We’re nearing the midway level of the 2025-26 Premier League season, and the desk stays remarkably shut from prime to backside.
Simply three factors separate Arsenal, Man Metropolis and Aston Villa on the prime, whereas simply 10 factors separate Liverpool in fourth from Bournemouth in fifteenth.
Matchday 18 of the season occurred from Friday, Dec. 26, to Sunday, Dec. 28. This is a rundown of the highest tales that developed throughout the league.
Aston Villa chased an astonishing document…
The start of the 2025-26 season was exhausting on loads of groups, but it surely was particularly exhausting on Birmingham’s Aston Villa. The membership failed to attain in its opening 4 matches and did not choose up its first win till Matchday 6.
“We have been in a foul second,” said Villa coach Unai Emery, “however we would have liked to be resilient and wait to get our greatest second.”
That “finest” second has nicely and actually arrived. Villa’s hard-fought 2-1 win over Chelsea capped off a exceptional turnaround for the membership: it is now received 11 straight matches in all competitions, sufficient to tie an all-time membership document set method again when in 1897. If Villa beats Arsenal on Tuesday, Dec. 30 — one thing it is completely able to doing — it is going to slingshot itself into the title race and change into the winningest aspect in 151 years of membership historical past.
The kicker? Lots of Villa’s most impactful gamers are long-tenured workhorses, not costly new signings. Lots of them have been round throughout Villa’s current nadir beneath Steven Gerrard in 2022. Emery began three gamers on this Chelsea win — goalkeeper Emi Martinez, defender Ezri Konsa and midfielder John McGinn — who additionally began in Gerrard’s dismal ultimate recreation in control of the membership.
That is resiliency proper there. And it is proof of simply how necessary teaching is on the highest degree of the sport. Beneath Gerrard, Martinez, Konsa and McGinn have been floundering; beneath Emery, they’re on monitor to make historical past for all the proper causes. Chelsea 1-2 Aston Villa
