Premier League Predictions: Gyokeres is the answer for Arsenal

Premier League Outright Odds

• Liverpool @ 15/8
• Arsenal @ 9/4
• Manchester City @ 3/1
• Chelsea @ 8/1
• Bar - 25/1

10th - Nottingham Forest

In 10th we have last season’s surprise package, Nottingham Forest. What a season Nuno Esprito Santo’s men had. As well as making an appearance in the FA Cup semi-final, the Reds looked destined for the Champions League for the first time in their history.

But a terrible run in form followed, winning just two of the remaining eight matches in the Premier League. Eventually finishing seventh in the Premier League, their best Premier League finish in 30 years.

Following Edu’s appointment as Global Head of Football, Forest brought the Samba to the East Midlands. Igor Jesus and Jair Cunha joined from Botafogo over the summer. Both players were instrumental in Botafogo’s first-ever Copa Libertadores victory. After signing from Shabab Al-Alhi halfway through the Brazilian season, Igor Jesus scored three goals and assisted two in the knockout stages to fire Botafogo to a historic title.

Back to the Premier League, we could see Nuno field both Chris Wood and Igor Jesus in a 4-4-2. Both players work extremely hard off the ball and provide a physical goal threat from crosses in the box.

Forest sold Anthony Elanga for £55 million over the summer and have replaced him with Dan Ndoye. The Swiss international scored eight goals and registered four assists for Bologna in Serie A last season and has similar traits to Elanga. Maybe not as quick as the former Man Utd winger, but has equal ability when it comes to progressively carrying the ball into the final third.

Ndoye will be the one leading the charge on the break for Nuno this season. I expect a slight drop off in league position for Forest as they are competing in the Europa League for the first time in their history. Thursday - Sunday is a gruelling schedule and will give Nuno last time for his tactical periodisation and thus Forest won’t be as competitive as last season.

9th - Newcastle United

Dean Huijsen. Liam Delap. Joao Pedro. Matheus Cunha. Bryan Mbeumo. Benjamin Sesko. James Trafford. Hugo Ekitike. Newcastle United’s talent ID cannot be faulted, but the disastrous decision to sack their Director of Football just before the window began has bitten them badly and has made them the laughing stock of the summer.

Without significantly strengthening their squad and with Alexander Isak’s future a major question mark, Newcastle will struggle massively with the league and Champions League balance. The last time the Magpies got into Europe’s premier competition, injuries caught up around November time and their league form fell off a cliff. The same issues will reemerge here.

They have a stong first eleven, but no depth to the squad and at the time of recording no number nine.

8th - Brighton

In 2025 only Man City, Liverpool, Arsenal, Villa and Newcastle have picked up more points than Fabian Hurzeler’s side and I expect a solid campaign once again.

Pervis Estupinain and Joao Pedro have gone and been replaced by Maxim De Cuyper and Charalampos Kostoulas. Kostoulas is definitely one for the future; he was part of the Olympiacos side that shocked European football winning the Uefa Youth League in 2024.

In the tournament, he scored five goals and registered two assists in eight games. De Cuyper on the other hand is ready for first team action. In the last three seasons, he has been directly involved in 29 goals from left back in Belgian’s top flight.

There’s usually one Brighton player that makes a huge jump during the season and the prime candidates this year are Yankuba Minteh and Brajan Gruda. Minteh has it all to be a world class attacker; explosive pace, agility, close quality and finishing in the box. But he is also intense, he ranked in the top 5% of wingers in Europe’s top five leagues last season for tackles won per 90. The full package.

Gruda on the other hand is more of a classic winger who loves to directly take on his man with wing play and get crosses into the box. Per 90, Gruda ranked in the top 1% of wingers in Europe for assists.

With a full year of Premier League management under the gaffer’s belt, some interesting additions to the squad and a couple of players who look ready to really kick on, I expect another eighth-place finish for Brighton.

7th - Tottenham Hotspur

Frank is a massive upgrade on Ange Postecoglou in terms of the defensive side of the game. Spurs conceded 65 goals last season - only Wolves, Leicester, Ipswich and Southampton shipped more. That was a major problem for Spurs’ consistency. They were poor at the back and they struggled to adapt to Postecoglou’s style.

