2023/24 Premier League Season Review

The English Premier League thinks of itself as the biggest and the best in the world. With the money available to all 20 clubs, it is certainly able to attract a lot of the top talent from across the globe. But there has been a very familiar story in the last few years as far as the title race goes. Typically, Manchester City will have some competition for a while but Pep Guardiola’s men will eventually pull away at the top and claim yet another championship. It is fair to say that this season has been a little different.

Many neutral fans will have watched Arsenal’s valiant, but ultimately unsuccessful, attempt to wrestle the Premier League trophy away from Manchester City in 2022-23 and concluded that the Gunners had missed their best opportunity for a long time to win a 14^th league title. But Mikel Arteta had been at pains to say that everyone should trust in the process and this season has shown that Arsenal are indeed the real deal. What most Premier League fans probably didn’t expect, however, was that for the first time in a decade there would be three clubs going into the final weeks of the season with a realistic chance of claiming the biggest prize in English football.

As a possible sign of things to come, Arsenal and Manchester City could not be separated in normal time in the traditional English season curtain raiser, the Community Shield. Penalties were needed and Arsenal claimed the first title of the season, ending City’s chances of a possible sextuple. But it was the race for the Premier League title that really captured the imagination. City were looking to break the record for consecutive championships by winning their fourth in a row, while Arsenal were hoping to claim their first in 20 years. For a while, it looked like Liverpool also might be in with a chance. But by the final game day of the season, there were just two teams left.

The campaign was one of high drama and legal proceedings. VAR has been more controversial than ever and there is now serious talk at the top of the English game of it being scrapped altogether. Manchester United continued to struggle under the leadership of Erik ten Hag, and Ange Postecoglou became a cult figure for his typically Australian manner and for keeping Tottenham in the hunt for a Champions League place even after the club lost their talismanic striker and captain, Harry Kane, in the summer.
It was refreshingly welcome for only two clubs to feel the need to sack their managers during the entire season. At a time when it is regularly said that head coaches are never given enough time to develop their teams these days, only Sheffield United and Nottingham Forest parted ways with theirs, with the latter’s decision vindicated by the fact that Forest will be back for a third successive top-flight campaign in August. Roy Hodgson also left his job in charge of Crystal Palace but resigned before being pushed out. Oliver Glasner then turned the Eagles into an unbeaten side for the final seven games of the season in a sign of possible good things to come at the South London club.

As far as the title race went, in the end, it took Phil Foden just 79 seconds to extinguish the hope of some real final day drama. That’s all it took for the Premier League’s Player of the Year to open the scoring on the way to Manchester City’s convincing victory over West Ham at the Etihad Stadium. Arsenal continued to do their part, toiling against a resilient Everton at the Emirates Stadium, eventually winning 2-1 but knowing that whatever result they achieved, it would not matter if Guardiola’s side were staying ahead in their game.
Most fans on that last day of the season had probably thought that City would end up winning the title again and so it came to pass. A team that had sat at the top of the league for just one game week since the start of November had won the title yet again. It hadn’t been quite as disappointing for the Gunners as the previous year when they surrendered an eight-point advantage but the season ended in the same way with the players and manager promising the fans that they would return and try again.

For a while, it had seemed as though Liverpool might muscle in on the private battle between City and Arsenal. When Jürgen Klopp made the shock announcement in January that he would be leaving Anfield at the end of the season, his team were top of the league and it felt as if it might be fate for one of the most charismatic and innovative coaches the English game had seen in quite a while to bow out by lifting the trophy. Unfortunately, for football romantics everywhere, his side would fall away dramatically in March and April, failing to beat both Manchester teams and even losing just a second Merseyside derby since 2010 to put themselves out of the running. In the end, Klopp would only celebrate winning the EFL Cup in his final season in English football.
There was so little to choose between the three title contenders throughout the first half of the season, with City occasionally dropping points, Arsenal grinding out results, and Klopp’s summer rebuild putting Liverpool in the running. After the turn of the year, the Gunners went up several gears and found a ruthless streak to win 15 of their final 17 games but as the Reds fell away, that still wasn’t enough to overhaul the Guardiola machine as the reigning champions won the final nine games in customary fashion. Arsenal couldn’t have done too much more to put their name on the trophy – they were just unfortunate to lose out to probably the greatest side English football has ever seen.

