Football fans, pundits and media outlets love to make predictions at the start of the season for what will happen during the campaign ahead. Many will offer tips for who might win the league, complete the top four, win the cups and get relegated. But the very bold will attempt to predict the exact order of the Premier League table, from one to 20.
Those who attempted that in 2024/25 will have done very well indeed to get more than a few teams in the right place. Arsenal for second – again – and Southampton, promoted via the play-offs, to finish rock bottom would have been popular picks. However, all in all, it was a strange year in the top flight of English football.
It was a campaign in which Manchester City failed to win silverware but three other clubs saw trophy droughts of varying durations end. Newcastle United claimed the League Cup, their first major trophy in 70 years. Palace did even better by claiming the FA Cup to claim their first big piece of silverware full stop. And then we had Spurs, who won their first trophy in 17 years by sneaking past Manchester United in the Europa League final.
It was a very fine year for London’s many football clubs in terms of adding to the trophy cabinets. Arsenal won the Second-three-years-in-a-row Trophy and Chelsea won the Europa Cup of Jokers. OK, we’re being harsh but the west London outfit did claim the Europa Conference League. Whilst they will hope not to play in the competition again any time soon, it remains a piece of UEFA-sanctioned silverware and not to be sniffed at.
But which London club had the best season? A recent survey by the paid-for football publication The Athletic revealed the satisfaction felt by fans of each of the teams to play in the 2024/25 Premier League season. It offered supporters the chance to rate their club’s campaigns on a four-point scale covering very satisfied, satisfied, dissatisfied and very dissatisfied.
There are different ways of looking at the results but we’d be interested to speak to the 10.5% of Saints fans who were very happy with their 12-point haul and failure in the cups. Equally, what exactly were the 0.5% of Liverpool fans who were either dissatisfied or very dissatisfied hoping for?
Leaving aside the many maniacs that walk among us, of the seven London clubs in the Premier League, West Ham fans were the most unhappy. And by a long way. Over 70% of Hammers fans were very dissatisfied with the latest campaign, a number only “bettered” by fans of Southampton, Leicester and, most unhappy of the lot, Man United (88.3%).
West Ham finished down in 14th place, five places worse than last season, with nine points fewer. So we can safely rule the Hammers out of this debate, but what about the other six London clubs?
What Is Best?
There is no right or wrong answer to this question and getting people to agree on what the question means, let alone what the answer is, is probably impossible. The survey mentioned above is based on fan sentiment, which almost by definition includes a significant degree of subjectivity. It also brings in a great deal of relativism, because fan satisfaction is always going to be based on expectations: how did the team get on compared to how fans thought they would.
There is also the matter of how you rank performance across the different competitions. We are not looking solely at the Premier League here, so how much importance is afforded to winning a cup versus a high finish in the league, and how the different cup competitions are weighted will affect the answer.
Spurs, The Kings of London
Controversially, we expect, we are going to declare Spurs, the kings of London. We believe in absolute terms that Tottenham had the best season of the seven sides from the capital. Almost 53% of Spurs fans ranked the last campaign as very satisfactory, so there is broad agreement from within the club.
In some regards that is an incredible stat given they finished 17th, just one place above the relegation zone. They may have been fully 13 points clear of the bottom three, with more points than 20th-placed Southampton and 18th-placed Leicester combined, but even so, it was their worst league finish since 1977.
Arsenal fans will throw scorn on this notion, pointing to the yawning chasm of 36 points between the north London rivals, with the Gunners earning almost twice as many as Tottenham. But just 5% of Arsenal fans were very satisfied with the season, whilst 41% were unhappy with things – compared to just 9% of their rivals’ followers.
But as said, our focus here is more on an absolute, objective assessment of things. So ask yourself this: would you rather your side, whoever they may be and whatever your pre-season hopes and dreams were, finish second and win nothing, or come in 17th but win a big European trophy?
Both clubs have qualified for the Champions League next season, with all the riches and player-pulling power that brings. Arsenal may, at least in theory, have a better platform for 2025/26, but that is hypothetical and in the future. CL qualification is a prize here and now, in its own right, so that, plus the Europa League, mean that of all the London clubs, Spurs had the best season.
Palace a Worthy Second
That Arsenal finished second in the Premier League and made the semi finals of the Champions League (and of the League Cup) means they had a reasonable campaign. Equally, Chelsea earned CL qualification by finishing fourth – their best top-flight position since 2021/22 – and of course won the Europa Conference League.
But we would have to say that Palace had the second-best campaign, thanks to their FA Cup win. It could be argued that Chelsea’s place in next term’s Champions League trumps Palace, who will be in the Europa League. But the Conference League, whilst not nothing, is a very minor prize, whilst the FA Cup is packed with history and remains, even now, a prestigious trophy to have in the cabinet. Bravo Palace!