Arsenal account for more than half of the seven worst Premier League runners-up ever based on points total, with Manchester United making an appearance.
Arsenal, 2024/25 – 72 points
Mikel Arteta knows better than anyone that “winning trophies is about being in the right moment in the right place,” and the points tally delivered in his fifth full campaign would not have been enough to secure the title in any Premier League season, moment or place.
Arsenal fell only three short of matching the record for most draws in a Premier League campaign and converting less than half of those into wins would have been enough to pip Liverpool. It is weird that they didn’t simply do that.
It is the next step and the hope is Viktor Gyokeres can help them take it, but Arsenal will need better luck with injuries and significant improvement away at sides in the top half to cross that championship threshold.
Manchester United, 2020/21 – 74 points
The previous time Manchester United lost a Europa League final they could at least console themselves with a second runners-up medal in the Premier League. There was also an overwhelming sense that a change of manager was needed at Old Trafford then because some things never change.
“No-one will remember how the league table looked like on the 12th of January in 2021,” was how Ole Gunnar Solskjaer grossly underestimated the recollective powers of a formerly good website. Manchester United were top, three points clear of Liverpool and a further four ahead of eventual champions Manchester City.
Leicester, Everton, Spurs and Southampton were in the top seven; it was a wild time.
But that was forever destined to be consigned to the realm of forgotten title challenges, an average second half of the season confirming the suspicion that this was not a team ready to break into the elite.
Cristiano Ronaldo was added to the ranks in a Manchester City-induced panic that summer and Solskjaer was sacked by November after they slipped to what do in 2025 seem the particularly heady heights of 7th.
Arsenal, 1999/2000 – 73 points
Until Pep Guardiola and Jurgen Klopp ruined everything by setting absurd bars for final totals, the distant record for biggest title-winning points margin stood at 18 for almost two decades.
When Manchester United were crowned as the first champions of the millennium in late April, their eventual bridesmaids were not even in place yet. Liverpool were their closest contenders, with Arsenal six points behind and armed with two games in hand.
The outlook was far bleaker for Arsene Wenger’s side at one stage. A 2-1 defeat to Middlesbrough in March left them fifth behind Leeds, Liverpool and Chelsea, nine points off second and what was the only other Champions League group stage qualification place, which was the style at the time.
A run of eight straight wins thereafter bumped them into second, but still laughably far off that Manchester United pace.
Arsenal, 2015/16 – 71 points
The miracle would not have been possible if just one of the traditional challengers had shown a modicum of competence. That is not to denigrate the ludicrous achievement of Leicester, but the inherent advantages boasted by the Big Six ordinarily prevent that glass ceiling from being broken.
It required The Mourinho Year, transitional periods for both Liverpool and Manchester City, and Louis van Gaal to be stumbling through his second and final Manchester United season.
That might have planted seeds and opened doors in north London but Arsenal remained painfully fragile and the opportunity came probably a year too soon for Spurs, who nevertheless put up the strongest resistance to Jamie Vardy and friends.
It was Mauricio Pochettino’s side who pushed them the furthest, yet St Totteringham had his say on the final day to relegate Spurs to third place in a two-horse race, their greatest Premier League season to that point still behind one of Arsenal’s worst in years.
Chelsea, 2010/11 – 71 points
‘This season’s performances have fallen short of expectations and the club feels the time is right to make this change ahead of next season’s preparations,’ read a line in the Chelsea statement which confirmed what Carlo Ancelotti had been informed in a corridor at Goodison Park within an hour of the campaign’s climax: the Italian had been sacked.
It was long held as proof of Roman Abramovich’s ruthlessness but it had been the worst season of his ownership by some distance. Chelsea had not dipped below 83 points since they had access to the Russian’s chequebook, and their only entirely trophyless campaign was the Avram Grant near-Treble in 2007/08.
Ancelotti followed up a Double in his debut year with early exits in each competition, while a miserable winter cost the Blues in the Premier League. Chelsea only pipped Manchester City on goal difference after two defeats and a draw in their final three games.
Arsenal, 2000/01 – 70 points
Only one team in Premier League history has finished runners-up in three consecutive seasons – and Arsenal have contrived to do it twice. Arteta truly is Wenger’s finest pupil.
As risible as their aforementioned chase the prior season was, Arsenal were humiliated in surrendering the title to Manchester United yet again in 2000/01. Sir Alex Ferguson’s side had already occupied the summit for months with a commanding lead when they hosted their closest rivals that February, but a farcically one-sided win basically wrapped things up.
“The only time Arsene lost it was when we got beaten 6-1 by Man United,” David Seaman later recalled. Having named a defence of Oleg Luzhny, Gilles Grimandi, Igors Stepanovs and Ashley Cole, it is unknown quite what else the manager expected. But it was at that point Manchester United started to phone it in, recording four of their six defeats that season in the final eight matches.
The belated Arsenal response was resounding as the Gunners won the title in one of the most satisfying ways imaginable the following season.
Newcastle, 1996/97 – 68 points
The lowest points total for a Premier League champion naturally facilitated the lowest points total for a Premier League runner-up. And Newcastle accrued almost a third of them during a winning run stretching across September and most of October.
They were, for a while, the runaway Premier League leaders again. But their inevitable collapse was far quicker and more anti-climactic than in the prior season, with champions Manchester United top from late January onwards.
Kevin Keegan resigned from his post at St James’ Park earlier that month but Kenny Dalglish held onto second place for dear life, pipping both Arsenal and Liverpool on goal difference courtesy of a final day 5-0 thrashing of Nottingham Forest – only their fifth win in their final dozen games.
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