Liverpool: Brilliant champions of a boring Premier League season

It's been a Premier League lacking too much drama and excitement, which doesn't take anything away from Liverpool's success.

There is an effort going round to belittle Liverpool’s championship win by any means possible. There’s been no title challenge, they’ve had no real pressure, other teams are weaker, City have fallen off, Arsenal have had too many injuries. As a Liverpool fan first and foremost, be absolutely aware that that is not the case here — I’ve loved Arne Slot taking what Jurgen Klopp left behind, refining it and turning them into a Premier League winning machine. You can only beat what’s in front of you and they’ve done so clinically and without much fuss throughout the season.

As someone who grew up in the Sir Alex Ferguson era of domination, surrounded by Manchester United fans and their annual processions to league titles, you better believe I’m soaking this one in as much as possible, especially as COVID-19 soured so much of the win back in 2019/20.

Slot’s work in taking on from what Klopp had started has been exemplary and his title win is right up there amongst the best by any rookie manager in league history. The consistency and control replaced the chaos we were familiar with, and working with a small squad that needed the likes of Ryan Gravenberch to play well above his initial floor highlights the amazing work Slot has done.

And let’s not forget Mo Salah, who has somehow gotten better under Slot and continues to score goals at a pace never really seen before. His decision to extend his stay at the club cements legendary status amongst the pantheon of Liverpool greats, right up at the very top table.

The scenes at the weekend’s title confirmation were unmatched, winning the game with a style and panache that the team deserved in front of a raucous home crowd, putting to bed all the emptiness that tainted the win in 2020.

The recent narrative is Liverpool have “stumbled” towards the league title, exacerbated in part by the Paris Saint-Germain games where they were matched by a really good side who needed penalties to get through, and the Newcastle victory in the League Cup where Liverpool simply failed to show up and Newcastle managed to hold their nerve after a long cup drought.

But in the league, Liverpool have been pretty much perfect. Throughout this period of falling over the line to the title they’ve won seven of the last eight games.

“Only” the league is another popular critique, as if failing to add a domestic cup or European trophy somehow taints the league trophy. Believe me: it doesn’t.

But having said all that, for me at least, I’ve found this season’s Premier League to be, well, a little bit boring. I’ve loved Liverpool winning the Premier League, but I haven’t loved the Premier League.

And that’s a sentiment that is naturally challenging to a lot of Liverpool fans. Just because other teams have failed to live up to their usual standards, depriving us of a proper title race, or because the likes of Manchester United are at the opposite end of the table, doesn’t negate at all what Liverpool have achieved. I’m speaking purely from the aspect of being enthralled and entertained by what the league has to deliver on a week-to-week basis.

In fact there’s going to be a lot of contradiction in this piece, because on one hand I feel like it’s possibly the strongest Premier League ever from top to bottom, but on the other hand, that doesn’t necessarily make for a fun or entertaining Premier League season to invest yourself in.

Andrew Beasley

has done a great piece crunching the numbers to illustrate exactly just how strong the 2024/25 season has been across the board, with the likes of Nottingham Forest, Bournemouth and Crystal Palace all reaching new heights. As he puts it in the article, the “floor has never been higher”.

And whilst that is great for the teams in the Premier League middle class, it hasn’t enhanced my enjoyment of settling into a weekend of Premier League action by any reasonable metric.

With all due respect to those teams, I don’t really care about Bournemouth or Nottingham Forest. Their style hasn’t revolutionized anything and they’re not making me tune into any Super Sunday humdingers, granted it’s very cool to see them doing well and playing competitively, particularly Forest.

The sentiment is any Premier League side can beat any other on a given weekend, and like a rising tide has elevated the league across the board. Clubs in that middle class and below are spending more than ever, rivalling some of the biggest clubs across Europe, and with so much money swirling around the league, and the clubs being ran better than they were previously, the league is at an ultra elite level.

But if anything, the most “entertaining” aspects of this season have been the teams that have underperformed, the clubs that are being ran badly, the likes of United and Tottenham, both languishing in the bottom half of the table. But even those storylines have gotten tired as the season wore on. Seeing Spurs falter with Ange getting closer to the door as yet another managerial flounder at the club is akin to rubbernecking a car crash. Especially as I really like Postecoglu and wanted him to do well in the Premier League, and he’s a character that the league would have benefited from in the long run.

Meanwhile, United take up a huge amount of airtime for a team performing so badly. It’s ironic that both sides are still in the hunt for a European trophy, but when so much of the Premier League attention span revolves around two bad teams, although the league is “strong”, it begins to get weighed down by the traditionally strong sides who aren’t strong anymore.

That also included Chelsea who, for all their spending, have been horrendously boring to watch under Enzo Maresca and have been very stuttery throughout the season, despite likely ending up in the top four.

And whether Liverpool fans want to admit it or not, a title race does make things more enthralling. From a fan point of view I am delighted it’s all been wrapped up smoothly and efficiently well ahead of time, but from a footballing perspective having the battle go down to the wire would’ve added a little bit of spice to the season.

And, again, that’s no fault of Liverpool — City have had a well overdue down year, which I compare closely to Liverpool’s 2022/23 campaign when it was evident the squad needed some revitalization. They’ve been another big club that have been hard to watch at times, making it difficult to revel too much in their downfall.

As for Arsenal, they’re a great side as evidenced by the Champions League quarter-final win over Real Madrid, but they’re not without their own drawbacks when it comes to tuning into their games. Whilst the Stoke comparisons are miles off the mark, I feel teams that set up to defend against Arsenal make games slow and clammy, because Mikel Arteta is somewhat mirroring it on the other side. That’s what made the Champions League games so exciting — Real Madrid weren’t afraid to attack, luring Arsenal out of their shells and it made for immensely exciting games and their best performances of the season.

Arsenal actually accounted for some of the more entertaining games for a neutral this season, like the late win over Leicester or the 2-2 draw against Manchester City earlier in the season.

But as the season turned the corner towards the run in, it became very boring, very quickly. Arsenal couldn’t last the trip and much of the league has been decided, mathematically or otherwise, for the last month, and we still have a month of football left to go. City and Chelsea have steadied course somewhat to lead the race for the top four, which is the only thing we really have left with any stakes involved.

I’m conscious of this being a “it used to be better” lament to nostalgia and a return to the early 2000s, but that’s not what this is.

Liverpool have been excellent in a strong league, but excellence and entertainment aren’t always the same thing. This season has been a strange paradox — a league bursting with quality from top to bottom, yet lacking the drama and unpredictability that make a campaign truly unforgettable and worth investing in.

That’s not Liverpool’s fault, nor should it detract from their achievements. They’ve navigated a competitive, evolving Premier League with ruthless efficiency and deservedly lifted the title. But as a football fan, beyond the red-tinted glasses, it’s hard not to feel like the 2024/25 season, for all its technical quality and financial might, has been missing a bit of its old magic. And that’s okay. Not every year needs to be a classic to be cherished. In fact, I expect next season to be much different.

Some seasons are for the purists — and as a Liverpool supporter, I’ll enjoy this one all the same, even if the wider spectacle felt just a little bit hollow.