The 2025-26 Premier League season in alternative tables

May 26, 2026 No Comments

The 2025-26 Premier League season in alternative tablesImage source, Getty ImagesImage caption, What if the Premier League changed its rules and awarded the trophy to the winners by alternate means?ByDaniel AustinBBC Sport senior journalistPublished24 minutes agoArsenal might have ended their 22-year wait to the win the title, but is there any metric by which the Gunners wouldn’t have been champions?

Very few people would suggest Arsenal were not worthy champions, so is there some insight for us to gain by assessing the performances of all 20 teams in alternative ways?

Just for fun, BBC Sport and Opta have crunched all the numbers to find out.

How would the Premier League table look based on expected points?

Now, I already know exactly what you’re thinking – “It’s real points that count, not expected ones!”

And yes, you’re right, points win prizes and that’s why the real league table is the only one that matters.

But expected points (xPTS) are useful for football analysts because they can serve as a decent indicator of whether a team over or under-performed across the course of a season.

Expected points are calculated by comparing the quality of goalscoring chances a team makes (xG) and concedes (xGA) in every match throughout the campaign, and shows what the impact would have been on the team’s points total.

In theory, it measures how genuinely strong a team’s attacking and defensive performance was.

There are a few real outliers on xPTS, the most notable being Sunderland, who would have been relegated had they earned the amount of points they ‘should’ have done, according to the data.

Aston Villa would also have finished in the bottom half, while Chelsea would have qualified for the Champions League.

Maybe keep an eye on whether Sunderland and Villa fall off massively next season if you fancy figuring out once and for all whether ‘expected’ data is truly insightful or a heap of hogwash.

What about home and away form?

Time for a classic of the alternative league table genre now.

Who has built themselves a fortress at home? Who gets travel sick on long journeys? Let’s find out.

The most striking difference here is Tottenham, who seemingly could hardly bear the thought of playing in front of their own fans, but earned enough points on the road to qualify for the Europa League if only away trips counted.

Everton and Nottingham Forest were also much better away than at home, perhaps a surprise given their fans’ reputation for generating a big atmosphere.

The team whose home results outshone their away ones to the greatest extent was Fulham, and fair play to them, Craven Cottage is the most homely sounding ground in the country.

Who did best from set-pieces?

This was a Premier League season defined by set-pieces – the goals scored from them, the fouls not given that might well have been in the past, the permanently tracksuited and strangely often long-haired specialist coaches on the touchline who became minor celebrities.

It will come as no surprise that Arsenal were among the best performers from set-pieces, something that became one of the main talking points of the season.

Will top-flight clubs spend the summer transfer window trying to master the set-piece meta by buying new free-kick takers and a gaggle of giants for them to lash the ball at? Or will a less industrial way of scoring goals re-emerge instead?

Who won the long shots?

Enough of the intricacy and the controversy, anyway. Bring on the screamers.

Here is the Premier League table if only goals scored from outside the box had counted in 2025-26.

And which teams had the most English goalscorers?

Have you got a massive St George’s cross covering the entire front of your house yet? Face paint stored safely in the cupboard ready for kick-off against Croatia?

No? Pfft, some England fan you are!

With the Three Lions aiming to bring the trophy home, what if the Football Association had prepared for the tournament by asking the Premier League to rank the table using only goals scored by English players this season?