How exciting is the Premier League in 2025?

It can be said that the Premier League this season has not achieved the kind of dramatic final chapter that many people expect.

Liverpool was crowned as champion early with four rounds left in the league, and the relegation dispute ended quickly due to three newly promoted teams, Leicester City, Ipswich and Southpton, returning to the Championship with almost no resistance.

All this sparked a wider but rather fierce online debate - whether the English top league matches have become dull. The discussion climaxed after a Manchester derby in April, with goals-free matches full of sterile, risk-averse ball possession, and neither team (Manchester United and Manchester City) created opportunities that failed to reach the level of one expected goal.

Former Manchester United defender and current media commentator Gary Neville described the game as "mechanized" and blamed the lack of personalized performance on "over-tactical".

But do these complaints make sense? Or just a frustrated reaction to a disappointing 90-minute game? One of the main criticisms of modern football has been that the game has become slower and more controlled. The data does support this: the speed at which Premier League teams push the ball forward this season and the average number of passes per possession have hit an all-time low.

However, passing is not a new thing. In the 2013-2014 season, the team's passes each time they handled the ball even exceeded this season. Is such a game boring? Obviously not - that season was considered one of the most exciting seasons in Premier League history. Manchester City, as champion and Liverpool as runner-up, scored more than 100 goals, and Manchester City is only 4 points away from Chelsea, which ranks third.

Perhaps the problem is not the number of passes, but the type of passes. Few people would deny how wonderful Paris Saint-Germain's goal was in the first leg of the Champions League semi-final last month: it was a smooth 26-footed pass that calmly penetrated Arsenal's defense.

What is frustrating is a match like this Manchester derby, in which short, safe return passes are preferred over bold, potentially tearing the defense. The league's front passes have decreased, from 42% of overall passes in the 2010-2011 season to 32% of this season.

may seem awful, but the reduction in forward passes can be explained by the disappearance of long passes. Those tactical styles based on long-range passes are often not associated with exciting open play. The tough, tenacious Burnley team coached by Sean Dyche often recorded the highest pre-pass ratio in a season, but a large part of it was casual clearance when oppressed by opponents.

Suspections of direct-pass play have emerged as early as the current era. The late former Nottingham Forest coach Brian Clough once said: "If God wanted us to play football in the air, he would have planted lawns in the sky."

Although the proportion of forward passes has decreased, the proportion of passes initiated from the team's defense zone three has hardly changed over the past six seasons. Are there really more boring matches, or are the influence of tactical changes making people miss the past more? These questions may not have definite answers. But anyway, dynamic data and tactical analysis like the modern Premier League provides a new perspective, allowing us to examine the most popular league in the world not only with enthusiasm or emotions, but with a more objective way.

But for many critics, the problem is not just the style of the game, but the lack of change in the league. Former England coach Sam Allardyce once said in an interview with the BBC Sky Sports in 2021: "Everyone wants to play football in the same way, and the best leagues in the world should have different tactical systems and different ways of playing football."

Many accusations point directly at Manchester City coach Guardiola, and his highly successful ball-handling style naturally inspired many peers to follow suit.

As his "best disciple" - Barcelona legend Messi said: "Guardiola seems to come from another world. He is different, he can see things that others cannot see. He changed football. Everyone wants to imitate us. In fact, he is also somewhat 'harm' for football, because some people try to play like we are Barcelona, ​​but failed to do it."

It is not new to imitate the reigning champion coach.

Before Jose Mourinho took over Chelsea in 2004, the most common formation in the Premier League was 442, and very few teams would choose other formations. Mourinho changed that, introducing a 433/451 hybrid system that helped Chelsea win its first Premier League title in team history. Not long after, 442 was widely regarded as outdated and rigid, and today twenty years later, it is the tactical style brought by Mourinho that many people missed as the "golden age" of the Premier League. In the mid-2000s, Mourinho's tactical style was widely popular, and the controversy it caused was quite similar to today - former Chelsea and Ireland striker Tony Casrino once wrote in the British Times that he "didn't expect so many Premier League coaches to be victims of the 451 virus."

Although victory tactics are often easily imitated, tactical diversity is still one of the Premier League's aspirations.

Although the overall trend tends to be more controlled ball-handling—9 of the 20 teams of this tournament recorded the "slowest" direct propulsion speed since the 2018-2019 season—the direct, vertical and vertical gameplay can still be successful. Nottingham Forest and Emmouth, in particular, have achieved good performances using this style this season.

Yes, Guardiola's Manchester City may have influenced other teams, but they are still the most prominent special point, playing in a unique way. When asked about his use of reversing fullbacks, Tottenham coach Angie Postkoglu joked on Sky Sports that he "just copied Guardiola." Arsenal coach Mikel Arteta insists that he "never tried to copy and paste" his Manchester City mentor's tactics.

Certain elements of Manchester City's tactical style do spread, especially their emphasis on systematic organizational offenses. However, their extreme style of play is still an "outlier" rather than a universal standard. Tactical diversity is still active on the Premier League stage.

Although the teams may have absorbed some of Guardiola's tactical philosophy, there are significant differences in their implementation, which reflects the tactical uniqueness of the Premier League teams.

Brighton coach Fabian Hezeler asked his full-back to stay high and wide, while Antoni Ilaura's coach Bournemouth created crowds with a rotating front-field foursome in the on-field attack area, Liverpool maintained a balanced midfield trio, while Guardiola's side effectively used three centre-backs on the offense to maintain a compact narrow position.

Even if the team is more or less tilted towards similar styles, this does not weaken the viewing of the game. Just last season, Gary Neville was filled with joy in his praise for Premier League teams, saying they were "always taking the initiative to think", adding: "This makes us better because the game is very exciting."

goals, as the ultimate driving force of the game, have been richer in the past two seasons than in previous Premier League 33 years: the 2023-2024 season averaged more than three goals per game (the first time in the English top league has reached such a huge number of goals since the 1960s), and this season is slightly below that.

In the same interview in 2024, Neville also recalled: "The league 20 years ago was full of teams that played quite ugly, and their goal was to stop opponents from attacking." That period coincided with the era of the lowest score in the Premier League.

The BBC's "Google of the Month" competition in December 2006 is often praised, especially Michael Essing's magnificent long-range scimitar shot against Arsenal at Chelsea, but that season recorded the third lowest goal rate per game in history.

This 2006 goal highlight also fueled another general criticism - players no longer shoot long distances.

The proportion of shots from outside the penalty area has dropped, from 38% of the 2018-2019 season to 32% of the season, but the number of long-range goals has remained stable. The players did not stop shooting from outside the penalty area, they were just cautious about when they would be shot.

As Brentford coach Thomas Frank said in an interview with Sky Sports, "Losing balance and playing a low-probability long shot with your left foot may not be a good idea."

Inter Milan's 7-6 Champions League semi-final victory over Barcelona in the past week or so is a perfect ad for football. From Lamin Yamal's almost incredible dribbling breakthrough to 37-year-old central defender Francesco Archerby's equalizer in stoppage time, the game was full of unpredictability, creativity, skill and style.

The Premier League has not reached such a dramatic height this season. The suspense of the whole season faded early, but the drama still existed in a single game. Manchester United's recent 3-4 loss to Brentford means that all 20 teams have had the experience of leading and being reversed this season - this is only the third time in Premier League history.

Not every season will have an "Aguero moment", which means changing the title attribution in the stoppage time of the last game, but unpredictability remains at the heart of the Premier League.