Premier League 2022/23: The Greatest Season of the Greatest League?
By Rory Grant
(Ilkay Gundogan lifts the Premier League Trophy, as Manchester City win their 3rd Premier League in a row. Photo courtesy of NBC)
2023 has been a wild year and as the world tries to return to normalcy after the COVID-19 pandemic, Premier League fans return to their new normal: Manchester City winning the league. For the 3rd time in 4 years, it was the Citizens who lifted the Premier League trophy, as they completed their historic treble, winning the Premier League, FA Cup, and the Champions League, certifying that season in the history books forever. But that’s exactly what the last season is now: history. So let’s take a look back at what happened to some of the big teams last year, and how they are looking for this upcoming season.
The Champions
(İlkay Gündoğan scores for Manchester City in their 2-1 FA Cup final win vs Manchester United. Photo courtesy of ESPN)
The sunny days continue for Manchester City. As the boys in blue prepare for another season under the watchful eye of Pep Guardiola, they know that they’re on top of the world. Completing a historic treble, the first in Britain since 1999 meant a lot to City. For so long, they were always the “noisy neighbors on the blue side of Manchester”, City was always second to Manchester United, but now they’ve finally proved everyone wrong. City finally conquered the Champions League, the one trophy they could never win, beating Inter Milan 1-0 in the final in Istanbul.
Quite a lot of their success had to do with one man: Erling Haaland. The big, blonde Norwegian took the Premier League by storm, scoring a record-setting 36 goals in 35 games. In his very first season, he broke the single-season record, which is just absolutely insane. Whenever he steps on the field, he grabs everyone’s attention. Defenders have to always keep an eye on him otherwise he’ll punish them. He’s incredibly fast, incredibly tall, and incredibly strong. He has a talent for finding the open spaces in the box for him to exploit. His numbers can only make you wonder how much he can achieve next season. Could he score 40, maybe even 50? That remains to be seen.
Aside from Haaland, City has an incredibly supportive cast with Julian Alvarez, who was instrumental in Argentina’s World Cup win, and Kevin De Bruyne, who is arguably the best midfielder in the world still. No team has ever won 4 Premier League titles in a row, but this could be the season that changes that. They have arguably the best squad in the world, with incredible depth, and the world would be shocked if they don’t win the league. Yet somehow, they’re only in 3rd right now! Has the team lost its hunger, or will they persevere yet again?
The Chaos Card
(A collage of photos of just some of the incredibly talented players who signed with Saudi Arabia over the past 12 months. Collage made by myself. Photos courtesy of ESPN, Sky Sports, and Fox Sports)
I know I promised myself I wouldn’t write another article about Cristiano Ronaldo, but here I am, yet again, talking about Ronaldo. Ever since he went to join Al Nassr in the Saudi Pro League, the Saudis have gone all in on their investment. They’ve signed massive talents from big teams, and have caused absolute chaos. An important thing to note here is that all the teams are controlled by the same organization, so while a specific player may sign with a specific Saudi team, all the SPL teams are owned by the Saudi government, and all the money to sign top talents like Karim Benzema, N’Golo Kante, Neymar, and Sadio Mane comes straight from the government’s pocketbooks. This would be like if the US government decided to start paying the entire cost of Lionel Messi’s salary, rather than have Messi’s club Inter Miami pay for it themselves.
The league took almost all of Liverpool’s midfielders, forcing them to scramble to sign an entirely new midfield trio this summer. Chelsea sold 3 key players to them. In general, Premier League teams were forced to replace quite a lot of players because of this massive spending spree. This is incredibly important, not just because of the fears of Saudi Arabian sportswashing(by adding a positive influence like top soccer players to their country, it takes away from the fact that this is a country with many human rights violations), but also because it’s detrimental to many other top European leagues, who are losing their best (sometimes homegrown) talent to a country like Saudi Arabia, a league that wasn’t broadcasted in the US until 2023. This left many teams shaken up, unsure of how their new players would gel, only adding to the excitement this season.
The Collapse
(Young Arsenal star Bukayo Saka holds his hands to his head after an Arsenal defeat. Photo courtesy of Goal.com)
Arsenal was so close. They started the season hot and just kept going and going. By April, they had an 8-point lead over Manchester City in the title race(a win is 3 points so equivalent to a 3-game lead), and it looked as if finally Mikel Arteta could beat Pep Guardiola to it. The apprentice could finally beat the master. Arteta, who served as Pep’s assistant coach for many years at City, who had made his big move to manage Arsenal, who had dealt with “#ArtetaOut” for years, was finally about to prove all of the haters wrong. Then they drew 2-2 with Liverpool and another 2-2 draw with West Ham started to shake their confidence. Arsenal had to score 2 goals in the last 8 minutes to draw 3-3 with Southampton, while City won yet again vs Leicester, to chop down that 8 point lead to 2 points. And guess who Arsenal had to play next: City. This was the title decider, Arsenal vs City at the Etihad Stadium in Manchester. This was Arsenal’s chance to make their stand and show they deserved to be the champions. They got battered 4-1. Their defense was atrocious, as the injury to defender William Saliba a few weeks earlier meant they had nobody fast and physical enough to contain City’s Erling Haaland, so City went rampant, and top of the table. 3 wins in a row in the following weeks against big clubs Chelsea, Newcastle, and Brighton were rendered useless considering City won 3 in a row as well. Arsenal’s title campaign was officially over with a shock 1-0 loss to Nottingham Forest. A 5-0 battering of Wolves on the final matchday gave them hope for next season, but they could do nothing but look on this year as yet again it was Manchester City who held the Premier League trophy. This season, they have started their Premier League season strong, going undefeated through 8 games, meaning they’re in 2nd place. Will this year be their year?
