After an unwelcome international break the view of many, Premier League football returns this weekend with plenty to decide at both ends of the table.
A gruelling clash between title-chasing Manchester City and top-four hopefuls Liverpool kicks things off on Saturday, with league leaders Arsenal hosting Leeds United later in the day and potentially having the opportunity to extend their lead at the summit.
Bukayo Saka is once again one to watch at Emirates Stadium, having maintained his fine form over the international break on England duty, and it would be wise to draft him into your fantasy squad if he is not yet in the side.
Elsewhere, Kai Havertz's resurgence is one to keep an eye on, while Danny Ings and Jack Harrison are also worth a punt.
Using Opta data, we've highlighted exactly why that quartet should be on your hit list.
Bukayo Saka (Arsenal v Leeds United)
The Hale End graduate is the only player in the Premier League to have hit double figures for both goals (12) and assists (10) this season, with Saka in particularly devastating form at Emirates Stadium.
Overall, 14 of his 22 goal involvements have come in north London, standing behind only Erling Haaland (23) for the most direct goal involvements at home in the Premier League.
Last time out against Crystal Palace, Saka scored twice and contributed an assist to help Arsenal maintain their title charge, then carrying that form into England duty and scoring against Ukraine at Wembley.
Kai Havertz (Chelsea v Aston Villa)
Linked with a move to Bayern Munich at the end of the season following Thomas Tuchel's appointment in Bavaria, Havertz has hit a fine vein of form at a crucial stage of the season in Chelsea's top-four bid.
Seven goals this season puts Havertz just one shy of his tally from last season, while he enters the clash against Aston Villa having scored in each of his last two Premier League appearances – meaning he could score in three consecutive games for the first time since March 2022.
No player has been involved in more goals under Graham Potter than Havertz (six goals, one assist), scoring twice the amount as Chelsea's next leading scorer under the Englishman (Mason Mount, three).
Danny Ings (West Ham v Southampton)
Ings has established a fine record of haunting his former employers in the Premier League, having been directly involved in 10 goals in his last 14 such matches (seven goals, three assists).
That includes involvement in three goals in his last two appearances against Southampton (one goal, two assists), who may wonder what might have been had he been in their ranks in the fight for Premier League survival.
Since January 21, no West Ham player has a higher goals-per-game ratio (0.55) or expected goals (0.56) return, while only Jarrod Bowen (6.43) and Said Benrahma (5.29) have more touches in the opposition box per 90 minutes than Ings (4.66).
Jack Harrison (Arsenal v Leeds United)
With six assists over the course of the season, Harrison ranks sixth across the entirety of the Premier League in that regard, with only Christian Eriksen (seven), Mohamed Salah (seven), Leandro Trossard (eight), Saka (10) and Kevin De Bruyne (12) having more.
In Leeds' bid for survival, Harrison has been the catalyst in pushing the club away from the bottom three and travels to Emirates Stadium having scored in consecutive Premier League matches.
Only Rodrigo (12) has been involved in more Leeds goals this term than Harrison (nine), while nobody has created more chances for the Yorkshire side than the midfielder (41).
Where it went wrong as Leicester’s success gives way to relegation
Leicester were relegated from the Premier League on Sunday seven years after being crowned champions of England.
The Foxes, also FA Cup winners in 2021, beat West Ham 2-1 at home on the final day of the season but Everton’s victory over Bournemouth condemned them to the second tier for the first time since 2013-14.
Here, the PA news agency examines some of the reasons why it went wrong.
Summer of discontentFor a club that had twice finished fifth – narrowly missing out on Champions League qualification – and eighth in Brendan Rodgers’ three full seasons in charge, there was an alarming drop in expectations at the start of the camapign. Summer cutbacks meant Rodgers was unable to significantly strengthen his squad, with chairman Aiyawatt Srivaddhanaprabha explaining Financial Fair Play and Covid had hit them hard. Central defender Wesley Fofana went to Chelsea for £70million before Rodgers could bring in any new recruits and the departure of title-winning goalkeeper Kasper Schmeichel, a huge character at the club for over a decade, hurt them badly.
