2022/23 Premier League season review

Manchester City won the 2022/23 Premier League with 89 points, five clear of Arsenal, for their third title in a row. Arsenal spent 248 days on top, the longest spell by any team that did not go on to win the English title, before City overhauled them in the spring and went on to win the treble.

Erling Haaland scored 36 league goals in his first season, a Premier League record. In Fantasy Premier League he was also the top scorer, with 272 points, and Ali Jahangirov won the game with 2,776.

You can replay the season here with a £100m squad picked from 360 players across all 20 clubs, or read on for how it unfolded.

A record summer and a winter World Cup

Premier League clubs spent more than £2.1bn in the summer of 2022, a record for the window, and all of the big six spent over £100m. The headline arrivals:

• Manchester City signed Erling Haaland from Borussia Dortmund for £51m.
• Liverpool paid £85m for Darwin Núñez.
• Manchester United bought Antony from Ajax for £87m and Casemiro from Real Madrid for £70m.
• Chelsea, under new owners led by Todd Boehly, spent a combined £172m on Kalidou Koulibaly, Marc Cucurella and Wesley Fofana.
• Arsenal signed Gabriel Jesus from City for £45m, and Tottenham paid £60m for Richarlison.
• Nottingham Forest, newly promoted, made 21 signings, a Premier League record.

Forest came up with Fulham and Bournemouth, and all three stayed up, the first time that had happened since 2017/18.

The season itself was broken up twice. After the death of Queen Elizabeth II in September, the matches due on 10 to 12 September were postponed, and three more were called off the following weekend because of policing for the state funeral. Then the league stopped after 12 and 13 November for the World Cup in Qatar and did not restart until Boxing Day.

How Arsenal led and City caught them

Arsenal were the story of the first two thirds of the season. Mikel Arteta's side spent 248 days on top of the table and at one stage led Manchester City by eight points. City went top briefly in mid-February, but Arsenal moved straight back ahead.

The lead slipped away in April. William Saliba, a regular in the back four, was injured in March, and Arsenal's defence was never as secure without him:

1. 9 April: a 2-2 draw at Liverpool, after Arsenal had led 2-0.
2. 16 April: another 2-2 at West Ham, again from 2-0 up, with Bukayo Saka missing a penalty at 2-1.
3. 21 April: 3-3 at home to Southampton, who were bottom of the table.
4. 26 April: a 4-1 defeat at the Etihad, which handed City control of the race.

Defeats to Brighton and Nottingham Forest finished it. Forest's 1-0 win over Arsenal on 20 May confirmed City as champions with three games to spare, their third title in a row and seventh in the Premier League era. Arsenal finished second on 84 points.

City's title rested on Erling Haaland. He scored 36 league goals in his first season, breaking the Premier League record for a single season, and the team won 12 league games in a row, the longest run of the season. They finished with 94 goals scored and 33 conceded.

Then came the cups. On 3 June City beat Manchester United 2-1 in the FA Cup final, with İlkay Gündoğan scoring after 12 seconds, the fastest goal in an FA Cup final. A week later, on 10 June in Istanbul, Rodri's goal beat Inter 1-0 in the Champions League final and completed the treble. Haaland was named Player of the Season by the Premier League, the PFA and the football writers, and Pep Guardiola was Manager of the Season.

Newcastle's return and the race for Europe

Behind the top two, the European places went to some unfamiliar names:

• Manchester United finished third on 75 points and won the League Cup.
• Newcastle United finished fourth on 71 points and reached the Champions League for the first time in 20 years. Their 17-match unbeaten run was the longest of the season, and they conceded only 33 goals, as few as the champions.
• Liverpool were fifth on 67 points and dropped into the Europa League. Their season included a 9-0 win over Bournemouth in August and a 7-0 win over Manchester United in March.
• Brighton finished sixth and qualified for Europe for the first time in their history. Graham Potter left for Chelsea in September, and Roberto De Zerbi took over on 18 September.
• Aston Villa were seventh under Unai Emery, appointed on 1 November after Steven Gerrard left, and earned a Conference League place.
• Tottenham finished eighth despite 30 league goals from Harry Kane. Antonio Conte left by mutual consent on 26 March, his interim replacement Cristian Stellini was dismissed a month later, and Ryan Mason saw out the season.

