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Aston Villa 1-3 Liverpool: The best of the action from last season's match
A late surge up the table saw Manchester City win their fifth Premier League title in six years, despite Arsenal holding top spot for 248 days of an elongated and unusual 2022/23 season.
For the first time in the competition’s 31-year history, there was an extended mid-season break to accommodate a winter FIFA World Cup 2022, making for a unique campaign of tired players, multiple matches-in-hand, and an unprecedented falling of records.
There were 1084 goals scored, more than ever before, and a record 14 managerial changes in what will go down as one of the wildest, most unpredictable, and most entertaining Premier League seasons of all time.
Yet there was one record that most people saw coming - and that ultimately defined the year.
Erling Haaland’s 36 Premier League goals smashed the previous record and, of course, played a major role in turning Man City’s eight-point deficit to Arsenal in early April to a five-point cushion by the end of May.
This was the headline story, but by no means the only memorable one.
Brighton & Hove Albion qualified for Europe for the first time in their history. Aston Villa rose from nowhere to make the top seven. All three newly-promoted clubs retained their Premier League status for only the fourth time since the competition’s inception.
Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur endured their worst seasons for over a decade.
And, perhaps most newsworthy of all, 2015/16 Premier League title winners Leicester City saw their extraordinary nine-year stint at the top table come to an unexpected end.
August was a month of high drama, setting the tone. Manchester United lost their first two matches under Erik ten Hag, prompting early crisis talk at Old Trafford, while Arsenal won all five of their matches as Chelsea and Leicester got off to difficult starts.
Elsewhere Man City showed signs of an early wobble, going two-goals down in consecutive matches against Newcastle United and Crystal Palace but collecting four points to stay close to the league leaders.
At the end of the month, Scott Parker was sacked by AFC Bournemouth after a 9-0 defeat to Liverpool and a post-match press conference in which he said his side were ‘struggling for air’ in the Premier League. His replacement Gary O’Neil would prove otherwise.
Thomas Tuchel was the second manager to go, sacked by new owner Todd Boehly after collecting ten points from six matches, and he was quickly replaced by Graham Potter, whose Brighton side were fourth at the time.
Arsenal’s winning streak came to an end with a 3-1 defeat to Man Utd that confirmed Ten Hag’s immediate recovery from a dreadful start, while Spurs beat Leicester 6-2 to extend their unbeaten start to seven matches and suggest - wrongly, as it turned out - they were ready for a title challenge under Antonio Conte.
Newcastle had won just one of their first seven Premier League matches, yet in October, they began to climb up the table with five wins from six to end the month in fourth.
It proved to be a big month, too, for Nottingham Forest, where manager Steve Cooper was under serious pressure before a famous 1-0 win against Liverpool at the City Ground kick-started a revival just in time to save his job.
Brighton fans had an early taste of what life would be like under new manager Roberto De Zerbi with a thrilling 3-3 draw against Liverpool who, incidentally, saw their indifferent start collapse into a full-blown hangover.
They ended October with two defeats and a mid-table position, prompting fears that last season’s near misses in the Premier League and UEFA Champions League had taken too great an emotional toll.
Strong autumns for Arsenal and Man City, combined with Spurs' runs of defeats to Arsenal, Man Utd, and Newcastle, left us with a two-horse race at the top at the one-third point in the season.
But a shortened November, with action pausing on the 13th for the FIFA World Cup 2022, saw Arsenal stretch their lead to five points after Man City lost 2-1 at home to Brentford.
November also saw two highly-respected managers arrive in the Midlands to reverse the fortunes of relegation-threatened clubs.
Julen Lopetegui joined rock-bottom Wolverhampton Wanderers just as the Premier League went on hiatus, while at Aston Villa, Unai Emery replaced Steven Gerrard, who was dismissed with Villa outside the bottom three on goal difference alone.
The new manager got off to a flying start with a 3-1 victory over Man Utd that was a sign of things to come.
And yet Emery isn’t even the most notable manager change in November. Arguably that goes to Nathan Jones, arriving from Luton Town to replace the departing Ralph Hasenhuttl at Southampton, only for the experiment to go badly wrong.
Jones lasted just 14 matches, winning once in a rapidly-unravelling tenure defined by bizarre press conferences and an increasingly toxic atmosphere at St. Mary’s.
But all of that was still to come. Through November and December, the league table was frozen and clubs were made to stew on their opening 14 or 15 matches.
Dazed players and supporters got whiplash turning their attention to Qatar - as Lionel Messi and Argentina won the World Cup - and then back again to domestic matters within six days of the final.
On Boxing Day, the Premier League returned with its usual flurry of matches, and by the end of January we began to piece together which clubs had enjoyed the break and which had been hurt by the interruption.
Chelsea, losing each of their last three before the interim, continued to struggle under Potter, while Everton’s season went from bad to worse under Frank Lampard, leading to his dismissal in late January with the Toffees 19th in the table.
