Liverpool were the best of a "weak" Premier League bunch? Debunking the myth | OneFootball

Liverpool have reclaimed the Premier League title, snatched from a 4-year period in which Manchester City were winners themselves. Manchester City went down to the wire both with Liverpool and then Arsenal during those years, but this year, there will be no such drama.

With this, there have been many commenting that the Premier League and the competition within it, proclaimed to be the best in the world, didn't quite feel the same. The Premier League this season had a very different feel to it, sure, but calling this season "weak" feels much more like a lazy excuse for certain teams and their fanbases based on the fact that their team will not be atop the Premier League table come the final matchweek.

Liverpool were the best of a lacklustre Premier League bunch?

Just over a year ago, there was doubt and uncertainty that filled the air in Liverpool. Longtime manager Jurgen Klopp had announced he was leaving, and that his successor, Arne Slot, would be the next manager of their football club. In the weeks that followed, everyone had opinions on how the next season would go, and not many of them included Liverpool winning their 20th Premier League title.

Fast forward to the start of the season, and not a single one of the BBC Sports pundits chose Liverpool to win the title. Then, Rodri gets injured, and their main challengers over the majority of the past seasons, quickly took a turn for the worse, and City has yet to recover.

Over the next few months, it became clear to most, that it Manchester City wouldn't be winning their 5th title in a row. Arsenal and Liverpool emerged as the front runners for this year's silverware, and it felt like a worthy race, for a while...

Now, being able to look at the bigger picture, it becomes a little clearer that the Reds have earned this title. Arne Slot is just the fifth manager to win a title in his first season in the Premier League. Slot was one of the youngest coaches in the history of the Premier League to win the whole thing.

If you look at Elo Scores, you can see that the competition levels were, in fact, the highest they've been as a league, and the overall score of teams from this year compared to recent title races is higher.

Combine all of this with the fact that Liverpool did this with almost entirely the same squad as they had last season, it starts to look much more impressive. They are currently 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 campaign. Apart from adding Federico Chiesa, who has barely played for Liverpool, this group went for the league and won it with next to no new faces and investments.

Arne Slot got the best out of his squad in his first year in England, toppling the likes of Arsenal, who would have probably thought this was their year (again), and a Manchester City side that looked well poised to make it five Premier League titles in a row.

Say what you want about the injuries to key players, but this Liverpool side has the chance to finish on 94 points, which hadn't been achieved since Liverpool finished on 99 points in the 2019/20 season. Maybe the race would have been closer, but I'm not sure anybody would have stopped Arne Slot and Liverpool from achieving their 20th Premier League title.