Ryan O’HanlonDec 19, 2025, 03:43 AM ETCloseRyan O’Hanlon is a staff writer for ESPN.com. He’s also the author of “Net Gains: Inside the Beautiful Game’s Analytics Revolution.”Follow on X
Is ‘outstanding’ Hugo Ekitike the best striker to join the Premier League? (1:22)Frank Leboeuf discusses Hugo Ekitike’s contribution to Liverpool since he joined the club in the summer transfer window. (1:22)
You know it’s probably going to be Arsenal or Manchester City for the Premier League title; Burnley and someone else for relegation; and one of, like, eight or nine different teams for the final two or three UEFA Champions League places.
So, today, we’re going to rank all 20 Premier League clubs based on how the future looks. This isn’t a prediction for who is going to win the league in a couple of years — that wouldn’t be fun since we’d be stuck picking someone from the so-called Big Six. Instead, it’s a ranking of how likely a team is to have self-defined successful seasons in the future.
• Managerial stability: A combination of how likely the current manager is to be at the club in a few years and how confident we should be that the club would be able to replace their current manager with the right guy.
• Club health: A combination of how highly I think of the ownership and the team’s decision-makers, the state of the team’s financial health, and how likely they are to be relegated at some point.
We’ve ranked each club in each of the four categories, added them up, and came up with the following list. Let’s get to the Premier League Future Power Rankings!
Reason for hope: It doesn’t feel like any of their recent moves have been major successes. There’s no clear young star on the roster like Moisés Caicedo or Alexis Mac Allister. And teams aren’t knocking Brighton’s doors down to hire Fabian Hurzeler, either.
But despite all of that, the club is currently in 10th, and they have the seventh-best expected-goal differential in the league. Midtable might be the floor for a team that, according to FBref, has the fourth-lowest wage bill in the Premier League. Still, they still have a ton of young potential on the roster. If two of them become stars at the same time, this could be a Champions League club.
Reason for concern: Take all of that and spin it around. They haven’t whiffed on any signings, but the club has some more money now, thanks to its continued presence in the league and the growing financial gap between the Premier League and everyone else. And as Brighton have started to spend more on transfers for individual players, there haven’t been any real hits.
There’s a chance — a small one — that their player-identification model doesn’t work higher up the market.
Reason for hope: Last season, Brentford’s per-game expected goal differential was plus-0.09. This season, Brentford’s per-game expected goal differential is plus-0.09. Did I mention that they lost their manager to Tottenham and their best player to Manchester United over the summer?
Reason for concern: They’ve outscored their opponents by one goal since they were promoted back in 2021. Given their wage bill — estimated by FBref to be the smallest in the league — that’s an incredible level of relative performance. But Brentford still haven’t shown the upside that we’ve seen from Brighton. One season of bad luck could still plunge them down into a relegation battle.
Reason for hope: So much has gone wrong this season. Every key player has spent time on the sidelines. It’s increasingly looking like summer signing Viktor Gyökeres just isn’t good enough to play consistent minutes for a team at this level. And Manchester City have already passed them on goal differential.
… But despite all of that, they’ve clearly been the best team in the Premier League so far: a plus-1.09 xG differential, while no one else is even at plus-0.8.
Reason for concern: They’re all-in. After multiple seasons with one of the youngest rosters in England, this team’s average age is just, well, average. Gyokeres has attempted two shots in the Premier League in his last five appearances, and with sizable fees already invested into Kai Havertz and Gabriel Jesus, they might be stuck with what they currently have at center forward.
Reason for hope: They’ve collected more young talent than probably any other club in Premier League history. And those double No. 1 rankings don’t even include all of the great prospects over at Strasbourg, the ownership group’s other club in France.
Reason for concern: It’s still unclear whether the people in charge know how — or even want — to turn that talent into a team that could genuinely win domestic and continental trophies. Their current accounting books would violate the Premier League’s new squad-cost-ratio rules, and I don’t know if Enzo Maresca is the right guy for this job or if Chelsea know who his best replacement would be, either. We know Chelsea’s future is filled with talent — but we don’t know a whole lot beyond that.