That bodes well for Thomas Frank in many ways as he’s the polar opposite of the Aussie coach. Frank’s sides are pragmatic, well-organised in defence, have adaptive pressing structures and are excellent from set pieces. Spurs should be able to again punch above their weight class under the former Brentford boss.

The departure of club legend Son Heung-min is sad to see but makes perfect sense on a footballing level. Son’s legs were probably done for Premier League football and the fact that he has been replaced by the enigmatic Mohammed Kudus is interesting. Kudus is a similar style of forward to Mbeumo - a tricky winger with an eye for cutting in from the right wing onto their stronger left foot to shoot.

But what Kudus hasn’t developed yet is consistency. His first season at West Ham, he was directly involved in 14 Premier League goals, last season he managed only eight. Frank has a track record of improving forwards and Kudus is the next project.

We are also likely to see the best of Dominic Solanke who played his best football in the Premier League under a similar pressing coach in Iraola. Solanke scored 19 goals in his only season under Iraola which led to his move to Spurs. Bournemouth played far more direct to Solanke than Spurs under Postecoglu. This is likely to change under Frank who does mind a direct pass into a striker, just ask Ivan Toney. So I expect Solanke to score closer to 20 goals than his nine of last season.

Spurs’ improvement defensively combined with the improvements of key attackers will see them massively improve on their 17th place finish of last season. But as I mentioned before, that's what Thomas Frank’s sides do… over perform.

6th - Manchester United

Another side that I think will massively improve on their place last season is Manchester United. Ruben Amorim’s side scored just 44 goals in the Premier League last term, that was far and away their biggest problem. Everton were the only sides to score fewer and stay in the division.

Man Utd’s response in the market has been remarkable - they’ve brought in Mbeumo, Cunha and Sesko as an entirely new front three. Those players managed 48 goals between them in league competition last term and there’s huge reasons to be optimistic about each of those signings.

Sesko has been the top scoring U23 across Europe’s top five leagues over the last two years, Mbeumo scored 20 Premier League goals - something no Man Utd player has done in the post-Fergie years - and Matheus Cunha was the most effective one-man attack in the division.

The club have been linked with PSG stopper Gianluigi Donnarumma and Brighton midfielder Carlos Baleba in recent weeks. Those players could be top additions but the fact that those are the areas that the club are now targeting alone should excite Man Utd fans. That tells me that the football staff are satisfied with the club’s attack - which was the main issue going into the summer.

5th - Aston Villa

I haven’t seen too much love for Aston Villa ahead of this season but I think they’re in for another outstanding year. They have one of the best managers in the Premier League by any measure in Unai Emery and have one of the more settled squads and managerial set-ups of the top sides.

Keeping Ollie Watkins is absolutely massive. The striker is unbelievably productive in terms of goals and assists and has that top-end quality that carries teams into these sorts of league spots. Over the last two seasons, Mohamed Salah is the only player with more assists than the England international whilst only Erling Haaland and Salah can better his goal output since joining the league.

He’ll benefit from the addition of Evann Guessand too. Guessand carries the ball into the final third and creates shots via dribbles on a level that only the very best players on the planet can compete with - he’ll be able to supply Watkins directly and will be able to cause plenty of problems of his own to give his teammates that extra bit of space.

They’re going under the radar a little but I think Aston Villa will have a top season.

4th - Chelsea

The Club World Cup winners were always going to start getting it right eventually, weren’t they? The London club have spent an absolute fortune over the past few seasons and that has continued into this summer. It does feel that they’re getting much better though and that their hit/miss ratio will be much improved this summer.

Joao Pedro is a player I really like. He’s a really well-rounded attacker who is able to play across the frontline and in a bunch of different roles - he’s as capable of hanging back and playmaking as he is getting on the end of crosses. He’s a much safer bet than most of the attackers Chelsea have signed of late. Delap’s role in the squad is a little murkier but I think he’ll end up having a good career at Chelsea - it’s easy to forget how young he is.

Enzo Maresca is a really interesting coach and the only thing you could really hold against him going into last season was his lack of experience in the Premier League and his trophy cabinet. Well, he’s now guided Chelsea to a trophy - beating the best team on the planet in the final - and has a season’s experience in this league to call upon.

Great (if very expensive) squad, great manager, full of confidence… Chelsea are in for their best league campaign for quite some time.

