Vitor Pereira has done as much to embarrass Ruben Amorim as Manchester United have, while Ange Postecoglou is gone and Newcastle did Eddie Howe proud.
Premier League winners
Vitor Pereira
Ruben Amorim was right back in December: the Wolves squad was “built for the system” of Vitor Pereira and so the comparison of Portuguese mid-season manager appointments at struggling clubs cannot be completely pure.
But for Pereira to accrue three more points in five fewer games than Amorim is a remarkable feat considering their starting positions. Only the managers of the current top seven have a better points-per-game record than Pereira in the Premier League this campaign.
Wolves, 19th and five points from safety upon his appointment, are 16th and 14 points clear of the bottom three five months later. Their current winning run of four games is a longer sequence than Arsenal have put together this season, and as good as Liverpool’s best.
And aside from the final 20 minutes of the victory over Spurs, that has been achieved entirely without best player and chief social media liability Matheus Cunha.
“Matheus is committed, working and preparing himself to help the team,” Pereira said before the Spurs win, the first time in 2025 Wolves had scored more than two goals in a match. “But we won the last three games, playing consistently, tactically and mentally.
“What is fair? It is fair to keep going with the same team. This is my opinion. This is football, this is commitment, this is leadership. And Matheus will come on to help us,” he added of a player who scored his 16th goal of the season from the bench. It is difficult not to be impressed with such clear management and confident coaching.
Manchester City
It cannot have been often that four Manchester City academy graduates have shared the same pitch in a Premier League game, even if James McAtee was immediately substituted upon Oscar Bobb’s introduction.
Pep Guardiola might consider integrating McAtee and Nico O’Reilly earlier this season if given the opportunity again, while Rico Lewis will be grateful for the chance to develop in slightly more settled circumstances.
Those players are good enough to be part of Manchester City’s new era and Guardiola’s trust in them instead of the faltering old guard is long overdue.
Newcastle
There are many different ways of measuring a manager’s ability even in the context of just one game, but securing such a powerful victory in both their image and absence is a fine indicator of success.
Eddie Howe had been missing from the touchline for a Newcastle game before: his first in charge, against Brentford in November 2021. His input was inevitably heavily relied upon, with Jason Tindall saying the pair were in “constant dialogue” and that the manager made the “final call” to introduce substitute Ryan Fraser, who set up the late equaliser in a 3-3 draw.
Newcastle could not possibly have been expected to function properly as a Howe team back then, but three-and-a-half years later the machine functioned effortlessly without the man who holds the blueprint.
Even with the undoubted generosity of an opponent as bereft of confidence and identity as Manchester United, it was a phenomenal performance that should give Howe immense pride. Neither Tindall nor the players needed their hands holding on this occasion; the manager put the game plan in place earlier in the week but only sent “the odd” message from hospital from Friday onwards. He knew he could trust the kids not to burn the house down this time.
David Moyes
The accepted wisdom is that you never go back. Moyes, having taken West Ham from relegation adjacence to European glory in his second spell in charge, would already have disagreed before picking up where he left off at Everton almost 12 years ago.
A pettier man might derive some perverse joy in sitting above both the Hammers and Manchester United after being dumped by both, even if those exits were entirely justifiable. But Moyes is long enough in the tooth to look beyond settling past personal scores and will instead focus solely on his current objectives.
Everton are closer in terms of points to the top four than they are the relegation zone. They are currently 13th, not only the highest they have been all season but the highest they have been since October 2022. Yet still Moyes is looking up, publicly dreaming of having “a season like Nottingham Forest are having this season, next season here”.
Sean Dyche habitually delivered results like these against high-flying teams. But rarely was it so consistently backed up against the rest of the league and never did he actively encourage supporters to aim high and be ambitious. It is a powerful shift in mindset.
Liverpool
The Manchester United champion vintage of 1996/97 have already been reeled in, with Arsenal’s Double winners of 1997/98 next and only two points ahead.
Liverpool still have plenty of future issues to sort but only 12 teams have ever had more points at this stage of a Premier League season and that really is quite good.
Aston Villa
It is arguably easier said than done against the continent’s form team but if Villa can keep Paris Saint-Germain within touching distance relatively deep into their Champions League quarter-final second leg then Unai Emery will know the mere act of turning to his bench could shift momentum inexorably.
Some might also suggest PSG are slightly better than Southampton but those people are no fun.
Emery specifically imbued his squad with more attacking depth in the winter, like a hibernating squirrel discarding Jhon Duran while storing Marcus Rashford and Marco Asensio in preparation for a busier mid-spring.
Donyell Malen remains ineligible in Europe but his goals in three consecutive games in which he has played just 88 minutes sum up the general theme still pushing Villa on three fronts. If the first team in Premier League history to have three different substitute scorers in one game do not beat you from the start, they have more than most in reserve to finish the job.
Here’s the Premier League table since the January transfer window closed, by the way:
Kieran McKenna
Facing Enzo Maresca four times with a vast disadvantage in terms of resources and remaining unbeaten against the Italian as a manager is a neat trick. McKenna preventing it from going stale by getting relegated is wise.
On a slightly more serious note, this was welcome proof that Ipswich can function without Liam Delap ahead of his predestined summer transfer auction. He has started all but three games in the Premier League and the Tractor Boys had lost the previous two 4-3 and 4-0, with Delap scoring one of those goals off the bench.
George Hirst was mightily effective against Chelsea and has earned his shot as the attacking fulcrum in the Championship.