Reason for hope: Now, here’s the club where everything has gone wrong this season. Almost none of the new signings have played well. Most of the guys from last year’s team look worse. Mohamed Salah might leave the club — and might have already left the company of the best players in the world. Manager Arne Slot can’t find any of the right buttons to press. They’ve already lost more games than they did all of last season.
And yet: they’re two points back of fourth place in the Premier League and tied for sixth place in the big Champions League table.
Reason for concern: This was the first real transfer window for new-ish sporting director Richard Hughes. The club spent a ton of money — and they got significantly worse.
The Alexander Isak signing, in particular, was a massive departure from the way Liverpool usually do things: a record-breaking fee for an already-in-his-peak-years, injury-prone player with system-fit issues. Their transfer moves no longer deserve the benefit of the doubt.
Reason for hope: The two more subjective rankings here are a combination of inference and what I know from people I talk to in the sport. But Bournemouth were willing to move on from a beloved manager who saved them from relegation because they (1) knew they got lucky, and (2) thought they’d identified a better option.
This kind of decision only gets made when a club really knows what it’s doing, from top to bottom. Most of the soccer world thought it was madness when they fired Gary O’Neil. Now, pretty much every club in the world would be willing to hire Andoni Iraola.
Reason for concern: The top-end talent seems to have dried out, and we’re already seeing it both from their results and performances this season. I trust Bournemouth to go through a rigorous process of identifying an eventual Iraola replacement — I trust they’ve already done it, too — but what does this team look like with a different coach and without players who will go on to start for PSG and Real Madrid?
Reason for concern: There are those 115 Premier League charges still hanging over the club, and Pep Guardiola’s contract expires at the end of next season.
Man City have such financial power that they’ll always be competitive, but we’ve never seen a club with this much money be transformed into the vision of one man before. What happens when Pep leaves? And what punishment might the league still have in store for its most dominant club?
Reason for hope: They’ve lost Michael Olise and Eberechi Eze in consecutive summers. And somehow, the more talent they lose, the better they get:
• 2023-24: minus-0.09 xG differential per game • 2024-25: plus-0.30 xG differential per game • 2025-26: plus-0.48 xG differential per game
Reason for concern: Oliver Glasner isn’t long for London — South London, at least — and Palace’s track record with coach hirings is mixed before the Austrian arrived to replace Roy Hodgson. While Palace seem to have a better handle on Championship prospects than anyone, their young-talent pipeline is starting to dry up. With Marc Guéhi expected to leave either in January or after the season, how many more star departures can they weather?
If you’re going to run off a bunch of disappointing seasons in a row, you need to be building for the future while your results are in the tank. Spurs have at least done that.
Reason for concern: They’re … getting worse? Here’s their expected goals differential, or xGD, over the past three seasons:
Former club chairman Daniel Levy is gone, but the club’s long-term performance level is lower than it’s been at any point this century.
Reason for hope: Sunderland aren’t your typical relegation survivor. Sam Allardyce isn’t on the sidelines, and Gareth Barry isn’t playing in the midfield. Instead, they’re managed by Regis Le Bris, who had never coached in England before and had only been the manager at one other club before joining Sunderland.
And — OK, sure, Granit Xhaka is basically their Gareth Barry. But beyond him, this isn’t a roster of late- and post-peak Premier League vets. Just two of their most-used 11 players are in their 30s and almost everyone who comes off the bench is 25 or younger.
Reason for concern: Although they’re currently in eight place, they have the 17th-best xG differential in the Premier League. And that’s after a season in the Championship when they ranked seventh by the same metric. Now, xG isn’t a perfect indicator of team performance, but clubs that overperform their aggregate chance quality tend to eventually come crashing back to Earth — at some point.
Reason for hope: They figured out how to fix the attack in a single summer. Last season, United scored 44 goals in 38 matches. This year, they’ve scored 30, and they’ve only played 16 games. For the first time in a long time, United identified a problem, threw a bunch of money at it, and actually got the result for which they were hoping.
Reason for concern: Five Manchester United players have created a combined 3.0 expected goals and assists so far this season. Four of them are 26 or older, two of them are 30-plus (Bruno Fernandes and Casemiro), and Ahmad Diallo is the only one (23) who still hasn’t hit his prime.