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Aron Wright - December 30, 2025
The arrival of a new year is traditionally a time for people to take stock of the 12 months that have just gone by, and think about what can be better in the months ahead. Doing more exercise, cutting down on food that’s bad for you, and finding a new job are common resolutions for us regular people. But they are all just really part and parcel of being a professional footballer.
The English Premier League season will be around halfway through the 2025-26 season when the clocks strike midnight on New Year’s Eve, so the 20 clubs will know that if anything is going to change, it needs to happen quickly. The betting sites profiled at VegasBetting already have an idea of how the rest of the season will go, and time is running out for any major change of plans.
That is not to say that Premier League teams cannot change their course, however. Football clubs don’t really do New Year’s resolutions, but here’s what we think will be hoped for by some in the English topflight.
Three points. Since Wolves returned to the EPL in 2019, it has been a story of gradual decline. Boosted by the arrival of a number of Portugal internationals, the first few seasons back in the topflight were impressive. But there have always been more losses than wins – apart from that initial campaign.
Things have gone terribly wrong this season, however. Vitor Pereira was sacked after ten games and brought no wins and just two points. His successor, Rob Edwards, has been unable to stem the tide and, at the time of writing, has failed to even draw a game. It might already be too late for Wolves this season, but winning an actual game would have to help the situation.
Keep Challenging. Aston Villa has experienced just about the polar opposite season to Wolves so far. After playing their first European Cup/Champions League games for over 40 years last season, Villa has kicked on this year, living up to expectation in the Europa League and starting to being talked about as possible league title contenders.
Unai Emery has been the main reason for Villa’s rise into the top tier of the EPL, but it is his players who have won important games and even overachieved in the last few seasons. Top stars departing have not proved to be a problem, and victories over Arsenal and Manchester City have shown that their league position is no fluke.
Bring the good times back. Manchester United was one of the most successful and feared clubs in the world not that long ago. But for the last ten years or so, it has been one of the more chaotically run clubs in the EPL. Past glories had faded as the club lurched from one self-inflicted crisis to another.
It is not as though United has now turned things around completely, but the much-maligned Ruben Amorim is finally starting to get something out of his players. The team is winning games, and the new players brought in are not suffering under the curse that seems to have been around in recent times. A return to league titles may still be a way off, but bringing the good times back to Old Trafford is a start.
Stay under the radar. It might seem a little strange to claim that Chelsea’s recent rise has occurred in the shadows. This is a team that won the expanded FIFA Club World Cup only last summer and spend hundreds of millions of pounds every season to remain in the upper echelons of the EPL. But it is a team that is curiously left out of conversations about trophies.
Chelsea became a major force at the end of the 1990s. thanks to the money of Roman Abramovich. The club has won titles at home and in Europe since then, but has fallen away in the last few years as Manchester City took center stage. Now, the club can become a Champions League regular once again, and Enzo Maresca would probably be quite happy for the attention to be mostly elsewhere while that happens.
Stop Being Spursy. It has become a running joke of how Tottenham Hotspur is able to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory or fail to win trophies when they seem destined for the white and blue half of North London. “Spursy” has become a term endured by the players and coaches at the club – and one that they would surely love to disappear.
Winning the Europa League last season might have proved enough to turn the corner for Spurs, although only just escaping relegation to the Championship at the same time was almost peak “Spursy”. Bringing Thomas Frank as the new head coach was thought by many to be a positive move, but old habits die hard. Spurs need to become more consistent and end the mockery of opposing fans.
Winning the league. The other half of North London would obviously love nothing more than for Spurs to continue to fall flat on their faces. Actually, there is one thing that would be more welcome to the Gunners – and that is a league title. After three years of finishing in second, Mikel Arteta’s process might finally be showing results.
It has been over 20 years since Arsenal won the EPL title, and there has even been a time out of the limelight before the recent upsurge in form. But still, the Gunners could not just get over the line. Manchester City have come back again this year, but Arsenal has stayed firm in its own direction so far. Could 2026 finally bring that elusive 14th league title?