3rd - Manchester City

It’s fascinating to see what Pep Guardiola is building here. Ait-Nouri, Rayan Cherki and Sverre Nypan are all absolute elite technicians but are fairly un-Pep in other aspects of their game. Tijjani Reijnders is the kind of player you’d typically expect to see playing for City and will slot in as a capable Rodri deputy and somebody who could compliment the Spaniard well.

How adding these very different styles of player into the mix at the Etihad will pan out is difficult to predict. It could be that we see a move marco move towards players with elite ball control, carrying and disguised passing and physical output becomes less important to the top teams once again. Or, it could be the opposite and that this new crop of City players just aren’t able to cut it at the top level.

I think we’ll land somewhere in the middle. These could well be the building blocks for the next truly dominant Manchester City team but I think the club will need a little time to adjust. Man City have Haaland up front and Rodri in midfield and whilst that remains the reality I cannot see them ever dropping out of the top four.

This will be something of a transitional season though - I don’t see them in the top two.

2nd - Liverpool

The Premier League title favourites will finish second. It’s a bold call and I’ve very few issues with Liverpool going into this season. Florian Wirtz is an unbelievable signing and has every chance of being the best footballer on the planet at some point in his career. At the time of writing it looks unlikely that Isak will end up at Anfield but they’ve improved on Darwin Nunez with the addition of Huge Ekitike.

The headline numbers with this young man are good but the underlying stats are truly special. In the Bundesliga last season, he averaged 0.91 expected goals and expected assists - that’s enough to put him in the top 1% of footballers in Europe. In basic terms, it means we can expect him to score or assist a goal almost every week.

I also like the additions of Jeremie Frimpong and Milos Kerkez. So, we’re adding a brilliant crop of signings into the best team in the league last season… why won’t they win it again?

Firstly, I think people are underestimating the impact that Trent Alexander-Arnold had on this Liverpool side. People always talk about his great assist numbers, but TAA was absolutely key to the way that Liverpool played in recent years with his penetrative passing from deep.

Admittedly, the majority of that came under Jurgen Klopp but it’s still been a fundamental part of Liverpool’s style for many years and it may take a little bit of time for Arne Slot to rewire those build-up structures from scratch.

He made some tweaks last year but the genius move he made was to be fairly hands-off and allow ‘Klopp’s Liverpool’ to play their stuff in a season where the usual best side in the league, Man City, had an off year. This time around, he has a major tactical switch to oversee.

The head coach also has much less experience than the man who I think is going to manage his side to the league title.

1st - Arsenal

Mikel Arteta’s Arsenal will win the Premier League.

Since the Spaniard arrived back in North London at the end of 2019, he has been steadily building an elite team. Even his biggest doubters would have to concede that Arsenal are now firmly in the top bracket of clubs in Europe.

The biggest criticism that Arteta gets is that he hasn’t picked up more silverware as a manager. It’s a fair point, but I believe that he has been prioritising building a side that can sustainably challenge for major honours for many years by recruiting elite young players rather than going for quick short-term wins.

I think he can get that monkey off his back this year and land the title.

For a few years now, Arsenal have been elite defensively. They had the best defensive record in the league once again last season by both actual and expected goals conceded. They were the only side in the Premier League to concede less than one goal per game on average. What let them down was the lack of firepower, with the 69 goals they scored bettered by both Manchester City and Liverpool.

Adding the top goalscorer from across Europe’s top six leagues last season should help them to correct that. Viktor Gyokeres can fire Arsenal to the title. He scored a ridiculous 39 goals in the league alone last season as well as bagging six in six starts in the Champions League, including a hat-trick against Manchester City. That’s worth remembering when people tell you he “can’t do it against the big clubs.”

Gyokeres was the most complete, in-form and appropriate striker on the market and Arsenal have gone and landed him. Martin Zubemendi will give the Gunners that extra little bit of control in some of the big games. Noni Madueke injects a bit of directness and burst into their attacking options. Cristhian Mosquera is the kind of elite ball-playing defender that Mikel Arteta adores and Christian Norgaard is a reliable all-rounded at Premier League level.

The big one, though, is Gyokeres. They’re adding the top scoring striker in Europe into the best defense in the league; it’s a pretty simple acquisition as far as I’m concerned. Liverpool are a live threat to this bet - of course they are- but the value this year is on Arteta’s Arsenal to win the Premier League.