Squad planningLeicester had appeared to be the byword for shrewd planning for so long in English football after launching the stellar careers of title winners N’Golo Kante and Riyad Mahrez. But eight players – Caglar Soyuncu, Daniel Amartey, Jonny Evans, Nampalys Mendy, Ryan Bertrand, Tete, Youri Tielemans and Ayoze Perez, who spent the second half of the campaign on loan at Real Betis – were out of contract at the end of the season. Belgium midfielder Tielemans, scorer of the FA Cup final winner against Chelsea, was nowhere near the levels he had shown after joining from Monaco in 2019. Deals for a further eight players are to expire next year, among them England attacking midfielder James Maddison who is now set to move on.
Post-World Cup bluesAfter a terrible start that saw Leicester anchored to the foot of the table with one point from seven games, their form picked up before the World Cup break with five wins in eight. But Leicester’s form nose-dived again when domestic football returned in December, taking just one point from 15. Evans was not fit to marshal a leaky defence and unconvincing Wales goalkeeper Danny Ward eventually lost his place to Daniel Iversen. Foxes great Jamie Vardy became increasingly marginalised and did not score a league goal for six months as a squad deemed ‘too good to go down’ hurtled towards a relegation scrap.
Was sacking Rodgers right call?Rodgers adopted a negative tone to Leicester’s summer strife by insisting the target was 40 points and top-flight survival. The former Liverpool and Celtic boss, more familiar with competing at the top of the table rather than the bottom, almost grew more pessimistic by the week with selection inconsistencies and injury undermining the Foxes’ cause. Rodgers was eventually sacked on April 2 after defeat at Crystal Palace had dropped Leicester into the bottom three. After Adam Sadler and Mike Stowell spent two games in caretaker charge, Dean Smith took command for the last eight – but would Leicester have been better served backing Rodgers as Nottingham Forest and West Ham did with Steve Cooper and David Moyes?
The Premier League season that rewrote the goalscoring record books
The 1,084 goals scored in this season’s Premier League were a record for a 20-team season.
Abdoulaye Doucoure’s crucial goal for Everton against Bournemouth on Sunday, which clinched the Toffees’ survival, also meant the league surpassed the previous high of 1,072 in 2018-19.
Here, the PA news agency looks at how it happened.
2022-23Erling Haaland has rewritten the individual record books and his exploits for Manchester City have now helped create a new league record as well.
The Norwegian’s 36 goals led the way, with Harry Kane a distant second in the Golden Boot race despite scoring 30 for Tottenham.
Ivan Toney netted 20 for Brentford before starting his eight-month betting suspension, with Mohamed Salah (19) and Callum Wilson (18) completing the top five.
Champions City were the league’s top scorers with 94 goals while long-time leaders Arsenal racked up 88.
Liverpool and Brighton cracked 70, as did Tottenham who scored and conceded more than 60 – their 2007-08 season was the only previous instance of a team doing so in the Premier League.
Every team contributed at least 30 to the tally, the first time that has happened since the 2012-13 campaign.
2018-19City were again champions in the previous record season and contributed 95 themselves, a similar impact to this season.
The tally could have been even higher but for Ederson and his defence, with City conceding only 23 to finish with a goal difference of plus-72 – that ranks third in Premier League history, with City and Chelsea the only clubs ever to top 70.
Liverpool, who finished just a point behind City in the title race, scored 89 while Arsenal contributed 73. Three more teams topped 60 and a further six reached a half-century while only Huddersfield (22) came in under 30.
There was no Haaland equivalent driving the total but a host of players contributed at a high level – Liverpool pair Mohamed Salah and Sadio Mane and Arsenal striker Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang all shared the Golden Boot on 22, with Sergio Aguero just one behind for City, while a record 32 players reached double figures.
Best of the restLast season came up just one short of the previous record as seven teams broke the 60-goal barrier, with City and Liverpool on 99 and 94 respectively.
There were 1,066 in 2011-12, 1,064 in 2016-17 and only one fewer in 2010-11 and 2012-13.
