Best team: Liverpool. Won the title by a street despite a wobble that cost them two trophies.
Best alternative team: Manchester City’s lawyers who managed to delay the verdict on those 115 charges and enable City to rebuild. If you were on £10k per hour, you wouldn’t rush either.
Most predictable team: Arsenal. Would not be swayed by the glaring need to buy a striker so completed a hattrick of runner-up spots.
Surprise teams: Nottingham Forest. Almost universally tipped to go down after two relegation battles, they were only denied a Champions League spot on the last day.
Crystal Palace. Sold two best players and failed to win any of the first eight games, but ended up winning the FA Cup thus qualifying for Europa League.
Best manager: Arne Slot. Little-known and filling giant footsteps, he made it look easy.
Honourable mentions: Nuno Espirito Santo (Forest) and Oliver Glasner (Palace).
Best player: No contest. With 47 goal involvements, Mo Salah won both players’ and writers’ awards with 90% of the votes. He’s the most popular Egyptian since Cleopatra.
Honourable mentions: Cole Palmer, Eberechi Eze, Matz Sels.
Biggest flops: Team – Manchester United. We’ll spare their blushes with the details, but the boos in KL will sting. As will the sight of 10,000 empty seats tonight in Hong Kong – unless they’re sold very quickly.
Players: Phil Foden. Player of the Year in the previous season, voted by both players and writers, a write-off in this one. He blames challenges “off the pitch mentally” and an ankle injury. “Goals in his veins,” said Pep Guardiola as he amassed a career-high 27 last season. This time, it was only 10.
Raheem Sterling. A deadline day loan signing, this was an act of desperation by Arsenal. Now 30, the former Liverpool, City and Chelsea forward is a shadow of his former self, playing for only 523 minutes in the Premier League, failing to find the net.
Managers: Ruben Amorim’s record has been worse than Erik ten Hag’s. He didn’t want to come to United until the end of the season. Now we can see why.
Southampton stuck with Russell Martin, who had taken them up, too long, but didn’t make that mistake with his successor Ivan Juric whom they sacked after one win in 107 days. Now they’ve appointed Will Still, who began his career on the video game, Football Manager. Do they deserve 30,000 crowds for every home game?
Biggest gripe: VAR and crackpot handball rules. Need to change before they make the game a farce.
Best signing: Nikola Milenkovic. Captain of Serbia, Europa Conference winner with Fiorentina, Forest snapped him up for £11m. Never meet your heroes? Milenkovic met Nemanja Vidic and then played like him.
Worst signing: Antony. Pound for pound, United fans have voted their £80m Brazilian their worst ever signing. Rubbing salt into the wound, he looks pretty useful at Real Betis.
Most fitting climax: James Tarkowski’s rocket at the death against Liverpool that ensured the Merseyside derby ended level as did the record between the two.
It blew the roof off as the Toffees didn’t want to lose the last derby at Goodison. It also achieved the considerable feat of getting Arne Slot to lose his rag.
Got out of jail: Ange Postecoglou and Spurs. Had the guts to change his style and instilled fight in players.
Best owners: Friedkin Group. Everton’s new bosses completed the move to their stunning new stadium, saved Goodison for the women’s team and brought back David Moyes.
Worst owner: Jim Ratcliffe. Plummeting down the table, out of Europe, booed off in Malaysia, upsetting club legends, culling staff, penny-pinching… protesting fans no longer differentiate between the local boy and the Glazers.
Should never have left: Scott McTominay. Another stroke of genius from the Ratcliffe regime was to sell one of the few United players who still seemed to care. But because he was homegrown, the whole fee went into the books. His dynamism has been badly missed but Napoli are grateful – he helped them to win the title and became Italy’s Player of the Year.
Bond villain award: Evangelos Marinakis. Forest’s Greek shipping magnate owner bearhugs players after wins, but looked like he wanted to sack Nuno on the field and then banned Gary Neville from the ground.
Declan’s double take: When Arsenal got a freekick against Real Madrid, their set-piece coach advised Declan Rice to pass. Bukayo Saka said, ‘’hit it,” so he did. A sumptuous curler that beat even Thibaut Courtois. Soon afterwards, he did it again with more power. They gave The Emirates the best 11 minutes it has ever known.
Best other goals: Kaoru Mitoma for Brighton v Chelsea. Cushioning a long punt from his keeper like Dennis Bergkamp, the Japanese winger beat his man, cut inside and provided a similarly exquisite finish. Football from the gods.
Omar Marmoush for Man City v Bournemouth. The defence obligingly parted like the Red Sea, and the Egyptian made the most of it. Steaming on before unleashing a heat-seeking missile of a strike into the top corner. Haaland couldn’t have done that.
Miracle comebacks: Two in the same match. After a 2-2 draw in their Europa League quarter-final at Lyon, Man United had led 2-0 in the second half at Old Trafford against 10 men. Thousands left the ground early but would regret it. Lyon hadn’t given up and United suddenly found themselves 4-2 down midway through the second half of extra time. There was even more disbelief when United found another gear to seal a 5-4 (and aggregate 7-6) win for the ages.
Bob Marley redemption award: Harry Maguire. Once ridiculed as too slow on the field and too fast off it – he was banned for speeding and convicted for an altercation in Greece – he battled back to be a heroic defender and unlikely attacker. Fleetingly dazzling on the wing and devastating in the air, he scored the winner in the epic win over Lyon.
Altitude sickness: For the second season in a row, the three promoted clubs have gone straight back down. Further evidence of the gulf between the top two tiers. None of them were ready. Leicester and Southampton went back up on the rebound, but Ipswich had just come up from League One. The Tractor Boys spent £120m to bridge the gap, but it wasn’t enough. Further evidence that parachute payments are more like trampolines.
Forgotten man: David de Gea. Safer pair of hands than what United have now as Fiorentina are happy to discover.
A man much missed: Rodri. His ACL injury proved pivotal and triggered the City slide.
Farewell, Kevin de Bruyne: The flame-haired Belgian is one of the EPL’s all-time greats and deserves his statue at The Etihad. A tantrum-free throwback in not having an agent and letting the ball do his talking. Like Mo Salah, he was another one that got away from Chelsea.
The views expressed are those of the writer and do not necessarily reflect those of FMT.