On first inspection, change seems to be the order of the day for the 2026-27 Premier League. When the new season begins this weekend, there will be nine new managers populating the dugouts of England's top flight. The absence of Pep Guardiola alone ought to significantly change the timbre of the league.
When four of the other members of the 'big six' either have new managers or one whose future was only decided in the final weeks of last season, this ought to be the start of a new era. And yet while the faces might change, will the storylines? Start at the bottom and you see a familiarly doom-laden picture.
Coventry City, Ipswich Town and Hull City have come up; the widespread expectation is that they will go straight back down. Few would be surprised if at least two of West Ham United, Wolverhampton Wanderers and Burnley took their place. Bridging the gap between the Championship and Premier League requires a confluence of pretty unlikely events.
Either one of the best teams to come up from the second tier spends its money shrewdly as in Leeds United's case or a more ordinary playoff team leaps up, invests incredibly shrewdly and gets the fortunate bounces of Sunderland, a minus six goal difference and a minus 16.9 non-penalty expected goals difference. Above them, the Premier League's middle ground still contains an awful lot of the top 20 or 30 teams in Europe. That is why Brighton and Hove Albion will surely rank among the favorites to win the Conference League, why Sunderland might be placed on a comparable level to Bayer Leverkusen and AC Milan even as they profile as battling against the drop.
Fifteen of the top 40 teams in the world by Club ELO rating come from the Premier League. According to Opta's power rankings, it is 18, and 41st-placed Ipswich sandwiched between RB Leipzig and Milan. There is vanishingly little between a lot of those teams, making some of the most contentious picks in this exercise those between around sixth and 15th.
There is a growing proportion of this division who can attest that it does not take a lot to go wrong before they are staring nervously over their shoulders, just as a good run in the right year might have their fans dusting off their passports. For all the strength in depth, though, it does not seem any likelier that the thrusting middle classes will be able to smash the glass ceiling. Aston Villa are back in the Champions League but they and Newcastle still find themselves carrion for their wealthier contemporaries.
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