Twelve months ago, Liverpool stood as Premier League champions while Manchester United endured their worst top-flight campaign in modern history. The 2025-26 season reversed that picture entirely.
A statistical comparison of points tallies between the two seasons reveals a 53-point swing between English football’s two most decorated clubs, a shift with few modern parallels.
Liverpool recorded a points swing of minus 24 from last season to this one, among the worst declines of any club in the Premier League during the current campaign.
Manchester United posted a swing of plus 29, the best of any side in the division, completing a turnaround that would have seemed far-fetched just over a year ago.
Last season, Liverpool won the title with 84 points, and Mohamed Salah finished as the league’s top scorer, with Arne Slot’s side standing as the dominant story of the campaign.
This season, Liverpool stumbled to the finish line, accumulating just 60 points and securing fifth place, squeezing into Champions League football on goal difference during the final weeks of the season.
Manchester United’s journey traced the opposite path, climbing from 15th place with 42 points in 2024-25 to third place with 71 points this term, securing Champions League football with games to spare.
Their 2024-25 finish represented their lowest league position since 1989-90 and their worst points total since the three-points-for-a-win era began, with many supporters fearing further decline heading into this season.
The single biggest catalyst for United’s transformation was the appointment of Michael Carrick on January 13, brought in as a permanent replacement for the sacked Ruben Amorim.
Carrick won 11 of his 16 league matches in charge, accumulating more points than any other manager during that same spell, with victories over Arsenal, Manchester City, Liverpool and Chelsea among his results.
United rewarded Carrick with a permanent two-year contract following his impact across the second half of the season, recognising the scale of the turnaround he produced at Old Trafford.
Liverpool’s decline is harder to attribute to a single cause, with the squad that dominated the division last season underperforming significantly despite the club spending half a billion pounds in the summer transfer window.
The departures of Mohamed Salah and Andy Robertson will now mark the beginning of a substantial transition period at Anfield, the club navigating the exit of two long-serving figures simultaneously.
Whether Arne Slot retains his position heading into next season remains unclear, but the drop from title winners to fifth place in 12 months demands a significant response from the club’s leadership.
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