2021/22 Premier League season review

Manchester City won the 2021/22 Premier League with 93 points, one ahead of Liverpool, on a dramatic final day. Two goals down to Aston Villa with less than a quarter of an hour left, City scored three times to retain the title, their fourth in five seasons.

It was also the first season since 2018/19 played in full stadiums. Mohamed Salah and Son Heung-min shared the Golden Boot with 23 goals each. In Fantasy Premier League, Salah was the top scorer with 265 points, and Jamie Pigott won the game with a record 2,844 points from more than 9 million managers.

You can replay the season here with a £100m squad picked from 356 players across all 20 clubs, or read on for how it unfolded.

Crowds back and a £100m signing

The season ran from 13 August 2021 to 22 May 2022, and for the first time in two years grounds were full from the start. It opened with Brentford, in their first Premier League season, beating Arsenal 2-0 in west London. Norwich City and Watford came back up with them, both after a year away.

Manchester City started as champions and Chelsea as European champions. Over the summer:

• Manchester City paid Aston Villa £100m for Jack Grealish, a British record.
• Chelsea brought Romelu Lukaku back from Inter Milan for a club-record £98m.
• Manchester United signed Jadon Sancho and Raphaël Varane, then brought Cristiano Ronaldo back to Old Trafford.
• Arsenal paid Brighton £50m for Ben White.
• Tottenham kept Harry Kane, who had tried to force a move to City.

There were new managers too. Nuno Espírito Santo moved from Wolves to Tottenham, Rafael Benítez replaced Carlo Ancelotti at Everton, and Patrick Vieira took over at Crystal Palace.

City, Liverpool and a 93-92 finish

For the first three months, Liverpool, Manchester City and Chelsea were hard to separate, and by early December only two points covered them. Chelsea led for a while, until a defeat at West Ham gave City the edge.

City then won 12 league games in a row and were 13 points clear in January, although Liverpool had two games in hand. Liverpool answered with ten straight wins of their own, including both games in hand, and by the time the two met at the Etihad on 10 April the gap was a single point. The match finished 2-2, and the lead stayed with City.

Going into the final day, 22 May, City needed to match Liverpool's result. Liverpool came from a goal down to beat Wolves 3-1. At the Etihad, Aston Villa, managed by the former Liverpool captain Steven Gerrard, led 2-0 through Matty Cash and Philippe Coutinho.

Then City scored three times in under six minutes. İlkay Gündoğan, on as a substitute, headed in Raheem Sterling's cross. Rodri equalised from outside the box, and Gündoğan turned in Kevin De Bruyne's cross to win it 3-2.

City finished on 93 points with 29 wins, for their sixth Premier League title and their fourth in five seasons. De Bruyne was named the Premier League's Player of the Season and Phil Foden its Young Player of the Season.

Liverpool's season of near misses

Liverpool finished second on 92 points and lost only two league games. They won both domestic cups on penalties after 0-0 draws, beating Chelsea in the FA Cup final. Until the final week they were still chasing all four trophies, but six days after the league finished they lost the Champions League final to Real Madrid in Paris.

Mohamed Salah was named PFA Players' Player of the Year and the Football Writers' Footballer of the Year, and Jürgen Klopp was Manager of the Season.

Takeovers, sanctions and the race for fourth

Two stories off the pitch shaped the season:

• Newcastle were taken over on 7 October, when Saudi Arabia's Public Investment Fund bought an 80% stake for £300m, ending Mike Ashley's 14 years as owner. Other clubs objected to the deal. Eddie Howe replaced Steve Bruce in November, and a run of 12 wins in their last 18 games took Newcastle from the relegation places to 11th.
• Chelsea's owner, Roman Abramovich, announced on 2 March that he would sell the club and give the proceeds to victims of the war in Ukraine. On 10 March the UK government froze his assets, and Chelsea were barred from selling tickets or signing players while a sale went through. Thomas Tuchel's side still finished third on 74 points.

The race for fourth went to the final week. Arsenal held the place with three games left, then lost 3-0 at Tottenham and 2-0 at Newcastle. Tottenham, who had replaced Nuno with Antonio Conte in November, beat Norwich 5-0 on the final day to finish fourth, two points ahead of Arsenal.