Leicester, mid-table until now, fell to five consecutive defeats that would signal a terminal decline, and as Spurs dropped further a clear top four including Newcastle and Man Utd began to emerge.
Meanwhile Fulham continued their phenomenal campaign under Marco Silva with four wins from four to cement their place in the top half and Brentford began a nine-match unbeaten sequence that put Thomas Frank’s side in the spotlight.
February would prove a hugely significant month. At the top, Arsenal went three matches without victory, beginning with a crucial statement win for Sean Dyche on his Everton debut and culminating in a 3-1 defeat at home to Man City that took them to the top of the table, albeit having played an extra fixture.
Over at Chelsea, the Potter era shifted from a thorny start to a full-scale crisis that had only one outcome, as a losing streak through February made it one win from nine by the time they lost 2-0 at Spurs at the end of February.
Chelsea were 10th. Potter was in serious trouble.
By then, Jones had already gone, to be replaced by Ruben Selles, while Leeds United also dispatched of Jesse Marsch and turned to Javier Gracia – who would last just 11 matches at the helm.
Nobody knew it at the time, but as March began Man City were gearing up for a remarkable late-season charge to the title, a 1-1 draw at Forest in mid-February the last time they would drop points before being crowned champions.
In fact, through March the general consensus was that Arsenal were the unstoppable force.
They won all four matches, coming back from 2-0 down to beat AFC Bournemouth in stoppage-time before easily dispatching of Fulham and Crystal Palace to create an eight-point gap at the top.
Villa were also back on the up after stumbling through February, as were Brighton, whose stunning run through 2023 reached its peak with a 4-0 victory over West Ham United, while Liverpool’s 7-0 win over Man Utd temporarily eased concerns that Jurgen Klopp’s team wouldn’t be able to recover from their poor campaign.
Moving in the other direction were Palace, who, after four defeats from four in March, extended their winless run to 12, sacked Patrick Vieira.
That was nothing compared to the goings on at Spurs, where following a 3-3 draw with Southampton, Conte’s extraordinary post-match rant was the final nail in the coffin.
Things had spiralled out of control, and despite Spurs still sitting in fourth Conte’s obvious unhappiness had created an untenable situation.
He left by mutual consent with his assistant Cristian Stellini overseeing things until late April, when he was replaced by Ryan Mason, who couldn’t halt the slide.
April was a time of considerable flux across the Premier League but most importantly in the title race as Arsenal dramatically unravelled.
They were 2-0 up at Liverpool, only to lose their grip and draw 2-2. The same thing happened at West Ham seven days later.
Rock-bottom Southampton scored within the opening 60 seconds at Emirates Stadium and drew 3-3 a week after that, before the month ended with Man City’s clinical 4-1 victory over Arsenal at the Etihad Stadium.
In the space of 17 days, Arsenal went from five points clear of Man City with both teams level on matches played, to just two ahead and Man City holding all the cards with two fixtures in hand.
There is no doubt this was the period in which Man City, whose 12-match Premier League winning streak enveloped this Arsenal sequence, won the title. Indeed Arsenal never really recovered, winning just 12 points from their final nine matches of the season.
But this was only the headline in a month of carnage, of collapse and renewal, across the Premier League.
Chelsea sacked Potter after just 31 matches at the helm, confirming this a lost year for the new owner despite their £500 million spending spree in the summer, and yet things went from bad to worse under interim manager Lampard.
Moving in the other direction, Villa continued their brilliant rise under Emery and announced themselves as European hopefuls, O’Neil all-but completed survival as his AFC Bournemouth won five from seven in April, and Liverpool rediscovered their verve to move back into the top seven.
Roy Hodgson’s trademark caution went out the window following his return to Palace, who attacked freely during a three-match winning run that stopped the rot, whereas the bottom fell out for now-doomed Southampton.
Leicester sacked Brendan Rodgers at the beginning of April following a complete capitulation over the preceding six weeks, but his replacement Dean Smith won just one of his five matches that month.
And so to a dramatic May, which began with the surprise return of Sam Allardyce, a moment that seemed to sum up this most peculiar and eventful of years.
He was given four matches to save Leeds but could not, his side going down alongside a former champion on the final day. Everton’s win at home to AFC Bournemouth, courtesy of an Abdoulaye Doucoure volley, made Leicester’s win against West Ham redundant.
Villa got over the line in seventh, Brighton snatched sixth, a thrilling sequence of three consecutive home wins saw Nottingham Forest secure survival by beating Arsenal 1-0, and four wins from the final four secured Man Utd a third-place finish.
But the biggest story came two weeks before the final day. Arsenal’s 3-0 defeat to Brighton on May 14 effectively sealed the title for Man City, who proved too relentless for the young upstarts.
Guardiola was the champion yet again, a remarkable spring drive taking Man City from fears of a fallow year to an historic treble.
