Worthy winners or a poor Premier League season? Liverpool's title debated

Telegraph

28-04-2025

A season of mass under-performance
Pat Nevin cut through the noise of Anfield on Sunday to deliver some advice on Radio 5 Live. 'You must enjoy these occasions,' he said. 'It doesn't happen that often, even for the great clubs.
'Quite often you go long periods without winning these championships and they've won this one, won it in style, and they've won it early. Savour it. Celtic have won 13 of the last 14 Scottish titles, even those fans don't take it for granted. It's very, very special to win a league.'
No arguments. It is easy to become jaded by the big moments as a broadcaster, journalist or TV viewer. Life is measured out with lifted trophies and gradually the shine comes off. Glory blurs when you are consuming sport constantly but not invested in the triumphant teams. It is rare to experience joy like Liverpool's on Sunday and nothing should erode it.
And here comes the 'but' you saw coming several sentences ago. This has not been a good Premier League season. Liverpool are its deserving champions, executing a masterfully controlled campaign. At no point did they look like succumbing to the wobble which usually affects league leaders. They have over-performed all expectations. It has helped that all of their potential competitors have done the opposite.
Arsenal are 10 points behind their position after 34 games last year, at which stage they had already scored 82 goals. They will need 19 goals in their remaining four games this year to match even that total, let alone the 92 they finished on for the season. Their defence has tightened up but they have disappointed domestically in 2024-25 and have been concentrating on Europe for several months now.
Chelsea briefly looked like title challengers through an impressive run of one defeat in 12 as autumn turned to winter. Their performances in 2025 have been patchy, not helped by Cole Palmer taking his 'Cold' nickname to heart and applying it to his form.
The seasons of Newcastle and Nottingham Forest have been excellent but there was a feeling of novelty to title talk for both. Proper challenges tend to come from teams used to competing at the top, who have experience in the pressure and expectation which comes from an ascent to nosebleed heights. Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur have that in their history but have had equally disastrous seasons.
The biggest drop of all has been Manchester City's: 30 points, 10 wins and 30 goals down from their totals from this time last year. It is hard to imagine a more drastic loss of form given their previous achievements, yet they still look likely to finish third and win the FA Cup. That does not suggest a league with fierce top-end competition.
Little tension at the top then, and a drab relegation battle which has not offered any distraction. Southampton, Leicester and Ipswich all looked doomed from around Christmas and so it has proved. Three cheers for the upwardly mobile mid-tier clubs like Fulham, Brighton, Bournemouth, Brentford and Crystal Palace, all better now than at any point in their history. Wonderful for their fans if not enthralling for the neutrals.
The closest parallel to this season's mass under-performance was Leicester in 2015-16. Chelsea's title defence left them 10th, Manuel Pellegrini's City were fourth and Jürgen Klopp ended his first Liverpool season eighth. Then it was Mauricio Pochettino's Spurs putting up a fight which at least went into May. It also provided enormous public interest in a truly unusual title winner. However much Liverpool have improved under Arne Slot, that is not something you can claim this year.
Blaming the failure of rivals is wrong – Liverpool are fine champions
It has been the worst Premier League season ever. Manchester City have put up a terrible title defence; Arsenal have fluffed it; Chelsea have blown hundreds of millions and gone backwards; Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur have been pitiful; the three promoted clubs were rubbish; VAR has ruined everything.
Some or all of this – maybe without the extreme language – might be true or at least open to debate. What is emphatically not true is that this can be extrapolated to mean that Liverpool are not only worthy champions but fine champions. That it has been boring.
This Liverpool team would be in any title race, in any previous season, against any opposition. They would have challenged prime Pep Guardiola City, Sir Alex Ferguson's United, Arsène Wenger's Arsenal at their best and José Mourinho's first Chelsea side.
They may not have finished ahead of them but would have been up there. They would have made it competitive.
Liverpool have been that good. Winning it with four games to go, having opened up a 15-point lead, is not their fault. It is the fault of those who failed to challenge them.
We have also probably been spoilt by the years of Guardiola's City going head-to-head with Jürgen Klopp's Liverpool (who earned more than 90 points in three seasons but only won the league once). A bit like Ferguson v Wenger but even tighter and with more on-field action and less spite.
But there is a world of difference between expressing disappointment that there has not been more of a fight for the title – of course we should all, apart from the winners, want it to go to the wire – and then trying to use that as a way of arguing that winning it is less of an achievement. That is almost Trumpian in its twisted logic.
And, by the way, try telling Newcastle United fans it has been boring or those of Nottingham Forest or Crystal Palace or Bournemouth or Fulham or Aston Villa, with their exciting Champions League campaign. Just because some of the big boys have been bad does not mean the narrative should be warped to try to diminish what Liverpool have achieved.
There have even been comments such as Liverpool 'have made this title race boring' as if it is their fault that they have been miles better than the rest. What were they supposed to do? Also underachieve? Deliberately lose some games to spice things up and make it more 'exciting'? That is some take.
By the way Liverpool have dominated a league from which all three European competitions could be won this season by teams in it. And not one of them is Liverpool. Arsenal are in the Champions League semi-finals, United and Tottenham (14th and 16th in the Premier League) are in the last four of the Europa League as are Chelsea in the Europa Conference League.
So if the Premier League is boring where does that leave the rest of Europe?
Of course they should be there. The financial might of the Premier League is such that, with those two lesser European competitions in particular, it would be a failure if they did not win them. But Liverpool have comfortably finished ahead of all these teams and what Arne Slot has done is so remarkable because no one had him down to do this in his first season in English football.
The rush to try to devalue what Liverpool have achieved is pretty pathetic. Napoli are set to win the Italian title after two more goals from Scott McTominay who, rightly or wrongly, was not deemed good enough for United. Having been pushed out at Spurs, Eric Dier is a regular at Bayern Munich who will be German champions. Barcelona's star player as they head La Liga and can also win the Champions League is Raphinha who left Leeds United when they only just avoided relegation from the Premier League.
Maybe it was a mistake to let those players go. But it also shows the competitiveness of getting into a Premier League team, even those who are falling short.
There is another argument, one for another day and one that has also already been raised, and that is whether some of the football being played in the Premier League is a bit boring. That teams have actually been over-coached by their managers with, as a result, far too much of the individuality taken out. That there is a risk-adverse, safety-first almost robotic approach. Nothing is off-the-cuff.
There is far more validity to that but, even then, Liverpool would be an exception. They have scored 14 more goals than the next highest scorer – City – and with some thrilling attacking football allied to the greater control that Slot has brought.
Win three of their last four games and Liverpool will again break through the 90-point total. They have lost just twice in the league all season. It is not their fault they have been good. It is the failure of others to keep pace with them. That, maybe, has been boring. Liverpool, the football they play, the title they have deservedly won, have emphatically not been.