The 2022/23 season is over as far as the Premier League is concerned, and despite it frequently being described as the most competitive in the world, it comes as a surprise to nobody anymore that the crown still belongs to Manchester City. Pep Guardiola has led his team to five titles in the English top flights in the last six season, with only Liverpool displacing them briefly from the throne in 2019/20.
Arsenal stumble in the final stretch
It was a great campaign for the most part for Arsenal, the team under the command of Guardiola’s former assistant Mikel Arteta.
Having obviously signed the right players in the last couple of years, namely goalkeeper Aaron Ramsdale, defenders Ben White and Tahekiro Tomiyasu, as well as William Saliba who returned from loan with Olympique Marseille, midfielder-turned-fullback Oleksandr Zinchenko, and forward Gabriel Jesus, Arteta gradually put the pieces together to form a truly formidable team, capable of beating anyone and going on long victorious streaks. Young attackers Gabriel Martinelli, Bukayo Saka and Eddie Nketiah played important roles too, as did Martin Odegaard, Granit Xhaka and Thomas Partey in the middle of the park.
It was believed at the start of the season that the Gunners were aiming for a top-four finish and the place in the Champions League that goes with it, but they ended up going toe to toe with Manchester City for the title for a long time. Their downfall arguably began at Anfield, where they threw away a two-goal lead to end up with no more than a point against Liverpool in April. Disappointing results against West Ham and Southampton followed, before a comprehensive defeat to City at the Etihad put the defending champions out of Arsenal’s reach.
In the end, the gap between the two teams stood at five points, but Arteta and his men will be hoping to have learned something and put this experience to good use next term.
Liverpool and Chelsea disappoint
Meanwhile, Liverpool, who have mostly been City’s greatest rival for years as Guardiola and Jurgen Klopp continued resumed their battles from the Bundesliga, went through a hugely underwhelming campaign. There were moments when they even found themselves in the lower half of the table, and performances so miserable that even their usually optimistic supporters started thinking they would be lucky to avoid being in the relegation race.
Injuries to several important players, most notably attackers Luis Diaz, Diogo Jota and Roberto Firmino, can be used to explain the woes of the Merseysiders up to a point. Liverpool were supposedly in the race for Aurelien Tchouameni last summer, and when the France international chose Real Madrid instead, they apparently decided to wait for 2023 to make their move for Jude Bellingham and signed Arthur Melo on loan from Juventus as a stop-gap solution.
However, the former Barcelona man turned out anything but a solution of any kind, not appearing even once in the Premier League as a serious thigh injury forced him into surgery and took him out for a long, long time. Naby Keita and Alex Oxlade-Chamberlain also struggled with injuries and contributed little more than Arthur.
Towards the end, Klopp managed to get his team firing again, linking seven consecutive victories to become a part of the top-four conversation again, but they still ended up just short and will now be playing in the Europa League as a consequence. Places three and four were won by Manchester United and Newcastle, and both these teams deserved to be in the Champions League more, even though Liverpool beat United by 7-0 at Anfield and did a league double on Newcastle.
Even though Liverpool gave up on Bellingham in the end, they’re reportedly doing much at the moment to rebuild their midfield ranks, and if they get it right, next season should look very different from their perspective.
But while Liverpool have been heavily criticized for lack of squad investment in recent years, Chelsea have done completely the opposite. The Blues spent over €600 million on new players in the summer of 2022 and January 2023, listed poor performances one after the other, and changed the manager twice, to no avail. Thomas Tuchel, who took them to the Champions League glory in 2021, and Graham Potter, Tuchel’s replacement who had previously done wonders with Brighton and Hove Albion, were both shown the door. Frank Lampard, sacked by the club before Tuchel’s appointment in January 2021, was brought back as a caretaker to no improvement.
