⚽ All 20 Premier League Teams

Arsenal went into the international break on the back foot after Brighton beat them 3-0 at the Amex, ending a nine-match winning run in some style. Nobody at the club will be rushing to bring that scoreline up.

Kai Havertz picked up a suspected hamstring problem playing for Germany over the break and was sent back to Arsenal for scans. Bad timing for a squad that was already looking thin up front.

The defence is a worry too: Ben White's been out since a groin injury against Sunderland, and Cristhian Mosquera and William Saliba are both carrying knocks of their own heading into October.

Declan Rice pulled out of the England squad, but it's described as load management rather than an injury — the club being careful with him rather than anything to panic about.

There's no Premier League football until October 10th, which at least gives the physio room a chance to empty out a bit before the fixtures resume.

Villa took just one point from their first four league games this season, with defeats to Brighton, Arsenal and Nottingham Forest along the way — an uncomfortable opening for Unai Emery's side.

It's an oddly familiar pattern: Villa were in almost exactly this position twelve months ago, before Emery turned things around and pushed them up the table. Fans have learned not to write the season off in September.

That patience paid off — Villa picked up their first league win of the campaign away at Tottenham, coming from behind to win 3-2 with goals from Johan Manzambi, Nicolas Jackson and Emiliano Buendía.

They'd already beaten Coventry City 3-1 in the Carabao Cup before that, so the Tottenham win wasn't completely out of nowhere — the performances were arguably better than the results suggested.

The international break has come at a decent time for Villa: a chance to build on that Spurs win rather than have it disappear into a two-week gap before it means anything.

Bournemouth are under new management this season — Marco Rose took over after Andoni Iraola left in the summer, and results have been a slow burn so far, with the team still searching for a first win.

There was an especially awkward afternoon on September 20th: Bournemouth lost 0-1 at home to Liverpool, managed by none other than Iraola himself, on his first game back at the Vitality Stadium since leaving.

It's not the first slow start the club's had, either — only Iraola's own opening to the 2023-24 season was worse. Bournemouth fans know this club has a habit of taking a while to get going.

There's genuine quality in the draws, though: a 2-2 at home to Brentford was a proper scrap rather than a capitulation, even if the final table doesn't reward performances that don't turn into points.

The international break gives Rose a rare block of time on the training ground to work with a squad that's still adjusting to a new voice — useful, given how the fixtures have piled up early on.

Brentford are unbeaten through their opening games this season under new head coach Keith Andrews, who took over the dugout from Thomas Frank — a smooth handover so far, results-wise.

The standout result: a 3-0 win away at Chelsea on September 18th, Chelsea's heaviest defeat of the season so far. Not a bad away day for a club with one of the smallest budgets in the league.

Kevin Schade scored twice in a 2-2 draw at Bournemouth, cancelling out a two-goal deficit — the kind of game that could easily have been a defeat but wasn't.

They've also put six past Birmingham City in the Carabao Cup, a 6-1 win that sent them through to the third round without much fuss.

Andrews himself isn't getting carried away — after the Bournemouth draw he said the team 'didn't hit the levels we've set', which tells you a lot about the standards being demanded even during a good run.

Brighton had one of the best weeks of Fabian Hürzeler's time in charge: a Carabao Cup comeback win at Manchester United, followed by a 3-0 demolition of Arsenal at the Amex on September 19th.

That Arsenal result ended the Gunners' nine-match winning run and catapulted Brighton up to third in the table — just two points off the top at the time.

The goals against Arsenal came from Pascal Groß, Charalampos Kostoulas and Chema Andrés, with Hürzeler saying afterwards that his side were 'horrible to play against' — his words, said with visible pride.

It hasn't all gone their way: Brighton lost their season opener 4-3 away at Chelsea back in August, a game that showed both the attacking quality and defensive gaps that have followed them since.

They also beat Coventry City 5-0 away, Coventry's heaviest defeat of the season — not a result Brighton fans need to bring up around a Coventry fan, but a genuinely eye-catching scoreline all the same.

Xabi Alonso is already Chelsea's third permanent head coach in under two years, arriving in the summer on a four-year deal after Enzo Maresca and Liam Rosenior both came and went in quick succession.

He's made an immediate attacking impression: Chelsea are only the fourth Premier League side in history to score seven or more goals across their first two league matches under a new manager.

That included a wild 4-3 win over Brighton on the opening weekend and a 3-2 comeback win over Fulham — end-to-end, high-scoring, exactly the kind of football Alonso's known for.

The trade-off has been at the back: Chelsea's heaviest defeat of the season so far was a 0-3 loss away at Brentford on September 18th, a reminder the defensive side of the project is still a work in progress.

