POWER RANKINGS - 2025/26 October Update

Ranking the Big/Rich Seven Premier League clubs after 8 matches played

It is time for the feature that everyone loves, putting teams into tiers and rating them against each other!

This is the first update to the rankings since the start of the season.

There are some teams (Crystal Palace and Bournemouth) that are close here to be meriting inclusion, and they might start getting included in the coming months but as things stand, I am going to keep it to just the “Big/Rich Seven” clubs here.

I did a podcast with Elliot Smith at Arsenal Vision going through this exercise but even after talking for an hour it always feels like there is more to say about the teams.

7. Tottenham

Previously 6th

Coming into the season I was a bit optimistic on Tottenham’s chances here.

I thought the move to hire Thomas Frank as the coach was a good one. We haven’t seen him take a big club to high levels but his time with Brentford saw him show pragmatism and an overall ability to push a team above their level of spending.

The early results have been pretty good; they are 6th on the table and are tied with the third best goal difference.

The performances that underlie these results though… they are telling a different story.

They have just three matches where they beat their opponent but a good margin on expected goals, and one of those includes a match where there was a red card against in the 54th minute that saw them add on.

This is not especially positive for the future performances, and this is echoed in the Champions League where against a not especially tough run of matches they have seen their opponents create more against them as well (2.8 xG for vs 5.4 xG against).

To my eye, Frank is trying to evolve their style, and you can see that this is giving them some growing pains for sure. Mohamed Mohamed had a good post about them in today’s version of the Transfer Flow newsletter.

The squad building is also a bit head scratching; they are trying out the what if passing, especially passing in midfield doesn’t matter strategy and I don’t know if that is smart or not.

They have one player in the top 50 for final third entries so far this season, they have 1 player in the top 25 for progressive passes, with three in the top 50 (none are midfielders), and they have two players in the top 50 for passes completed into the penalty area.

They have some cool guys are doing stuff in Kudus and Simons, but they are just not a team that gets the ball up the field effectively.

They are begrudgingly effective at stopping their opponents from doing the same but it might be an example of the Rafa Benetiz blanket situation where they are looking to shore up the defense and that has come at the expense of what they have been capable of creating in attack.

They have been the “luckiest” team so far this season on turning expected points into actual points so that helps give them some room to improve without too much pressure, but it is something where they really need to get that improvement going sooner than later if they want to continue to be in the hunt for the European places.

This looks like a team that is very much still a work in progress and one that is going through a transition.

6. Manchester United

Previously 7th

This is a team that I was pretty harsh on for their summer business and the first nearly three months of the season has not drastically changed it for me. I think that they focused on the wrong areas with their investment and while they have gotten better the areas they didn’t address still look like a problem for them.

I can’t help but look at the attackers and how they are performing elsewhere compared to the attackers that they brought in and be a bit like “that is what a net spend of 200m gets you?”

That being said, they have gone from a pure basket case of a team to at least a semi competent looking team that might be on the edge of the European places.

Their play style still looks like a team that has some pretty glaring issues in midfield but they are looking more competent in both boxes so far. They just are not a team that can stop a match from turning into a back-and-forth affair.

Sometimes that has been good for them, sometimes it hasn’t and it puts them in a bit of a muddled middle of teams.

The positive for this team is that they are very much showing improvement from what was a very bad team last year, it just has moved them from a bottom of the table team to a team that is in the thick of the upper midtable.

Just a final note, it is a touch ironic that they went out and added the player that had some of the biggest over performance in expected goals last season and they have started this season as a team that is quite a bit below their expected numbers.

5. Newcastle

Previously 5th

There is no change from Newcastle here in my view and that probably says good stuff about them given they have lost their best player from last season.

I am also still pretty high on them, even though they currently sit 14th in the table.

Early in the season the table can lie, and I think that this is the case with Newcastle right now.

One of the big things I am bullish on them about is that they have been quite good at keeping opponents from creating much against them. They have had several matches where they have struggled to create chances themselves, but they have generally been doing more than they allow.

That is a positive sign and one that has a great track record for figuring out if something is actually wrong with a team or not.

They aren’t quite at the Arsenal level but they have still been damn impressive this season, and I think that they have enough attacking talent that they can turn these types of matches in to points going forward.

So far this season they have one match (against Arsenal) where they have been significantly out played with everything else pointing toward the match being close or them having the advantage.

They just haven’t seen the ball bounce their way and it has left them with fewer points than they probably deserve so far.

If they keep playing like this, they should turn things around and be able to march up the table.

4. Chelsea

Previously 4th