Ranking 10 must-watch games that will define the 2025-26 Premier League season: Arsenal-Liverpool not No. 1

The 2025-26 Premier League season is on the horizon, and it's one that dawns with altogether greater intrigue than many recent iterations of the biggest league in football. Champions Liverpool have strengthened aggressively, but so have their likely rivals Arsenal and Manchester City, who might just believe they can build even greater separation from the other 17 teams.

Further down the table Manchester United and Tottenham are looking to bounce back from trying campaigns while their potential rivals for Champions League qualification, the likes of Aston Villa and Newcastle, will need to gamble on internal growth after trying summers in the transfer market so far. Then, at the bottom of the table, the likes of Leeds and Sunderland can realistically aspire to break the cycle of promoted teams going straight back to the Championship. All that and we've not even mentioned Chelsea, never anything less than fascinating.

With that in mind, here are 10 games from across the course of the 2025-26 season that promise to be fascinating, and potentially critical:

Few games in the early weeks will dictate the course of the season, but there is one that could set the vibe for the months ahead. All eyes will be on Alexander Isak, whichever team he ends up with (or in the likelier event that he is not involved in this game), and it is easy to see how a defeat at the St. James' Park opener could send Newcastle spiraling. Isak goes, no one of commensurate quality replaces him and Eddie Howe is set for a grim slog of a season across the Premier League and Champions League.

It doesn't have to go that way though. One of the emerging narratives of preseason has been Liverpool's vulnerability in transition. Now just imagine that Newcastle are hitting those spaces with Anthony Gordon and Anthony Elanga. We've already seen Palace's success on the break, could the Magpies set the tone for how the rest of the Premier League attacks its champions?

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If any team will be believing they can hit the new season with momentum it is world champions Chelsea, who seem to have picked up where they left off at the Club World Cup over the course of their mini-preseason. To make matters better, the early season fixture list has been kind to Enzo Maresca's side, who do not face a side who finished above 10th until Brighton rock up to Stamford Bridge six games into the campaign.

Could a bright start fuel a title campaign? It's hard to be confident in that where Chelsea are concerned, particularly given that all that transfer business arguably has not improved a team whose title credentials were so robustly dismissed by their manager early last season. Then again, it seems plausible that they could hit 15 or so points from those first six games, giving them head room over some of those who aspire to be ahead of them.

Will Manchester United have a clear sense of who they are and what they can achieve in the early months of the season? They have committed full throatedly to the Ruben Amorim project in their recruitment of forwards and yet there is a lot left to address behind Benjamin Sesko, Bryan Mbeumo and Matheus Cunha. The question is whether an organization not known for its patience and clear-eyed assessment of its standing post-Sir Alex Ferguson will be able to hold the course when the wobbles come.

If you were picking a time when they might, you would probably look at the autumn. After a cross-Manchester trip to the Etihad on September 20, United face Chelsea, Liverpool, Brighton and Nottingham Forest in quick succession with only two more favorable fixtures around those games. Wobble this early in the season and United could find themselves heading to the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium a very unfavorable position in the table. This could be the time when the Old Trafford hierarchy have to hold their nerve.

A smattering of variance and a reasonable lack of final third oomph turned matches like this one into the games where Arsenal fell out of the title race last season. Make no mistake, an aggregate scorel of 3.01 expected goals to 1.18 more often results in six points than the two Arsenal got from their meetings with Everton last season, but it is probably fair to say that this team would have fared better in trips like Everton away with a smattering of stardust. In Viktor Gyokeres and Noni Madueke they have added that, if those players can swing games like this then Arsenal will be in the mix until the end.

Thomas Tuchel's assessment of the Club World Cup earlier this summer looked chilling for Manchester City and Arsenal. "I think [the Club World Cup] will have a huge impact and it will give Liverpool and Arsenal a huge advantage in the next season to not be there," he said. If that is going to shine through at any stage it will be in the traditionally hectic fixture window at the turn of the year, when England's two representatives at this summer's tournament will be on the fourth of five Premier League games they will have played in around 18 days, with a third round FA Cup tie and perhaps even an EFL Cup semifinal to jam into their schedules too. Oh and that elongated Champions League.

On the surface it would appear that Chelsea have recruited the depth to deal with this schedule. If their pursuit of Alejandro Garnacho and Xavi Simons is successful then they will have at least two options in every position but will enough of them be up to the requisite standard? And for both teams, will their very best players be feeling the impact of a shorter preseason and brief holidays?

This will come too early to be a true title decider but both this and the meeting at Anfield on August 31 promise to have an outsized impact. Exactly how much will depend on the final points tally required to be champions; the higher that goes the more that it will hurt to cede points to direct rivals.

When the point totals get high, that is when the head to head matches matter, as Arsenal know only too well. In 2022-23 it would have taken them winning just one of their two defeats at Manchester City's hands for Mikel Arteta's side to be crowned champions. In the years since then they have become England's best big game hunters, taking four points off both Manchester City and Liverpool in 2023-24 and 2024-25. That advantage hasn't been exploited so far, but perhaps the third time would be the charm.

If either of these two teams are going to overcome the odds and survive, these are the games they must win. Sunderland certainly look the more likely on the basis of their recruitment, building a squad that mixes veterans such as Granit Xhaka with young legs who can either be sold on for a good return or who can make a big impact on the Premier League. They'll have a chance but only if these sorts of matches deliver three points rather than one.

For Burnley, it is hard to shake the sense that even by match week 24 they might be in an extremely perilous situation. The Clarets rode James Trafford's hot hands to the Premier League and subsequently lost him to Manchester City. At the other end of the pitch it is hard to believe that Armando Broja and Jacob Bruun Larsen will score the goals to keep their team alive.

In every season there is a game where it all clicks for Pep Guardiola's side. Even in their struggles during 2024-25 they clicked into the gear with a win over Leicester and didn't lose from there on out. If they hadn't left themselves with such ground to make up... This time round they will need to have reached their peak form by this stage. They might just need to get going by this stage given that their final seven games include meetings with Arsenal, Chelsea and Aston Villa, as well as potentially challenging away games against Everton and Bournemouth. If City get it right they could fly through these games, if not they might be drawn into a top four battle.

On the subject of top four battles, could these two teams be in the mix for Champions League qualification? Much may come down to how they are faring in Europe at the same time, deep runs opening up the prospect of England getting a fifth spot at the top table. Unai Emery could well find himself having to consider whether winning Europa League represents a better route to Champions League qualification.

After a summer where few of those who were in the mix for fifth last season have decisively strengthened, might Tottenham drag themselves into contention? It does not seem beyond the realms of possibility even though they have lost Son Heung-Min to MLS. At this stage of the season they might also be reintegrating James Maddison, arguably Tottenham's best attacking players last season. If Spurs are in the mix heading into the final weeks of the season, Maddison could be an X-factor.

We'll save our full predicted Premier League table for elsewhere, but suffice to say, if there's a game on the final weekend that decides who stays up and who goes down, it might well happen at the London Stadium. West Ham might not have finished 17th last season, but they had the worst non-penalty expected goal difference of those who survived by a fair margin and it is not immediately apparent how much they are going to improve in Graham Potter's first full season in charge.

As for Leeds, they have the look of the best team to come up from the Championship in quite a while. The evidence of two seasons where those that came up went straight back down suggests they're going to have to be if they want to survive. Even then it might be a scrap that goes all the way to the last few minutes of the season.