2019/20 Premier League season review

Liverpool won the 2019/20 Premier League with 99 points, 18 clear of Manchester City, for their first league title since 1990. They were 25 points ahead when the season was suspended in March because of Covid-19, and they confirmed the title in June with seven games to spare, after more than three months without football.

Jamie Vardy won the Golden Boot with 23 goals. In Fantasy Premier League, Kevin De Bruyne was the top scorer with 251 points, and Joshua Bull won the game with 2,557 points from more than 7 million managers.

You can replay the season here with a £100m squad picked from 357 players across all 20 clubs, or read on for how it unfolded.

VAR, Lampard and a £1.4bn summer

The season began on 9 August 2019 with the Premier League's first use of VAR, which stayed controversial all year. Liverpool started as European champions and Manchester City as champions of England for the second year running. Norwich City, Sheffield United and Aston Villa came up from the Championship.

Chelsea appointed Frank Lampard after Maurizio Sarri left. Working under a transfer ban, they sold Eden Hazard to Real Madrid for £130m. Graham Potter took over at Brighton and Steve Bruce at Newcastle.

Clubs spent about £1.4bn over the summer:

• Manchester United paid Leicester £80m for Harry Maguire, a world-record fee for a defender, and also signed Aaron Wan-Bissaka and Daniel James.
• Arsenal signed Nicolas Pépé from Lille for £72m.
• Tottenham signed Tanguy Ndombele for £63m.
• Manchester City added Rodri for £62.5m and João Cancelo for £60m.
• Aston Villa spent £144.5m on 12 players after promotion, more net than any other club.

Liverpool's runaway title

Liverpool dropped points only once before the new year, in a 1-1 draw at Manchester United in October. By Boxing Day they were 13 points clear of Leicester, who were second, and on New Year's Day the lead was ten.

They kept winning. Liverpool won 18 league games in a row and went their first 27 unbeaten, until a 3-0 defeat at Watford on 29 February. By the time they beat Bournemouth on 7 March, they had 82 points from 29 games and a lead of 25, the biggest at any point in Premier League history.

The suspension and the restart

On 13 March 2020 the Premier League suspended the season after players and staff fell ill with Covid-19. The pause was first set until 4 April, then extended. At that point Liverpool were two wins from the title.

On 4 June clubs agreed that teams could name nine substitutes and use five. Football returned on 17 June, with Aston Villa against Sheffield United and Manchester City against Arsenal, and every match from then on was played behind closed doors.

Liverpool beat Crystal Palace 4-0 on 24 June. The next evening Chelsea beat Manchester City 2-1 at Stamford Bridge, and Liverpool were champions with seven games to spare, the earliest in Premier League history by games played and the latest by date. It was their first league title in 30 years and their first of the Premier League era.

They eased off after that, losing 4-0 at Manchester City and 2-1 at Arsenal, but still finished on 99 points with 32 wins. They also won 24 home league games in a row, carried over from the previous season, a record. The season ended on 26 July, and Jürgen Klopp was named Manager of the Season.

The race for the Champions League places

Manchester City finished second on 81 points and scored 102 league goals, more than anyone else, but lost nine league games. Their 8-0 win over Watford in September was the biggest home win of the season, and in January Sergio Agüero's hat-trick against Aston Villa made him the Premier League's record overseas scorer, with a record 12 hat-tricks.

Behind City, the last two Champions League places went to the final day:

• Manchester United finished third on 66 points in Ole Gunnar Solskjær's first full season. They clinched it with a 2-0 win at Leicester on the last day.
• Chelsea were fourth, also on 66, in Lampard's first season, after beating Wolves 2-0 on the final day.
• Leicester had been second at Christmas and won 9-0 at Southampton in October, a record away win. They fell away after the turn of the year and finished fifth.
• Tottenham replaced Mauricio Pochettino with José Mourinho in November, five months after reaching the Champions League final, and finished sixth.
• Arsenal replaced Unai Emery with Mikel Arteta in December and finished eighth, but won the FA Cup and with it a Europa League place.

