One year ago, Liverpool were Premier League champions. Manchester United had just endured their worst top-flight season in modern history.
Twelve months on, the table tells a story that would have seemed utterly unthinkable back then.
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Liverpool and Man United’s stunning role reversal
The graphic tells you everything you need to know. Liverpool’s points swing of -24 from 2024-25 to 2025-26 is one of the worst of any club in the Premier League this season.
Manchester United’s swing of +29 is the best. Put them together and you have a 53-point gulf between the fortunes of English football’s two most decorated clubs, a reversal of fortune with very few parallels in the modern era of the sport.
? Premier League points swing from 2024/25 to 2025/26
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Last season, Liverpool won the title with 84 points. Mohamed Salah finished as the league’s top scorer.
Arne Slot’s side were the runaway story of the campaign. This season, they limped to the finish line with 60 points, finishing fifth and scraping into Champions League football only on goal difference in the final weeks.
Manchester United’s trajectory has gone in the exact opposite direction.
After finishing 15th with just 42 points in 2024-25, their lowest league position since 1989-90 and their worst points haul since the three-points-for-a-win system was introduced, they end this campaign in third place with 71 points, back in the Champions League.
How Carrick turned Man United around and how Liverpool fell apart
The single biggest catalyst for United’s transformation was the appointment of Michael Carrick on January 13.
Brought in to replace the sacked Ruben Amorim, the former United midfielder wasted no time.
He won 11 of his 16 league games in charge, more points than any other manager during that spell, beating Arsenal, Manchester City, Liverpool and Chelsea along the way.
United’s fans went from fearing relegation eighteen months ago to watching their club secure Champions League football with games to spare.
Carrick has since been rewarded with a permanent two-year contract.
Liverpool’s decline is harder to explain. The squad that steamrolled the division a year ago simply did not fire the same, despite spending half a billion pounds in the summer transfer market.
The departures of Mohamed Salah and Andy Robertson will now define a significant transition period at Anfield.
Whether Slot is sacked or not remains to be seen. But one thing is for certain, something needs to change at Liverpool FC and it needs to be done fast.
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