Liverpool are the 2024-25 Premier League champions. Some have tried to argue that they have merely been the best of a bad bunch. We’re here to tell you why that’s complete nonsense.
At the start of the season, the BBC asked 30 of their pundits to predict the Premier League’s top four in 2024-25.
In total, 19 believed Manchester City would retain their crown for a fifth consecutive campaign, 11 thought it would finally Arsenal’s time after two near misses to City, while zero predicted that Liverpool would finish top. In fact, only two out of the 30 even thought the Reds would finish second – Stephen Warnock and Fara Williams, two former Liverpool players.
Twenty-three felt the Reds would finish third, while two predicted a fourth-place finish, with Steve Sidwell as well as former Everton pair Leon Osman and Pat Nevin not even putting Liverpool in their top four.
This is not to make fun of anyone; Premier League predictions are very tricky at the best of times, especially at the start of the season, and not everyone is lucky enough to have their own Opta supercomputer (which, incidentally, projected Liverpool to finish third with 74 points… ahem).
It is, though, an indication of the relatively low expectations most had of them back in August.
However, with Sunday’s 5-1 thrashing of Tottenham Hotspur, Liverpool secured the Premier League title, their 20th English top-flight crown to pull level with rivals Manchester United for the most ever.
Some have suggested their success has merely been due to good luck, or poor form and misfortune of their rivals, but Liverpool have been the best team in the Premier League pretty much from start to finish. In fact, by the campaign’s end they will have spent 234 days top of the league this season, with only Manchester City in 2017-18 (240 days) and Liverpool themselves in 2019-20 (346 days) spending a longer period at the summit in a Premier League campaign of eventual champions in the last 10 years.
It was understandable that people initially doubted Liverpool’s title credentials. They challenged last season before falling away in the last two months, but said goodbye to legendary manager Jürgen Klopp after the German decided to step aside at the end of the campaign.
His replacement, Arne Slot, had enjoyed success with Feyenoord, but there was scepticism as to whether he could do the same in England, or at least, that he could make an impact straight away.
Slot did suggest it would be evolution, not revolution, though, conceding that his preferred style of play was very similar to Klopp’s, with only a few minor adjustments needed.
The early signs were positive. Liverpool had 50 touches in Ipswich Town’s penalty area in their opening-day 2-0 win at Portman Road, Slot’s first game in charge. It was the most touches for a team in the opposition box in a manager’s first ever game in the Premier League that Opta has on record since 2008-09.
That was just the beginning, though. Slot’s start to life in the Premier League became record-breaking quite early on. Following a 2-0 win over Brentford and a 3-0 victory at Manchester United, the Dutchman became the first manager to win each of his first three Premier League games without conceding a single goal since Sven-Göran Eriksson in 2007.
That was followed by a shock 1-0 loss at home to Nottingham Forest, though as the season progressed, it became clear that had more to do with the stunning improvements in Nuno Espírito Santo’s side than fundamental issues with Liverpool, and it proved to be the Reds’ only defeat in the league until early April.
They went on to win eight of their first 10 Premier League games under Slot (D1 L1), the most ever by a Liverpool manager in his first 10 top-flight matches in charge of the club.
A 2-0 home victory over Aston Villa moved them on to 28 points after only 11 games. Only in 2019-20 (31) had Liverpool collected more points after 11 matches of a Premier League season, while Guus Hiddink at Chelsea was the only manager to have ever won as many points from their first 11 games in the competition (also 28).
Next up was a hard-fought 3-2 win at Southampton, which took Slot to 10 Premier League wins from just 12 games. No manager in Premier League history had reached 10 wins in fewer matches from the start of their career in the competition (level with Hiddink and Carlo Ancelotti).
Liverpool were top of the table on Christmas Day after an emphatic 6-3 win at Spurs. Slot was just the fourth manager to be top of the Premier League at Christmas in his first season in the competition – and the first non-Chelsea manager – after José Mourinho in 2004-05, Ancelotti in 2009-10 and Antonio Conte in 2016-17, all of whom also won the league that season.
Liverpool reached 60 points after the 2-1 home win over Wolves in February, doing so in just 25 Premier League matches. The only manager in the competition’s history to have won more points through his first 25 matches than Slot was Mourinho (64).
Then, with the 5-1 victory against Spurs that sealed the title, Slot now joins a short list of managers to have won the Premier League in their first season.
So, just how good have Liverpool been?
Perhaps unsurprisingly given they have a player in Mohamed Salah who has broken the record for goal involvements in a 38-game Premier League season, Liverpool have scored the most goals (80), have attempted the most shots (591), have the highest expected goals total both overall (75.5 xG) and from non-penalty attempts (68.4), and have taken 72 more shots inside the box than any other team (438).
It’s interesting to compare that to last season, when Liverpool’s approach was very much about shot volume. They’ve attempted 790 shots in total in 2023-24, at least 97 more than any other Premier League team, at an average of 20.8 shots per game. That has come down to 17.4 shots per game this season, though it should be noted that 65.9% of their shots were inside the box last season, which has gone up to 74.1% this season, showing that while they’re not quite having as many shots, they are generally having them closer to goal.
