What we've learned from 2024/25 so far

Football writer Alex Keble highlights the hot topics and tactical lessons of the season so far.

When the March international break ends and we enter April, the Premier League’s official run-in begins, with just nine matchweeks remaining in the 2024/25 campaign.

Here we take a look at the six biggest things we have learnt from the season so far.

The No 9 is back in fashion again

There was a time, not long ago, when all the best players and top scorers in the Premier League seemed to be wide forwards.

The "false nine" was all the rage and it felt as though the traditional centre-forward – strong in the air, good at holding up the ball, poaching goals in the box – was a dying breed.

But as Premier League football evolves beyond a brief obsession with possession football, and as set-pieces come back to the fore, we are seeing a clear resurgence in the use and appreciation of No 9s.

Erling Haaland, Chris Wood, Jean-Philippe Mateta, Alexander Isak, Ollie Watkins, Raul Jimenez: the list is long and the trend undeniable.

Top 10 PL scorers 2024/25

It was only a couple of seasons ago that the two title challengers, Manchester City and Liverpool, played without a traditional No 9.

Fast forward to 2024/25 and, as Arsenal’s title bid falters, there is universal agreement they need to jump on the bandwagon and get themselves a proper striker.

'Big Six' breakup speaks to the strength of Premier League's emerging middle class

The biggest story of the Premier League season has been the remarkable breakup of the "Big Six", a band of clubs that once dominated the top six places in English football but looks to be falling away.

Liverpool might be running away with the title but beneath them the competition looks healthier than it has been in a very long time.

Tottenham Hotspur and Manchester United are languishing in the bottom half of the table while Man City and Chelsea have under-performed against expectations, dragging them into a wide-open race for UEFA Champions League football.

What we’ve come to realise is that the Premier League’s middle class – so recently locked out from European competition – are now genuinely able to rub shoulders with the "Big Six".

It’s happened almost overnight, to the extent that seven of the eight of the clubs in that band have been in the Championship in the last ten years: Aston Villa, Newcastle United, Brentford, Fulham, Brighton & Hove Albion, AFC Bournemouth, and Nottingham Forest. The only exception is Crystal Palace.

One reason for the shift could be the Premier League’s PSR regulations, which may have created more competitive balance, although just as likely is the increasing financial might of the division compared to others in Europe.

Even traditionally mid-table clubs are able to attract star players and star managers, with the likes of Oliver Glasner, Andoni Iraola, and Unai Emery leaving high-profile jobs in Europe to manage in England’s top flight.

Whatever the reason, it’s a pattern that looks here to stay.

Premier League at the vanguard of modern tactics

On that note, another lesson from this season is the sheer complexity and variety of tactics on display in the division, which has surely never been in a better position in that regard.

Nuno Espirito Santo has brought deep-lying counter-attacking tactics back into fashion at Forest; Fabian Hurzeler and Iraola are pressing kings at Brighton and Bournemouth; Emery and Eddie Howe oversee highly flexible football at Villa and Newcastle; and even bottom-half clubs like West Ham are attempting a progressive possession game under Graham Potter.

This wasn’t always the case. Ten years ago, before Pep Guardiola and Jurgen Klopp came to the country, the Premier League was known for being backwards compared to European counterparts, which partly explains how Leicester City won the title in 2015/16.

Even in the years since then, clubs expected to be in a relegation battle would often play a simple reactive game more based on individual quality, relying on "firefighter" managers to stay up rather than sit in the classroom learning about positional play and counter-pressing.

Not anymore. Everyone seems to want to play proactive football, and virtually every manager in the division would see themselves as a tactician.

That’s a big shift from years gone by - and 2024/25 is a new peak. Outside the relegation zone, the five lowest-ranking managers are all tactical thinkers: Potter, Ange Postecoglou, Ruben Amorim, David Moyes, and Vitor Pereira.

Fast transitions are the new normal, and not everyone is ready

Despite the large amount of variation within the division, we can still say that the main tactical theme of the 2024/25 campaign is the transition: attacking quickly immediately after winning the ball.

This is the buzzword everyone is talking about, and fast transitions have become commonplace up and down the division. As the table below shows, breaking quickly is growing in prominence.

Quick breaks in the PL per 90 minutes

*All stats per 90 minutes

Even Guardiola has begun to realise their significance this season. The Man City manager has leant into end-to-end games recently, playing Omar Marmoush behind Haaland (and with two speedy wingers either side) despite this move sacrificing control.

But not everyone has got on board just yet.

Arsenal don’t deploy fast transitions nearly enough, hence some static football and reliance on set-piece goals, while Spurs and Man Utd in particular are struggling.

Only time will tell if the Premier League continues to go deeper into football that flows freely from one end to the other, or if the possession-obsessives like Guardiola and Mikel Arteta can strengthen their grip again.

Salah is the best player in the world

In terms of individual players, what’s most surprising and unusual about the 2024/25 Premier League season is that one footballer stands out head and shoulders above everybody else.

Mohamed Salah is on track to break all kinds of records, most impressively the number of goal involvements in a single 38-game Premier League season. He is currently level with Haaland on 44 (27 goals, 17 assists).

He should obliterate that over the next nine games, then, and is likely to get the four assists he needs to also break the assists record of 20, jointly held by Thierry Henry (2002/03) and Haaland (2019/20).

He is indisputably the best player in the Premier League, and, right now, the best in the world.

His only real competition is Kylian Mbappe or Vinicius Junior of Real Madrid – widely seen as the other contenders for this year’s Ballon d’Or - but neither player can get anywhere near his numbers this season.

Probable Ballon d'Or contenders' goal involvements 

For the first time in a while, the Premier League boasts the best player in the world. Salah should soon have the Ballon d’Or to prove it.