Brentford
The explanation for their Jekyll and Hyde ridiculousness was initially that Brentford simply had easier home fixtures and tougher away trips at the start of the season, with their form generally tracking when that was inverted at the midway point.
Then they came from behind to take a point from the Emirates, their first this season away at a team higher than ninth, and everyone just came to accept Brentford are fundamentally quite weird.
Leicester
It is difficult to recall the last time an entire team simply needed one to go in off its collective arse, so Leicester will not look a gift horse made entirely of fortunate deflections and atrocious set-piece marking in the mouth.
This will not spark a miraculous push for survival but Ruud van Nistelrooy was right about the Foxes needing “to break a negative cycle”. How unfortunate that they have six games left to get back into one.
Aaron Ramsdale
The ninth keeper to save two penalties in a Premier League game will surely soon have the opportunity to pick his next career move a little more wisely. Although perhaps joining a Southampton side incompetent enough to entirely absorb his poor performances while platforming his more eye-catching displays was actually fine 4D chess.
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Premier League losers
Spurs
Ange Postecoglou settled on “unusual” as the buzzword to describe the individual mistakes which underpinned a 17th defeat entirely typical of a miserable Premier League season.
It felt like the manager was purposefully subdued, almost to the point of antipathy after the game. Postecoglou might suggest he cannot win in that case, having been criticised for his more antagonistic, argumentative post-match interviews throughout the season. But for such a gifted orator he has so frequently struck the wrong tone this campaign.
“We made errors that conceded goals, so that’s all you can analyse and that’s what happened today,” said Postecoglou. The hope is that being outshot by a team lower in the table despite having almost two-thirds of the possession warrants a little more in-house scrutiny, because one or two individual mistakes leading to a goal is an anomaly but four such instances in the same game points to deep systemic issues.
A chaotic system begets chaos. A lack of proper structure leads to structural problems. And as was wholly predictable, those returning from injury have simply been consumed by that chaos and lack of structure rather than miraculously correcting it through their mere presence.
If Postecoglou is only willing to “analyse” those specific individual mistakes then Spurs can expect nothing else while he remains in the post.
Manchester United
It is genuinely impressive to finish level on points with a team, poach and then part with their sporting director to the tune of £4.1m while cutting costs and making hundreds redundant, outspend them by more than £150m and for the gap to widen to 18 points and ten places in their favour.
That is not all on Amorim but the perennial question remains: do things really need to be this specifically awful? The Portuguese inherited an undoubted mess but the worst of Erik ten Hag had Manchester United four points from Champions League qualification in November; they are three above 17th in April.
The tactics are a separate abject point but even the sort of bold selection calls a manager often relies on to make a statement or evoke a reaction are backfiring horribly. The Andre Onana problem has now been compounded ahead of a game which will help define this miserable season.
Nottingham Forest
No Premier League club has used as few as their 23 players this season and it is starting to show. The legs might be weary with minutes while minds start to be weighed down by pressure and expectation.
Nuno Espirito Santo saw “no positives” but there was also nothing Nottingham Forest did specifically wrong. Their attack was just blunt with Chris Wood returning perhaps a game too soon, while Murillo soiled a hard-earned clean sheet in stoppage time. Everton took full advantage.
The hope is that consecutive defeats can be compartmentalised, coming as they have against one of the league’s form teams and a side which has become remarkably difficult to beat. Everton were organised in defence and struck on the break to secure an ostensibly narrow but ultimately deserved win; Forest have administered that medicine often enough this season to know how to take it and move on.
Enzo Maresca
The prevailing theory that he is quite prone to being Found Out in some way is twofold:
Chuck in an inclination to clash with fans over the playing style and it would be no surprise if Chelsea were conducting another manager search shortly. Blaming the supporters for the errors of Robert Sanchez is brave coming from the man who has played, dropped and then restored him to the starting line-up this season.
Brighton
No club outside the bottom three has accrued fewer points per game against that imminently relegated trio than Brighton (1.67). It is a record somehow damned further by being shared with Spurs.
Brighton’s manager reign-spanning inability to extract the absolute maximum from theoretically the season’s easiest fixtures is well established but no less infuriating. They have faced four of the bottom five at home and failed to win each time, keeping just one clean sheet.
Theirs is a substantial injury list robbing them of key players in crucial positions but excuses and caveats really shouldn’t be necessary against a team which hasn’t scored for eight games dating back to late January, never mind avoided defeat.
The biggest spenders in the Premier League this season still need to invest a little more in defence and on research to discover a way of consistently beating the division’s worst teams.
Oliver Glasner
The latest manager to react in the only sensible way to being linked with taking over at Spurs: by promptly losing his next match.
Glasner did at least own it, admitting that changing formation when leading 2-0 at half-time was “the wrong decision” and his ambitious plan “didn’t work” after some early brilliance at the Etihad.
But even that is a mark against his candidacy for other more illustrious posts. The big nerd has been here long enough to know that blaming VAR or sneering at the long-ball merchantism of the opponents is far more preferable than public introspection and accountability.
Arsenal
Already more Premier League points dropped this season than in both of the last two, with a relatively worrying trend developing in terms of squandering advantages: before this campaign, the most points Arsenal dropped from winning positions in a full season under Mikel Arteta was nine. It is 16 and counting in 2024/25.
The good news is that it is really beyond the point of actually mattering and there are no relevant scenarios in which Arsenal’s emerging tendency to waste a hard-earned lead can properly hurt them this season.