It seems unfair to Aston Villa that their most impressive season in living memory became something of an afterthought to the main action going on at the top of the league. Unai Emery only arrived as head coach in November 2022 but he has completely reinvigorated the club and has now led them to a European semi-final and also inspired them to a place in next season’s Champions League. 

The turnaround has been nothing short of incredible as Villa spent the majority of the campaign in the top four. The goals of Ollie Watkins definitely helped but the entire squad has been reenergised by Emery’s tactics and way of doing things and now the fans in the Holte End will be eagerly looking forward to what comes next.
After their fantastic start, Tottenham ultimately had to settle for fifth and a place in the Europa League, just above Chelsea who had many a tough day in Mauricio Pochettino’s first season in charge, but showed impressively resurgent form in the closing weeks to finish a respectable sixth. The Blues also had one of the Premier League’s star turns, with Cole Palmer enjoying the most outstanding breakout season.

If the race for the title had everyone on the edge of their seats, the scrap at the bottom was more nuanced than the final league table positions suggest. For only the second time in the Premier League era, all three of the clubs promoted from the Championship ended up making a swift return trip back down to the second tier.
Sheffield United seemed woefully unprepared for the rigours of the Premier League as they conceded a record 104 goals in claiming only three wins all season, and while Burnley looked good in flashes under the management of Vincent Kompany, their fate also seemed signposted long before they were officially relegated. Luton Town were the big surprise of the season though. Their unique Kenilworth Road ground attracted most of the patronising media attention at the beginning of the campaign but Rob Edwards managed to get his players to outperform the club’s budgetary restrictions throughout. However, even with the points deductions suffered by Everton and Nottingham Forest, Luton could not do enough in the end to warrant another season in the Premier League.

So, as the dust settles on one of the more memorable Premier League seasons in recent years, it is Manchester City who celebrate another title, continuing their dominance of the English game. But it was evident that the way Arsenal pushed them all the way to the final weekend of the season engrossed the fans and the media alike and made the Premier League as a whole a far more interesting place. City might have won another title but the best thing for the EPL is to have this increased level of competition.
With so much money concentrated in the few clubs at the top, there is the potential for things to get stale and the drama and excitement that attracts football fans from all over the world to the English game to disappear. Arsenal’s players may have promised their own fans that they would be back and give it their all again next season but, for the sake of the English Premier League itself, it would be a positive step if even more clubs joined in the battle for the title in the years ahead.

Financial Farce

The race for the Premier League title was exhilarating to follow in 2023-24. However, the battle against relegation was equally captivating, with only Sheffield United doomed well before the end of the campaign. But there has been one factor that blighted the story of the battle against the drop.

Both Everton and Nottingham Forest would probably have been scrambling at the wrong end of the table this season anyway, but both felt wronged after being deducted points after being found guilty of breaking the league’s profitability and sustainability rules. The Toffees were initially docked 10 points, gained four points back on appeal before losing a further two points following a separate charge. Meanwhile, Forest lost four points to plunge them deeper into the relegation mire and saw an appeal against the punishment rejected.
As well as creating uncertainty and prompting angry fans to accuse the Premier League of corruption, the saga highlighted how the criteria for sanctioning clubs found to be in breach of the regulations hadn’t been properly thought through. But in the end, both teams still had enough about them to stay up.

The two clubs involved feel slighted by the EPL. But, the fact is, they did break the profit and sustainability rules brought in to rid the game of financial mismanagement. The fact that Manchester City’s 115 charges are still yet to be decided upon only makes the grievances of Everton and Forest even more amplified. A sense of one rule for the top clubs and one for the rest has fostered and created a feeling of distrust that has severely affected what has been an otherwise engaging contest.

The EPL has now announced that it could change its financial fair play rules. But the proposed new way of doing things looks like it will favour the wealthier clubs even more. That suspicion of being unable – or unwilling – to punish the likes of Manchester City over the clubs lower down the league will only grow and the EPL should probably prepare for more disgruntled protests in the future if they go ahead with their current plans.