Premier League 24/25 awards: Our winners for players, goals and managers

Manager of the Season – Arne Slot

Last summer, an unproven manager with no experience in a ‘top five’ league took over from a club legend, Jurgen Klopp, and led an ageing team suffering from a long comedown into a new Premier League season. He was given no new gs.

Nobody – and that includes Liverpool ers – thought Arne Slot could sustain a challenge for the title, much less win it with four games to go.

The gloss has been taken off Liverpool’s first title in five years by its inevitability since January and the four-game winless streak that ended the campaign.

But we shouldn’t let the achievement be normalised. Slot has become just the fifth person to win the Premier League in their debut year, a remarkable feat in the circumstances.

He rejigged central midfield, slowed things down by teaching the players some game management, and tweaked the full-backs to hide the limitations of both. And he made it look easy.

Player of the Season – Mohamed Salah

This one picks itself.

There is no looking past Salah’s record-equalling 47 goal involvements (29 goals, 18 assists), and even though he slowed significantly over the final couple of months Salah has still arguably put in the greatest single-season performance in Premier League history.

Salah’s goals and assists ed for 54.7% of Liverpool’s total, by far the highest in the division, which is all the evidence needed to show Salah was the most influential player in the team that won the title.

There can be no arguments with Salah picking up more or less every award going.

He is now fifth in the all-time goalscorer list and needs 75 more to overtake Alan Shearer. Having signed a new two-year deal this spring, and after suggesting this week he could play on for another eight years, there is every chance Salah will get there.

Young Player of the Season – Myles Lewis-Skelly

Another young left-back, Milos Kerkez, is unlucky to miss out here after starting every single Premier League game for Bournemouth (and he gets the nod in team of the season to make up for it), but the teenager who emerged at Arsenal is on a whole other level.

Lewis-Skelly didn’t start his first Premier League game for Arsenal until mid-December.

By April, he was an automatic selection for both legs of the Champions League quarter-final against Real Madrid, in which he twice kept Vinicius Junior quiet.

Already he looks like a complete player; a left-back as adept at driving to the byline as inverting into central midfield. Already – and this is the really crazy bit – he looks like England’s best left-back and a star player for Thomas Tuchel.

g of the Season – Nikola Milenkovic

There are lots of factors behind Nottingham Forest’s magnificent season but maybe the most important is the partnership of Milenkovic: the centre-back pair who laid the groundwork for a defence-first rise into Champions League contention under Nuno Espirito Santo.

Milenkovic is the star player of the two, more comfortable with the ball at his feet and as dominant on the ground as in the air.

He also scored five Premier League goals and played in 37 straight games after missing the opening day 1-1 draw with Bournemouth.

Tellingly, he was the only one of Forest’s summer spree who was a regular starter. If anyone deserves the lion’s share of the praise for the club’s rise from 17th to 7th, it’s Milenkovic.

Best performance of the season – Newcastle 2-1 Liverpool & Crystal Palace 1-0 Manchester City

There is nothing to choose between these two and it just feels right to present them as a pair.

Newcastle completely dominated Liverpool in the Carabao Cup final, swarming central midfield and bursting into the final third in a textbook example of Eddie Howe football.

It was a tactical masterclass that made the league-leaders look average.

Nobody else managed to do that in 2024/25, and to do it under pressure on the biggest day of their careers was extraordinary.

The same can be said of Palace’s FA Cup final victory, which in its defensive organisation and counter-attacking winning goal was a perfect distillation of Oliver Glasner’s football.

They thoroughly deserved to beat Man City, rising to the occasion with a spectacular, 10/10 display at Wembley. Both historic cup finals had that in common.

Moment of the season – James Tarkowski’s goal in Goodison Park’s final Merseyside derby

It was the perfect volley, a rifling thwack into the roof of the net that seemed straight out of the 1990s. It’s hard to recall the last time we saw a goal that looked like that, never mind one of such significance and late drama.

James Tarkowski’s 98th-minute equaliser, the last kick of the game, gave Goodison Park one final moment of magic for the men’s team.

It is already being talked about among Everton ers as one of, if not the, greatest moment the stadium has ever seen.

Defeat would have given Liverpool final, everlasting bragging rights, but Tarkowski’s goal kept the Goodison Park Merseyside derby record at 41 wins apiece.

It was surely the wildest any team has ever celebrated a draw.

Goal of the Season – Kaoru Mitoma (Brighton v Chelsea)

One, two, three, four perfect touches from Kaoru Mitoma turned an innocuous long ball from Bart Verbruggen into a uniquely beautiful goal.

Mitoma’s first touch, plucking the ball out of the sky, is up there with the best we’ve ever seen.

But the instant second and third touches are also special, turning Trevoh Chalobah inside out to set up the shot.

For its rarity alone, Mitoma’s goal sures the late contender from Omar Marmoush.

Worst performance of the season – Ruben Amorim’s Man Utd

Manchester United’s 15th-place finish is scarcely believable, yet had it not been for a refereeing error on the final day they would have finished 17th and won fewer than 40 points.

There are so many people to blame for their historic ineptitude, but Ruben Amorim has played a very big part in it. Since his appointment Man Utd have won 27 points from 27 games, which is near-enough relegation form.

The team have gone notably backwards thanks to Amorim’s brutally-honest management style sapping confidence and his steadfast refusal to compromise on a formation that simply does not suit the players at his disposal.

United lost 18 league games, their most since 1973/74, the year they were relegated. Old Trafford hasn’t seen days this bad for 50 years.

The storm came. It shows no sign of subsiding.

Team of the season

Matz Sels | Daniel Munoz, Nikola Milenković, Virgil van Dijk, Milos Kerkez | Youri Tielemans, Ryan Gravenberch, Moises Caicedo | Mohamed Salah, Alexander Isak, Morgan Rogers.

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