West Ham finished 14th but won the Europa Conference League, which took them into the Europa League.

It was a season of upheaval in the dugouts. A record 14 managers were sacked, and Chelsea, Leeds and Southampton each used three or more managers.

The relegation fight

Two of the three relegated clubs went down on the final day:

• Southampton finished bottom with 25 points. They went through three managers, with Ralph Hasenhüttl sacked in November, and were relegated first, after a 2-0 home defeat by Fulham on 13 May.
• Leeds United finished 19th. Jesse Marsch left in February and Javi Gracia in May, and Sam Allardyce's late rescue attempt ended with a 4-1 home defeat by Tottenham on the last day.
• Leicester City, champions seven years earlier, beat West Ham 2-1 on the final day but still went down in 18th, because Everton beat Bournemouth 1-0. Brendan Rodgers had left in April, and Dean Smith could not save them.

Everton's win kept them up in 17th and extended their unbroken run in the top flight to 70 years.

Surprises and disappointments

All three promoted clubs stayed up, and several other clubs beat expectations:

• Fulham finished tenth in their first season back.
• Bournemouth, widely tipped to go down, lost 9-0 at Liverpool in August and sacked Scott Parker three days later. Gary O'Neil, first as interim and then permanent, took them to 15th.
• Nottingham Forest survived in 16th after a late run of home wins over Brighton, Southampton and Arsenal.
• Brentford finished ninth, and Ivan Toney scored 20 league goals. His season ended early: on 17 May he was banned for eight months after admitting 232 breaches of the FA's betting rules.

The biggest disappointment was Chelsea. The new owners spent more than £600m on players, sacked Thomas Tuchel in September and Graham Potter in April, and brought back Frank Lampard as interim manager. Chelsea finished 12th with 44 points, their lowest total in the Premier League.

The joint highest-scoring game of the season was the Manchester derby on 2 October, when City beat United 6-3 and both Haaland and Phil Foden scored hat-tricks.

2022/23 in Fantasy Premier League

About 11.45 million managers had entered Fantasy Premier League by the end of 2022/23. The winner was Ali Jahangirov, from Azerbaijan, whose team FPL Gunz finished on 2,776 points, five ahead of second place.

The final day nearly went the other way. Jahangirov captained Mohamed Salah, who scored only five points, while the managers in second and third both captained Harry Kane, whose 16 points were the highest haul of the gameweek. The runner-up also had Ethan Pinnock's 15-point haul sitting unused on his bench.

Erling Haaland was the game's top scorer with 272 points, and by the end of the season 78.4% of managers owned him. Kane (263), Salah (239), Martin Ødegaard (212) and Marcus Rashford (205) followed.

A few other numbers stand out:

• Kieran Trippier was the top-scoring defender with 198 points, and nearly two thirds of managers owned him by May.
• David Raya was the top-scoring goalkeeper, with 166 points from Brentford's goal, where he made more saves than anyone else in the game.
• The biggest single-gameweek score was Haaland's 23 points in the 6-3 derby win, from three goals and two assists.

The PFA Team of the Year

The top two dominated the players' own Team of the Year, with five Manchester City players and four from Arsenal.

The season's other awards:

2022/23 quick answers

Who won the Premier League in 2022/23? Manchester City, with 89 points, five ahead of Arsenal. They also won the FA Cup and the Champions League.

Who was relegated in 2022/23? Leicester City, Leeds United and Southampton.

Who was the Premier League top scorer in 2022/23? Erling Haaland, with 36 league goals, a Premier League record for one season.

Who was PFA Player of the Year in 2022/23? Erling Haaland. Bukayo Saka was Young Player of the Year.

Why was there a break in the middle of 2022/23? The league stopped after 13 November for the World Cup in Qatar and restarted on 26 December.

Who scored the most FPL points in 2022/23? Erling Haaland, with 272.

Who won Fantasy Premier League in 2022/23? Ali Jahangirov, with 2,776 points.