End of an Era?
(Mohammed Salah gazes disappointedly after a Liverpool loss. Photo courtesy of This is Anfield)
This season was an absolute stinker for Liverpool. They had so much hope going into the season, as Liverpool splashed the cash on the young and talented Uruguayan striker Darwin Nunez from Benfica for 85 million pounds, breaking their transfer record.
The hype was real, as many Reds thought that they were ready to push for another Premier League title. Sure, they sold club legend Sadio Mane to Bayern Munich in Germany that summer but they finally had their striker, and with young talent Luis Diaz and Premier League legend Mohammed Salah, their attack was complete.
The whole summer, it was Nunez vs Haaland, who was better, who would score more? This comparison was easily shown to be false, as Haaland blew Nunez out of the water when looking at goals scored. Liverpool had quite a lot of hope going into the summer, as they defeated Manchester City 3-1 to win the Community Shield. This meant that legendary Liverpool coach Jurgen Klopp had now won every competition at least once during his time at Liverpool. Truly an amazing feat that only gave more confidence coming into the season, but it didn’t start great. Back-to-back draws with middle of the pack teams Fulham and Crystal Palace, then a 2-1 loss to rivals Manchester United didn’t excite anyone. It wasn’t looking good. Then they showed up to Anfield, their legendary home stadium, and battered AFC Bournemouth 9-0! 9 different players scoring showed their combined attacking prowess. Surely such a powerful attacking spree would mean that this was the team’s wake-up call, they were ready to push for the title. They beat Newcastle 2-1 the following week, handing the Geordies the first loss of their own title campaign, and it gave them positive momentum heading into the 241st annual Merseyside Derby, against fierce crosstown rivals Everton. In fact, it’s not fair to even call this a crosstown rivalry, as both stadiums are less than a mile apart from each other, only adding to the intensity of it all. However, the final score ended 0-0, a disappointing result from Liverpool’s point of view given how poorly Everton had been playing up to that point.
That was Liverpool’s problem, they were maddeningly inconsistent all throughout the season, and just could never find the form they needed to push for a title charge until it was too late. While injuries could have played a key part in their inconsistency, quite a lot of it could be blamed on players not performing as well as expected. Star players like winger Mohamed Salah, and central defender Virgil Van Dijk both had slow starts to the season, and both finished with below average seasons by their standards. This upcoming season will provide a major test to the Reds, as we will see if last season was the sad end of a dynasty, or if this is a team that only needed one season to rebuild and are ready to push for the title. Having done surprisingly well this season so far, they currently sit fourth in the table, hoping that they can maintain this position for the rest of the season to clinch a valuable Champions League position.
The Greatest Season of Them All?
(Brighton’s star midfielder Katoru Mitoma, he has been a key reason why Brighton have turned into an incredibly well run team. Photo courtesy of BHAFC.com)
While almost every season seems to be hyped as “the season” by the media, this is the first time in quite a few years that there is a genuine debate as to who will do well this year, and who will get relegated. There are so many ‘good’ teams, we are left to debate who will get those european competition spots (the top 4 get Champions League, 5th and 6th get Europa League, and 7th place gets Conference League), which brings in quite a lot of money. For the big clubs like United, Liverpool, or Arsenal, who have been used to that cash, not performing well enough to qualify for those competitions will cause chaos financially, while for smaller clubs like Brighton and Aston Villa, that money will allow them to bring bigger talents to their teams.
While the general consensus is that Manchester City will win the league yet again, cases can be made that teams like Liverpool, Manchester United, Arsenal, Brighton, Newcastle, and even Aston Villa could all somehow qualify in the top 4. Similarly, while people expect Luton Town (a team that wasn’t even playing professional ‘league’ football 10 years ago, and have a staircase to a section of their stadium that passes by people’s back gardens) to get relegated, Sheffield United, Burnley, Wolves, Nottingham Forest, Everton, and Bournemouth could all be one of the 3 teams that get relegated. Teams like Spurs, who just sold star striker Harry Kane to Bayern Munich in Germany, were expected to finish in much weaker spots(I had them finishing 8th), but instead are currently in 1st(as of Halloween, 10/31), having a great run of form. It’s such an unpredictable season that you can’t help but want to watch.