Alonso arrives with a big reputation from his unbeaten title-winning spell at Bayer Leverkusen, so expectations at Stamford Bridge are already high despite this being barely a handful of games into the job.

Coventry are back in the Premier League for the first time in 25 years, which on its own is worth celebrating with any Coventry fan regardless of how the season's actually going.

Frank Lampard got them there by winning the Championship title with the best start to a league campaign in the club's history — a genuinely impressive achievement before a ball was even kicked in the top flight.

The step up has been brutal so far: Coventry are down near the bottom of the table, and took their heaviest defeat of the season so far, a 5-0 loss at home to Brighton.

That kind of scoreline is exactly the sort of thing every promoted club dreads and most experience at some point — the gap in quality at this level can be unforgiving in the first few months.

The international break gives Lampard a rare block of time to work with the squad before matches resume on October 10th, which after a rough start is probably a welcome breather.

Crystal Palace won the first European trophy in their history back in May, beating Rayo Vallecano 1-0 in the Conference League final in Leipzig, with Jean-Philippe Mateta tapping in the winner.

That win earned them a first-ever crack at the Europa League this season, and they marked it in style with a 4-0 win over Lech Poznań at Selhurst Park — their first home game in the competition.

Domestically it's been a mixed bag: a 3-2 win away at Fulham and a 0-0 draw at Leeds either side of a surprise Carabao Cup exit to Ipswich Town, losing 3-2.

Juggling three competitions this early in the season is exactly the kind of squad-depth test that catches out clubs who aren't used to it — Palace haven't had to manage a fixture list like this before.

Manager Oliver Glasner now has genuine silverware to point to at Palace, which changes the conversation about the club from 'plucky underdogs' to a side actually building something.

Everton are 7th in the table right now, which is the best they've looked in years — helped along by the new Hill Dickinson Stadium giving home games a different atmosphere entirely. Lead with this one; it's the good news before you get to the rest.

David Moyes has openly admitted his squad is 'really small' — just 18 senior outfield players — after a quiet summer transfer window, and selling Beto left them with only one recognised striker. It got so tight that Everton even floated a shock move for veteran free agent Jamie Vardy, who ended up joining Championship strugglers Burnley instead.

A deadline-day move for Monaco's Folarin Balogun also fell through in the final hours, which tells you something about where Everton currently sit in strikers' pecking order. Maybe don't lead with that one — it stings a bit.

Moyes also revealed he's never actually spoken to owner Dan Friedkin, despite the difficult transfer window just gone. Drop that in and you'll sound like you've been reading the inside stuff, not just the scoreline.

Everton go into their next home game with the squad stretched — as many as eight absences including midfielder Christian Nørgaard — against a misfiring Manchester United. On paper, that's a real chance to take points off one of the traditional big six.

Fulham said goodbye to Marco Silva in the summer after five settled seasons, and in came Alvaro Arbeloa — a rookie manager straight from coaching Real Madrid's youth sides, on a three-year deal. It's a leap of faith, and the early results suggest the jury's still very much out.

Fulham currently sit 19th with just two points from their opening games, which is not the story anyone at Craven Cottage was hoping to tell this season. It's still early, but 'still early' has an expiry date.

They led Manchester United deep into stoppage time before Matheus Cunha popped up with an 89th-minute equaliser — the kind of late concession that's starting to look like a theme rather than a one-off.

A 2-3 defeat to Crystal Palace in early September didn't help matters either. Fulham are creating openings and just not seeing games out.

Arbeloa's Fulham are trying to play an expansive, possession-based style that echoes his Real Madrid education, but transplanting that philosophy into a relegation fight is a hard ask for anyone's first senior management job.

Hull City are back in the Premier League for the first time in a decade, and they've made an entrance — as high as 3rd in the table in the opening weeks, behind only Manchester City and Arsenal. Nobody saw that coming, least of all Hull.

The promotion itself had a fairytale ending: Oli McBurnie scored in the 95th minute of the play-off final against Middlesbrough to send Hull up. Mention that one if you want to see a Hull fan go a bit misty-eyed.

Manager Sergej Jakirović built that early promise on defence — Hull didn't concede a goal in their first few matches back in the top flight, which is remarkable for a promoted side usually just expected to survive.

That form has cooled a little since — a 2-1 loss to Newcastle and a goalless draw with Aston Villa have brought them back to 8th — but 8th, for a newly promoted club in late September, is still a genuinely good story.

The scale of the achievement is easy to undersell: Hull spent a decade outside the Premier League, and now they're comfortably clear of the drop zone with a manager who's clearly not just there to make up the numbers.

Ipswich are back in the Premier League after Kieran McKenna led them up — then, in one of the more understated exits in football, stepped down in June to spend more time with his family rather than take the job forward himself. That's a genuinely rare thing to see in this sport.