Their expected goals (xG) per game was still higher last season (2.35), slightly down to 2.22 this term, but xG wasn’t Liverpool’s friend in 2023-24. They underperformed by 3.3 xG (86 goals from 89.3 xG), with only three teams in the Premier League underperforming by more. This season, they have overperformed by +4.5 xG (80 goals from 75.5 xG), an improvement and seventh best in the league.
Having the best attack in the league is very important. As we’ve mentioned before, the mantra that attacks win games but defences win titles doesn’t really ring true in the Premier League. In the 32 seasons since the competition began (prior to this one), 21 title winners have also been the team to have scored the most goals (once jointly), while there have only been 15 instances of the team with the best defensive record winning the title (three times jointly).
That therefore means, more often than not, that while the team with the best attack wins the league, the team with the best defensive record does not (though they do so almost half the time).
However, in the Premier League’s 32 seasons prior to this one, there had only been three instances of a team conceding 40 or more goals and winning the title – all three of which were Man Utd – so it is still important to keep things tight at the back.
And Liverpool do just that, boasting the second-best defensive record behind Arsenal (29), having conceded just 32 goals in their 34 games, but have the lowest xG against (28.9) in the league ahead of the Gunners (29.2).
In fact, Liverpool’s xG against is at least 11.4 lower than any other Premier League team apart from Arsenal.
They have improved on last season, when they faced 10.9 shots per game, down to 9.5 this, and conceded 1.22 xG against per game last season, which is down to 0.85 in 2024-25.
Liverpool’s record would have been even better if they’d matched their xG against, though. Only seven teams have a bigger underperformance of goals conceded to xG against than Liverpool’s -2.1 (excluding own goals).
There may still be xG sceptics out there (presumably not reading our website, though) but having a higher xG than your opponents generally means you’re likelier to win a game of football. Of their 34 Premier League games this season, Liverpool have ended with a higher xG in 31 of them, having only been bettered away to Arsenal, Newcastle and Everton, drawing all three of those games.
A lot of people associated Liverpool with goals from fast breaks in Klopp’s time at the club, with them scoring nine in the 2017-18 season, and 10 in their last title-winning campaign in 2019-20. Slot’s Liverpool have scored 14 this season with four games remaining, the most any Premier League team have scored in a single campaign on record (since 2006-07).
They’re not quite as hot on high turnovers as they were last season, when they made the third most in the Premier League. Liverpool are sixth for high turnovers this season (282), but they’re often making it count when they do turn the ball over, as they’re second for shots from high turnovers (58), and first for goals from them (10). They’ve already scored more goals from high turnovers this season than they did in 2023-24 (7).
Liverpool did almost nothing in the summer transfer window, with Slot wanting to see what the squad he inherited had. Federico Chiesa arrived from Juventus but the Italian has played just 33 Premier League minutes this season.
They are the only team in the Premier League to have not had a single player start a game this season who didn’t also start a game for them in the 2023-24 season.
Continuity has been a help rather than a hinderance, though. Slot said at his press conference ahead of the clash with Leicester: “I agree [that a lack of new players can see a team go backwards], but there is also a lot of studies being done [saying] the longer a team plays together, the more success it has. The core of the team you want to keep together as long as you can as long as they are performing in the best possible way.
“It is also, in general, good to have some energy in and around the place with one or two new players, that I agree on. But it isn’t really a necessity if you look at the quality we have and the quality of the season we’ve had.”
Only 16 players have played more than 600 league minutes for Liverpool this season, whereas 22 did so last season, though of course that could rise in their remaining games.
It has not been a flawless campaign, none are, but recent talk of a “wobble” from Liverpool seems a bit of a stretch. Granted, they were eliminated from the UEFA Champions League on penalties by a Paris Saint-Germain side that have sauntered to the Ligue 1 title and look like the most fluid team in Europe right now, and they lost the EFL Cup final just a few days after that energy-sapping clash with PSG against a Newcastle United team that have won 19 of their last 25 games.
In the league, there simply has been nothing resembling a “wobble”. Liverpool have won 11 of their last 14 games, and seven of their last eight. They win the title as the form team in the Premier League, which is a fitting end to a supreme campaign.
Some have questioned the strength of this season’s Premier League, but the fact that Arsenal are the favourites to win the Champions League with the Opta supercomputer, and that two teams in the bottom half could be playing each other in the Europa League final is a sign that in all probability, it’s the strongest league in Europe.
Whether Liverpool can follow it up next season is up for debate; you would fancy their rivals to come back stronger in August, but then so should the champions. Slot has hinted at a busy summer in the transfer market, but crucially, it looks like he will also keep the spine of his team intact now that Virgil van Dijk and Salah have signed their contract extensions.
The potential loss of Trent Alexander-Arnold would be a blow, but you’d back Slot to find a solution given how relatively simple he has made navigating the Premier League look so far.
Those are conversations for another day, but when fans and pundits alike are asked this summer who they think will win the 2025-26 Premier League, it will be far less forgivable for any of them to write off Liverpool again.
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Liverpool Win the Premier League: Arne Slot’s Reds Deserve All the Plaudits After Imperious Campaign Opta Analyst.
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