What was the best season that each 2024-25 Premier League club ever had?

The alphabet helps us start with gusto. It isn’t too controversial to say that Arsenal’s 2003-04 season isn’t the best in Premier League history. However, the Gunners did something that no other club has done. These are the Invincibles. Arsenal did not lose a single game in the 2003-04 season. The Gunners did have 12 draws, and finished on 90 points, but, you know, they also NEVER LOST ONCE.

Villa finished fourth last season and is playing Champions League football for the first time in years thanks to this fact. However, its best Premier League season was also… the very first Premier League season. Back when there were 22 teams in the Premier League, Manchester United breezed to a title on 84 points in 42 games. In second, though, we find Aston Villa on 74 points, and it finished third in goal differential as well.

The Cherries didn’t play Premier League football until the last decade or so, and it hasn’t been a perfect run as they spent two seasons back in the Championship. This was a pretty easy choice in terms of the season to go with. The 2016-17 campaign is the only time Bournemouth has finished in the top half of the table. Sure, it finished ninth, but that counts!

Options were limited here. Brentford didn’t play top-flight football for decades, and the 2024-25 season is its fourth in the Premier League. Hey, it is also its fourth season in a row in said league. Bolstered by Ivan Toney’s 20 goals, in 2022-23 the club finished ninth in the table, and even had a positive goal differential. Not bad for a team that at the time was playing Premier League football for the second season ever.

Brighton debuted in the Premier League in the 2017-18 season but already feels like one of those clubs that is going to be around for a while. The first few seasons saw the club in a relegation battle, but it feels solidly mid-tier these days. During the 2022-23 season, Brighton saw manager Graham Potter leave for Chelsea, but Roberto de Zerbi stepped in and the club still finished a whopping sixth in the table.

Chelsea has been swirling chaos for years now, but we have not forgotten that it was title contenders year in and year out for a while, and has won multiple Premier League crowns. The 2009-10 season was not Chelsea’s best performance from a points perspective. Chelsea had 86 points and in two earlier winning years had over 90. However, this team was just so fun. The Blues set a Premier League record by scoring a whopping 103 goals and having a plus-71 goal differential. Both have been beaten since, but what a year.

Palace is the only club to be coming off its best Premier League season. That’s a bit surprising, given that the team struggled early and Roy Hodgson stepped down. Once Oliver Glasner took over, though, Crystal Palace soared. It finished 10th, tied for its best finish. Palace’s 49 points also tied its best performance, and its minus-1 goal differential was good for a club like this.

Everton has been down in the relegation battle for a few seasons, and may go down for the first time in Premier League history. Believe it or not, the Toffees used to regularly be in the top half of the table. Now, the one time Everton finished fourth, it actually had a negative goal differential. While the Toffees finished fifth in 2013-14 they had 72 points, their best in the Premier League, and also had a plus-22 goal differential.

Fulham has been a yo-yo team for about a decade, but before that it was steadily in the Premier League for about a decade. In the thick of that run, 2008-09, it finished seventh with 53 points. Now, we will grant you it wasn’t the most riveting of seasons. Fulham got there by allowing a mere 34 goals, but also only managed to score 39. It powered its way to seventh on the back of one-all draws. How exciting!

Ipswich was an original Premier League club, but this is its first season back in the top flight since 2001-02. Obviously, it was relegated that season, but the season prior, well, we aren’t really sure what happened. It was just remarkably good. Ipswich won the playoff to get promoted at the end of the 1999-2000 season, but it was not relegation fodder by any means. Instead, powered by Marcus Stewart’s 19 goals, the club finished fifth. Fifth! With a plus-15 goal differential that showed it was no fluke!

When American sports fans, and also some English sports fans one assumes, complain about football, one of the complaints is that Cinderella need not even get fitted for glass slippers. There are only a handful of teams in any given league that can win the title, and it is usually the same team for years on end. Also, they tend to be among the richest clubs in the world. One time, though, Cinderella did make her way to the ball. Leicester came out of nowhere to win the Premier League title in the 2015-16 season. The bookmakers had Leicester’s odds at 5,000-to-1 before the campaign began. Now, when fans lament they don’t root for one of the behemoths of football, another fan can bolster them by saying, “Yeah, but Leicester!”

Liverpool is one of the titans of English football. Hell, of European football. It has won a litany of top-flight titles…but only one Premier League title. While the Reds have been frequent finishers in the top four, only the 2019-20 season ended with Liverpool atop the table. Sadly, it happened during the COVID-19 pandemic, so fans couldn’t even properly celebrate.

Man City has been the bully on the block for years, so we had plenty of seasons to choose from. Well, in theory, at least. In practice, there was only one choice. Manchester City’s 2017-18 campaign is the best any English club has had. Ever. This team is the one and only team to hit 100 points playing top-flight football in England. City also broke Chelsea’s record for goals with 106 and goal differential at plus-79. The Centurions are the finest squad the Premier League has ever seen.

Manchester United fans are longing for the days of Sir Alex Ferguson, moreso now that it has been a decade since the club’s last title. It used to be United was, well, what City is now. We had many league-winning sides to choose from, but this turn-of-the-millennium team definitely stands out. Yes, the team the year prior won the treble, but that year United won the Premier League with only 79 points and won just 22 games. The next season the club had 91 points and 28 wins, kicking its goal differential all the way up to plus-52. Sure, there was no treble, but there was Premier League glory.

Newcastle United is an interesting club. While it has finished in the top four of the Premier League many times over, it has also played three seasons in the second flight since the debut of the Premier League. Early in the league’s history, United was often one of the best clubs competing. During the 1995-96 season, for example, it finished second, only four points behind champs Man United. Newcastle won 24 games and had a plus-29 goal differential. It has never won more games than that in the Premier League.

This is only Forest’s third season back in the Premier League after years away, and it has never regularly stayed in the league. In fact, three seasons in the Premier League is Forest’s longest run, having now done it twice. The 1994-95 season was the last with 22 teams, and thus 42 games. While Blackburn and Man United were comfortably ahead of the rest of the table, in third you could find Forest. Yes, Nottingham Forest once finished third in the Premier League.

Because at one point in the 2000s it was in League One, and because it was in the Championship in the 2022-23 season, it might be hard to remember that Southampton has been in the Premier League more often than not, and prior to 2022-23 had a decade run with multiple top-10 finishes. In the 2015-16 season Southampton climbed all the way to sixth. Of course, when you’re a club like Southampton, keeping success going can be tough. Within a couple years, Sadio Mane, Virgil van Dijk, and manager Ronald Koeman would all be gone.

Spurs have been a staple of the top five for years on end, but one season does stand out. Not only did manager Maurico Pochettino lead the club to a second-place finish, Tottenham’s plus-60 goal differential was best in the league. Its 86 points is comfortably the best it has done in the Premier League era. That would have won the league in several seasons!

You may not want to hear it, West Ham fans, but David Moyes managed the club to some of its best years. That includes the 2020-21 campaign. The Hammers finished sixth, ahead of fellow London clubs Tottenham and Arsenal. One more win and they would have qualified for the Champions League! Yes, Moyes couldn’t sustain that, but he was by no means a failure at West Ham.

Wolves has mostly been playing below the Premier League level the last 30 years, but it has recently been able to stick around the Premier League for several seasons in a row. Notably, the club finished seventh in both its first and second seasons back in the top flight. The second of those seasons, 2019-20, was a bit better. Yes, Wolves only improved by two points, 57 to 59, but its goal differential went from a mere plus-1 to a respectable plus-11. Thanks to many draws, the club only lost nine games that season.