 8-2 loss to PSG by being battered 8-3 by Barcelona.
Crystal Palace and Nottingham Forest both dropped down the table, although both did well enough in Europe to not really be true contenders for our unwanted award. That is especially true because we have to view their performances last term as an overachievement.
All of the bottom four could be contenders for chief underperformer. However, many tipped Wolves for the drop and just about everyone fancied Burnley to be demoted. In years gone by, 20 points and 22 points would be considered a horror campaign, but over the past decade or so we have seen several teams end a top-flight season with similarly low totals.
Spurs, however, are certainly in the mix, despite staying up on the final day. They finished 17th last term and so 17th again in 2025/26 could be seen as holding steady. But we rather doubt any Tottenham fans – or neutrals who were desperate for them to go down – will view it that way.
Then we have the Hammers, relegated after 14 seasons in the top flight. Shocking stuff, having won a major(ish!) European trophy in 2022/23 (the Europa Conference League), having made the semis of the Europa League the year before that, and the quarters (in the Europa League) in 2023/24.
And the Winner Is…
Sorry Reds, but Liverpool are the biggest underachievers of the 2025/26 season. But their supporters probably knew that already themselves, having endured a torrid campaign. Arne Slot delivered the club the Premier League title last term, and the club spent almost £450m in the summer.
It was a colossal outlay and while the net spend was “only” £235m, they still bought almost half a billion pounds worth of players to go backwards. And they went backwards by some distance. In 2024/25, they won the title with 84 points, while 12 months later they finished fifth with just 60 points. They lost one fewer game than Leeds and conceded more goals than four teams who finished in the bottom half of the table.
None of their signings has come close to justifying the fee, while huge contracts for Mo Salah and Virgil van Dijk have proved to be terrible errors. Last summer, 21 out of 33 BBC “experts” predicted the Reds would win the title. They were significantly closer to relegated West Ham than champions Arsenal.
What’s more, they lost 4-0 to Manchester City in the FA Cup quarters, 3-0 at home against Crystal Palace in the EFL Cup, and lost 2-0 both home and away against PSG in the last eight of the Champions League. It was a dreadful, dreadful campaign and, under Slot, the side played some horrible football too.