In came Gary O'Neil from Strasbourg in Ligue 1, and he's kept Ipswich competitive: wins over Sunderland and Crystal Palace sit alongside losses to Manchester United, Liverpool and, most recently, Everton. Respectable numbers for a newly promoted side.

O'Neil's been honest about where his team's at — he's said he wants to see Ipswich have 'more control' in matches, while acknowledging that's a lot to ask of a promoted team still finding its feet at this level.

They also went out of the Carabao Cup to Arsenal at Portman Road, which stings a bit less when you remember it's Arsenal, and a domestic cup rather than the league that actually matters to survival.

Sitting 11th with 6 points isn't glamorous, but for a club that's spent plenty of years outside the top flight, mid-table respectability in September is exactly the platform a newly promoted side wants to build from.

Leeds are unbeaten through their first five Premier League games back in the top flight — two wins, three draws, and a genuinely solid 5th place in the table. That's a serious return for a promoted club.

A chunk of the credit goes to a busy summer in the transfer market: goalkeeper James Trafford, defender Tarik Muharemović and centre-back Nico Elvedi have all settled in quickly and look like proper Premier League additions rather than gambles.

Manager Daniel Farke is heading into contract talks from a position of real strength — his current deal runs out at the end of the season, but with Leeds unbeaten, the expectation is he'll sign a new one during the international break rather than there being any real drama about it.

Crystal Palace were the side that stopped Leeds turning momentum into another win, holding them to a draw rather than handing them a sixth game unbeaten as an outright victory. Still, a draw against Palace away from home is no disaster.

Leeds have already ground out results against Nottingham Forest, Brentford and Brighton — not glamour fixtures, but exactly the kind of unspectacular points that keep a promoted club well clear of trouble in September.

Alexander Isak's finally started delivering for Liverpool after an injury-hit start to his Anfield career, playing a big part in a recent win. Given the reported £125m fee from Newcastle, every good performance gets noticed.

That injury was no small thing — a fractured fibula from a challenge by Tottenham's Micky van de Ven that Arne Slot publicly called 'reckless', which kept Isak out for months. Decent context for why fans have been cautious about getting too excited too soon.

Liverpool have Manchester City at Anfield on the calendar once the October international break wraps up — a genuine litmus test for where this Liverpool side actually stands against the league's traditional benchmark.

Arne Slot's management style is fairly understated compared to some of his predecessors at Anfield, but he's shown he'll speak plainly when he feels a player's been wronged, as the Isak tackle comments showed.

Isak's time at Liverpool was also disrupted by a groin issue before the fracture, so there's a pattern of him needing time to find full fitness — worth remembering before writing off, or over-hyping, any single performance.

The biggest story at City this season isn't a player, it's the dugout: Pep Guardiola's reign finally ended, and Enzo Maresca took over in June. So far, the transition's been remarkably smooth.

City started the season with a perfect record — five wins from five — and currently sit three points clear at the top, exactly the kind of dominance a lot of people assumed would evaporate the moment Guardiola left.

Erling Haaland is having an obscene start to the campaign — five goals in five matches, including a starring role in a 5-3 win over Sunderland — and was named Etihad Player of the Month for September, as announced by the club on the 25th.

City's most recent league fixture was a hard-fought 1-0 win over Manchester United, extracted from a Manchester derby that was tighter than the scoreline suggests — no thrashing, just City doing enough.

The obvious question hanging over Maresca is whether he can actually improve on a Guardiola side that was already the best team in the country, rather than just maintaining it. Early signs suggest he's at least not making things worse.

Manchester United are being managed by Michael Carrick now, not Ruben Amorim — Amorim was sacked back in January, Carrick took over on an interim basis, and the club handed him a permanent two-year deal in May. Easy to lose track of United's managerial merry-go-round, so that's worth having straight.

It hasn't clicked yet: United have lost three of their opening six matches this season across all competitions, including a 1-0 defeat to Manchester City in the derby on September 13th.

There's a genuinely funny subplot here — with results struggling, the hashtag '#bringamorimback' has been trending among United fans, even though Amorim is now managing AC Milan. Selective memory is a hell of a drug.

United actually got dragged back from the brink at Fulham recently — Matheus Cunha scored an 89th-minute equaliser to salvage a point from a game they looked set to lose outright. Small mercies.

The Amorim exit wasn't cheap either — United took an exceptional cost of £8.2 million tied to his departure, on top of whatever they're now paying Carrick. That's before you even get to results on the pitch.

Eddie Howe stepped down after almost five years in charge over the summer, and Newcastle went looking well outside the usual pool for his replacement. New head coach Matthias Jaissle arrives from Saudi side Al Ahli, where he won back-to-back Asian Champions Leagues — he's 38, on a four-year deal, and still finding his feet on Tyneside.