Surprisingly 2017-18, when City scored 106 goals and Salah and Kane both hit the magical 30 mark individually, had only 1,018 goals in total as Huddersfield stayed up with 28, the same total as relegated Swansea, and Burnley finished seventh with only 36.
Indeed, none of the four seasons in which a team has hit a century figures particularly highly in the chart. City scored 102 of the league’s 1,034 in 2019-20 and Chelsea 103 of 1,053 in 2009-10. Even 2013-14, when City scored 102 and Liverpool 101, only saw 1,052 goals in total.
The league’s early 42-game seasons unsurprisingly featured higher overall tallies, with 1,222 in the inaugural 1992-93 campaign followed by back-to-back seasons with 1,195, but the average of 2.85 per game this term is the outright highest in the Premier League era.
The Premier League season in numbers
The Premier League season came to an end on Sunday with Manchester City winning the title while Southampton, Leeds and Leicester were relegated.
Here, the PA news agency looks at the stand-out statistics from the season.
7 – Premier League titles for Manchester City, including five of the last six.
89 – points for Pep Guardiola’s side, five more than runners-up Arsenal.
5 – Guardiola has five Premier League titles to his name, second only to former Manchester United boss Sir Alex Ferguson’s 13. Eight of his players – Ederson, Kyle Walker, John Stones, Aymeric Laporte, Ilkay Gundogan, Kevin De Bruyne, Bernardo Silva and Phil Foden – have been part of the squad for all five.
36 – City striker Erling Haaland’s Premier League record goal tally, ending a run of three straight seasons in which 23 won the Golden Boot.
30 – goals for Tottenham’s Harry Kane, the second time he has reached that mark without winning the Golden Boot – a feat otherwise only achieved by Alan Shearer in 1993-94.
16 – Haaland’s team-mate De Bruyne led the assists chart, four clear of his nearest challengers Mohamed Salah and Leandro Trossard.
17 – clean sheets for Manchester United’s David De Gea as he won the league’s Golden Glove award for a second time.
1,084 – goals scored in this season’s top flight, a Premier League record.
248 – days Arsenal led the Premier League table, the most ever for a team who did not win the league. They won eight of their first nine games, with the club accounting for the last three examples of a team starting so well without winning the league having suffered similarly in 2004-05 and 2007-08.
21 – Newcastle finished in the top four for the first time in 21 years. They are only the second team from outside the league’s established ‘big six’ to qualify for the Champions League in the last 18 seasons, the other exception being Leicester’s memorable 2016 title win.
3 – all three promoted teams – Fulham, Bournemouth and Nottingham Forest – avoided relegation, only the fourth time in the Premier League era that has been the case and the first since 2017-18.
60 – Tottenham became only the second team to both score and concede more than 60 goals in a Premier League season, after they themselves did so in 2007-08.
1 – Everton defender James Tarkowski was the only outfield player to play every minute of his side’s season, in addition to goalkeepers De Gea, Aaron Ramsdale and David Raya. Max Kilman was on track to achieve the same feat until being left on the bench for Wolves’ penultimate game against Everton.
6 – Wolves’ six red cards were twice as many as any other club, while their 84 yellows was jointly the most in the league alongside Forest and Leeds.
147 – Fulham’s Joao Palhinha was far and away the league’s leading tackler, with second-placed Moises Caicedo of Brighton on exactly 100.
2 – three players scored two own goals apiece – Leicester defender Wout Faes, in a seven-minute spell against Liverpool, Crystal Palace’s Joachim Andersen and Bournemouth’s Chris Mepham. Faes was only the fourth player to score two in a Premier League match.
9 – Liverpool’s 9-0 win over Bournemouth equalled the biggest in Premier League history.
9.11 – the Cherries’ Philip Billing scored the second-quickest goal in Premier League history, 9.11 seconds into their eventual 3-2 defeat to Arsenal.
15 – Arsenal’s Ethan Nwaneri became the league’s youngest ever player when he made his debut against Brentford in September, aged 15 years and 181 days.
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