It’s hard to accurately put a finger to the sore spot, to determine the exact problem here. A look at the squad says they lacked a proper centre-forward, with Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang showing very little and both Potter and Lampard being reluctant to put much faith into January signing David Datro Fofana, while Armando Broja was out with an ACL tear. As before, Kai Havertz was mostly deployed as the man closest to the opposition goal, but the host of players who were supposed to benefit from his presence there – Mason Mount, Mykhaylo Mudryk, Christian Pulisic, Joao Felix, Raheem Sterling, Hakim Ziyech and Noni Madueke – mostly failed to reach the required level of understanding with the Germany international.
Consequently, Chelsea ended up in 12th place with 44 points, scoring just 38 goals in the whole season. To put that number into perspective, Leicester City, who have been relegated, scored 51.
Leicester, Leeds, Southampton – The end of the road
Interestingly enough, all three teams that won promotion to the Premier League last year have managed to stay up. Fulham did it in a rather impressive way, staying in the running for European places for a long time, while Nottingham Forest and Bournemouth managed to survive in a race that lasted almost to the end.
Southampton, on the other hand, struggled immensely and with just 25 points in the end, their 11-year stay in the English top flight has come to an end. It’s not to be wondered at, given that the Saints continually lost their best players to better-ranked clubs down the years, and now even captain James Ward-Prowse, the long serving 11-cap England international, is being linked with departure with a number of clubs said to be interested.
The work Marcelo Bielsa did at Leeds United was surely respect-worthy. The experienced Argentinian tactician led the team to promotion in 2020 after 16 years of absence from the top flight, but only three years later, the club that reached the semifinals of the Champions League in 2000/01, has gone back down. Jesse Marsch, Javi Gracia and Sam Allardyce were all employed to try and improve their fortunes, but in the end, the task of surviving in these extremely competitive conditions proved too hard.
As for Leicester, their decline has probably come sooner that many expected. Only seven years ago at this time of the year, they were celebrating a Premier League title. That level of success was never going to last, but they still managed to stay competitive for a long time after, even winning the FA Cup and the Community Shield under Brendan Rodgers in 2021.
But this season, their performances deteriorated quickly and the former Liverpool and Swansea boss was unable to stop the rot. He was relieved of duty in early April, and Dean Smith, brought in to pick up the pieces, was unsuccessful as well.
Smith’s under contract until the end of the month, and it remains to be seen if he’ll be entrusted to lead a charge for Premier League return, or if there’ll be a new name in the dugout at the King Power Stadium in 2023/24.
Manchester City – A tale of huge success and controversy
The season didn’t go completely as planned for Guardiola and his men earlier, but when it mattered most, they were as ruthless as ever. Having drawn away to Nottingham Forest in mid-February, they won 12 league games on the bounce, securing the title in style, and ended up winning the FA Cup while striding with irresistible force into the Champions League final. Needless to say, they’re now on the verge of not only winning the one trophy they desire most, the one that has eluded them so far, but also completing a historic treble.
The man of the moment, aside for Guardiola himself of course, was Erling Haaland. The Norwegian sensation, who joined the club where his father played once upon a time at the start of the season from Borussia Dortmund, scored 36 goals in 35 matches, breaking the record of 32 strikes previously set by Liverpool’s Mohamed Salah in 2017/18.
However, City under Guardiola have never been a one-player team, and the likes of Kevin De Bruyne, Bernardo Silva, Ilkay Gundogan, Rodri, John Stones, Ruben Dias and Kyle Walker, arguably contributed in equal amount as Haaland.
But there is another side of the medal around the necks at Manchester City. The Premier League champions have been hit with 115 charges of breaching financial rules. Several years ago, they were initially banned by UEFA from European competitions for two years, and while they managed to win that battle through the Court of Arbitration for Sports, this time the CAS has no jurisdiction to overturn a decision from English football authorities.
It remains to be seen when the case will be resolved, and it’s not expected to happen quickly. Possible consequences apparently include expulsion from the Premier League, as well as loss of trophies they won over the period in question, between 2009 and 2018.
But for the time being, Manchester City are Premier League champions, and Guardiola has been named as the Manager of the Year. The Champions League final against Inter Milan awaits, and for the time being, their thoughts won’t be going further than that.
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