Remember Elliot Anderson, the academy midfielder Newcastle sold to Nottingham Forest for £35m back in 2024? Forest have just flipped him to Manchester City for £116m, making him the most expensive British player in history — pricier even than Jude Bellingham's move to Real Madrid. Newcastle fans are allowed to wince slightly at that one.

Last season was derailed before a ball was kicked when Alexander Isak forced through a move to Liverpool, and Newcastle are still shaping their attack without him. Best to know that going in — it's still a sore subject for plenty of fans, so don't bring it up unprompted.

Form has been a rollercoaster lately: a chastening 4-1 defeat to Leeds was followed by a scrappy 2-1 win over Hull City and a comfortable 2-0 win over big-spending Tottenham. Inconsistent, but points on the board, and the Spurs result travels especially well in conversation right now.

Newcastle went into the international break with a genuinely long injury list — Tino Livramento withdrew from the England squad and Anthony Elanga remains sidelined — but Dan Burn, Joelinton and Will Osula are all in the frame to return, which should ease the squeeze on Jaissle's options.

Forest got through four different head coaches across the 2025-26 season alone before landing on Oliver Glasner in July. Fans have more or less given up learning names at this point — which makes the early pressure on Glasner feel painfully familiar.

That pressure is already real: Glasner has just one win from his first six games in charge and Forest sit 13th, with reports describing his position as 'unstable' barely two months in. Given how quickly Forest change managers lately, that's not exactly reassuring.

Home form has been genuinely grim — Forest have lost to Coventry and Leeds at the City Ground without scoring in either game, with a win over Aston Villa their only bright spot there this season. Good to have ready if anyone asks how Forest are doing at home.

Off the pitch, they've made an absolute killing: Elliot Anderson, bought from Newcastle for £35m in 2024, was sold to Manchester City this summer for £116m — the most expensive British player in history. A handy financial cushion while results settle down.

Star playmaker Morgan Gibbs-White is a genuine flashpoint: owner Evangelos Marinakis reportedly threatened Tottenham with legal action last year over an 'unlawful approach', and Forest have since offered him a new contract. Gibbs-White reportedly still has his eye on Champions League football, so don't be shocked if this rumbles on into next summer.

Sunderland finished seventh in their first season back in the Premier League last year, an extraordinary effort for a club that had just come up through the play-offs — and it earned them Europa League football, the club's first European campaign since 1973-74. Manager Régis Le Bris somehow didn't win the league's Manager of the Season award for it, which still irritates plenty of fans.

On deadline day, Sunderland beat Crystal Palace to sign winger Malick Fofana from Lyon — a proper coup for a club this size, and a sign of how far the club's ambitions have shifted since promotion.

The stat of the season so far: Sunderland lost 5-3 at Manchester City despite Brian Brobbey scoring a hat-trick. That makes him only the sixth player ever to score a Premier League hat-trick and still lose, and the first since Roque Santa Cruz managed it for Blackburn back in 2007.

Erling Haaland also scored in that game, completing a full set of having now found the net against all 25 clubs he's faced in the Premier League. Sunderland joining that particular list isn't the club's proudest new entry, but it's a fun one to drop into conversation.

Le Bris has been refreshingly modest about ambitions this season, saying the target is simply to be 'consistently top ten' — a realistic goal that shows how quickly standards have shifted at a club that spent eight years outside the top flight before promotion.

Tottenham spent more than £300m rebuilding the squad for Roberto De Zerbi this summer — including £100m on Sandro Tonali from Newcastle and £85m on Mateus Fernandes — and still somehow started the season bottom of the Premier League with just two points from five games. Genuinely one of the most expensive bad starts English football has seen in a while.

De Zerbi's job security is more precarious than the spending suggests: he only got the role full-time in March after keeping Spurs up on the final day of last season with a 1-0 win over Everton, following back-to-back 17th-place finishes. That context matters when judging how much patience is really left in the tank.

After back-to-back defeats — including a 2-0 loss to Newcastle — De Zerbi has publicly insisted he's 'not angry' and there's 'no panic'. The club say there's no plan to make a change during the international break, but the pressure is visibly building.

The injury list reads badly: Mykhailo Mudryk, Xavi Simons and Wilson Odobert are all sidelined, with Simons and Odobert both out with cruciate ligament injuries. There is a genuine bright spot though — Dejan Kulusevski is finally nearing a return after being out since a serious knee injury in May 2025, which De Zerbi has called 'like a new signing'.

Pedro Porro has also joined the treatment table with a suspected hamstring injury picked up against Aston Villa, ruling him out of the Spain squad. Just another name for De Zerbi to work around when the season resumes.