Manchester United finished sixth with 58 points, their lowest total of the Premier League era. Ole Gunnar Solskjær was sacked in November after a 4-1 defeat at Watford, and Ralf Rangnick was appointed interim manager in December. West Ham took the last European place in seventh.

The relegation fight

Two of the three relegation places were settled early, and the last went to the final afternoon:

• Norwich City finished bottom with 22 points and were relegated on 30 April with four games left.
• Watford went through three managers, Xisco Muñoz, Claudio Ranieri and Roy Hodgson, and went down a week after Norwich, with 23 points.
• Burnley went into the final day level on points with Leeds but behind on goal difference. They lost 2-1 at home to Newcastle, ending six seasons in the Premier League. Sean Dyche had left in April.

Leeds stayed up when Jack Harrison scored in added time to win 2-1 at Brentford. Everton, under Frank Lampard since January, made sure of safety in their last home game by beating Crystal Palace 3-2. Dominic Calvert-Lewin scored the winner in the 85th minute, and fans ran on to the pitch at the end.

Surprises and disappointments

Some clubs and players did far better than expected:

• Brentford finished 13th in their first Premier League season and won seven of their last 11 games. Christian Eriksen joined in January and made his debut against Newcastle on 26 February, his first competitive match since his cardiac arrest at Euro 2020 the previous summer.
• Brighton finished ninth with 51 points, the best top-flight season in the club's history.
• Son Heung-min scored 23 league goals to share the Golden Boot, two of them in the 5-0 win at Norwich on the final day that took Tottenham into the top four.
• Cristiano Ronaldo scored 18 league goals in his first season back at Manchester United.

Several scorelines stood out: Chelsea 7-0 Norwich in October, Manchester City 7-0 Leeds in December, Southampton 0-6 Chelsea in April, and a nine-goal Boxing Day match, Manchester City 6-3 Leicester.

Others had seasons to forget:

• Manchester United went from Solskjær to a caretaker, Michael Carrick, and then an interim manager, and finished with their lowest points total of the Premier League era.
• Everton sacked Rafael Benítez in January and finished 16th, only four points above the drop.
• Leeds conceded 79 goals, sacked Marcelo Bielsa in February and survived only in added time on the final day.
• Arsenal missed out on the Champions League for a sixth straight season, despite holding fourth place with three games left.

2021/22 in Fantasy Premier League

About 9.2 million managers played Fantasy Premier League in 2021/22. Jamie Pigott, from the United States, won with his team Futbol is Life and 2,844 points, edging India's Suvansh Singh. It was the highest total any FPL winner had scored, helped by a season with an unusually large number of double gameweeks.

Mohamed Salah was the top scorer with 265 points, and Son Heung-min, listed as a midfielder, was close behind on 258. Trent Alexander-Arnold (208) and João Cancelo (201) were the top-scoring defenders, and Cancelo finished as the most owned player, in 41.4% of teams. Alisson was the top goalkeeper with 176 points and 20 clean sheets.

A few other numbers from the season:

• Jarrod Bowen of West Ham made 17 FPL assists, more than anyone else in the game.
• The biggest single-gameweek score was 24 points, reached four times: by Mason Mount and Salah in the same October gameweek, by Gabriel Jesus for four goals against Watford, and by Kevin De Bruyne for four goals at Wolves.
• The fixture list was badly broken up by postponements, starting with the Covid outbreaks in December. Gameweeks 18 and 30 had only four matches each, while Gameweek 36 had sixteen.

The PFA Team of the Year

The runners-up supplied six of the XI and the champions three, with Antonio Rüdiger and Cristiano Ronaldo completing the team.

Son Heung-min was left out despite sharing the Golden Boot.

The season's other awards:

2021/22 quick answers

Who won the Premier League in 2021/22? Manchester City, with 93 points, one ahead of Liverpool.

What happened on the final day of 2021/22? City were 2-0 down at home to Aston Villa, then scored three goals in under six minutes to win 3-2 and retain the title.

Who was relegated in 2021/22? Norwich City, Watford and Burnley.

Who was the Premier League top scorer in 2021/22? Mohamed Salah and Son Heung-min shared the Golden Boot with 23 goals each.

Who was PFA Player of the Year in 2021/22? Mohamed Salah. Phil Foden was Young Player of the Year.

Who scored the most FPL points in 2021/22? Mohamed Salah, with 265.

Who won Fantasy Premier League in 2021/22? Jamie Pigott, with 2,844 points.