Sheffield United were the surprise of the promoted clubs. They finished ninth, and only Liverpool, City and United conceded fewer goals.

The relegation fight

All three relegated clubs had come up together in 2015:

• Norwich City finished bottom with 21 points. They were relegated on 11 July after a 4-0 home defeat by West Ham, in which Michail Antonio scored all four goals.
• Watford went through four managers. Javi Gracia was sacked in September, Quique Sánchez Flores in December and Nigel Pearson with two games left. They went down on the final day after losing 3-2 at Arsenal.
• Bournemouth won 3-1 at Everton on the final day but were relegated on 34 points, level with Watford.

Aston Villa survived by a single point. Their 1-1 draw at West Ham on the last day, after spending heavily on promotion, kept them up on 35.

Surprises and disappointments

Some players and clubs did far better than expected:

• Jamie Vardy won the Golden Boot with 23 goals, one ahead of Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang and Danny Ings.
• Danny Ings scored 22 for Southampton, the same Southampton side that lost 9-0 at home to Leicester in October and still finished 11th.
• Kevin De Bruyne made 20 assists, equalling Thierry Henry's Premier League record from 2002/03, and was named both PFA Players' Player of the Year and the Premier League's Player of the Season.
• Nick Pope was the players' choice in goal for the PFA Team of the Year as Burnley finished tenth.
• Sheffield United finished ninth in their first season back, level on points with Burnley and five off a European place.

Others had seasons to forget:

• Tottenham went from Champions League finalists to sixth place, and changed manager on the way.
• Arsenal finished eighth and changed manager in mid-season, though winning the FA Cup took them back into Europe.
• Norwich won five league games all season and finished 14 points from safety.
• Watford were bottom before Christmas and climbed out of the bottom three under Nigel Pearson, including a 3-0 win over Liverpool. They were still 17th with two games left, sacked Pearson, and lost both.

2019/20 in Fantasy Premier League

About 7.6 million managers played Fantasy Premier League in 2019/20, and the game paused along with the league. When football returned in June, the last nine rounds were squeezed into five and a half weeks. Joshua Bull, from England, won with his team #TheBullDozzers and 2,557 points. The result was confirmed later than usual, after the game's end-of-season checks.

Kevin De Bruyne was the top scorer with 251 points, helped by 23 FPL assists, and by the end of the season almost half of all managers owned him. Mohamed Salah (233), Sadio Mané (221), Jamie Vardy (210) and Trent Alexander-Arnold (210) followed. Alexander-Arnold was the game's top-scoring defender, and Nick Pope the top goalkeeper, with 170 points and 15 clean sheets for Burnley.

Two hauls stand out:

• Michail Antonio scored 26 points, the biggest single-gameweek score of the season, for his four goals at Norwich in July that relegated them.
• Trent Alexander-Arnold scored 24 on Boxing Day, with a goal and three assists in Liverpool's 4-0 win at Leicester.

The PFA Team of the Year

The champions supplied five of the XI, with two players each from Manchester City and Leicester. The team was announced on 8 September 2020, six weeks after the season finished.

The season's other awards:

2019/20 quick answers

Who won the Premier League in 2019/20? Liverpool, with 99 points, 18 ahead of Manchester City. It was their first league title since 1990.

When was the 2019/20 season suspended and restarted? It was suspended on 13 March 2020 because of Covid-19, restarted behind closed doors on 17 June and finished on 26 July.

When did Liverpool win the 2019/20 title? On 25 June 2020, when Chelsea beat Manchester City, with seven games to spare.

Who was relegated in 2019/20? Norwich City, Watford and Bournemouth.

Who was the Premier League top scorer in 2019/20? Jamie Vardy, with 23 goals.

Who was PFA Player of the Year in 2019/20? Kevin De Bruyne. Trent Alexander-Arnold was Young Player of the Year.

Who scored the most FPL points in 2019/20? Kevin De Bruyne, with 251.

Who won Fantasy Premier League in 2019/20? Joshua Bull, with 2,557 points.