As we look back on the greatest Premier League title races ever, it’s hard to shake the feeling that the drama, tension and jaw-dropping conclusion of the 2011/12 season will ever be beaten. Manchester City needed to beat QPR to win the title ahead of their local rivals Manchester United, but found themselves a goal down to the Hoops as the contest on the last day of the campaign headed into injury time.
Edin Dzeko popped up with a 92nd minute equaliser for the Cityzens, but surely that just gave the fans inside the Etihad Stadium false hope. In one of the most extraordinary moments in the annals of the Premier League, a loose ball fell to Sergio Aguero in the QPR penalty area in the 94th minute and… well, the rest is history. The emotions of the supporters of both Manchester clubs on that fateful day flip-flopped from euphoria to despair and back again; no doubt many sprouted grey hairs that weren’t there previously.
For neutral football fans, these sorts of grandstand finishes are a joy to behold. So it stands to reason that when a title race is a metaphorical one horse race, it can be rather banal to observe. Not that anyone associated with Liverpool FC will care. During the 2024/25 campaign, they have one hand on the Premier League trophy with eleven weeks of the season still to play. The win looks so much in the bag, that some bookies are already paying out as if they’ve already won (although we should point out that this strategy has backfired in the past). If other results go their way, the Reds could equal their own record for the earliest Premier League title win in a season.
What Is the Earliest Premier League Title Win?
If all of the results go their way, i.e. they keep winning and those behind them in the league table don’t, Liverpool will be crowned champions with seven games of the 2024/25 season to spare. If all of those dominoes fall into place, it would equal their own record set during the 2019/20 campaign, in which they also clinched the title with seven rounds of games still to be played.
The difference this time around is that they be crowned champions in April – the earliest in the calendar year the title has been decided. That’s because back in 2019/20, the global health crisis disrupted the fixture list to the extent that Liverpool did not open up an unassailable lead at the top of the table until June.
14 April 2001 – Manchester United
The earliest date that the Premier League trophy has been won was April 14, 2001, which was the prior record set by Manchester United. Due to the vagaries of the fixture list in that 2000/01 campaign, the Red Devils were crowned champions with five games to spare… hence why they’ve been usurped by Liverpool in the record books since.
That being said, it’s highly unlikely that the Reds will win the title by April 14 in 2025, barring a truly bizarre and unexpected set of results… and so United’s record could stand for many years to come. That title win also offered an insight into a mild disappointment of being crowned champions early on in the season. United’s triumph was confirmed when Arsenal lost to Middlesbrough in a game that took place after the Red Devils’ own fixture, so the players and fans were unable to celebrate together.
Occasions with Four or Five Games to Spare
Only one other side has won the Premier League title with five games to spare. That was Pep Guardiola’s first season in charge of Manchester City back in 2017/18, when the Cityzens blitzed the competition and racked up 100 points, opening up a whopping 19-point gap to Manchester United in second.
On three separate occasions, the Premier League title race has been declared over with four games to spare. Manchester United were the first to achieve that in 1999/00 – going on to be crowned champions with five matches to go the very next season, with the remarkable ‘Invincibles’ era Arsenal matching the feat in 2003/04 and Manchester United doing likewise in 2012/13.
The Earliest Title Wins in Football
The old First Division was rebranded as the Premier League in 1992, so there’s well over a century of top-flight action prior to the jazzy EPL overhaul in the early nineties. An exploration of that reveals a contender for the earliest top-flight title win on English soil. Way back in 1908, Manchester United wrapped up the First Division championship on April 11 – and so, technically, this is the earliest in a calendar year that the champions have been coronated.
Olympiakos
There are other notable entries into the history books as we scout around Europe. In Greece, Olympiakos won the Super League title of 2015/16 with six games to spare – due to the vagaries of the scheduling, that meant they were crowned champions on February 28… by far and away the earliest that a club has secured a title in one the continent’s recognised top-tier divisions.
Lyon & Real Madrid
As far as Europe’s big five leagues are concerned, Lyon have a slice of history to call their own having claimed the Ligue 1 title with six games to spare in 2006/07 – albeit they were mathematically confirmed as champions on April 21. But a host of big clubs can show the Premier League elite a thing or two having won their respective league titles in March. Real Madrid’s vintage class of 1960/61, featuring the likes of Alfredo Di Stefano and Ferenc Puskas, had wrapped up the La Liga title as early as March 12; by our reckoning, that’s the earliest that a big five championship has been won.
PSG, Bayern Munich & AC Milan
PSG came within hours of breaking that record in 2015/16 – instead, they had to settle for coronation on March 13, while Bayern Munich (March 25, 2014) and AC Milan (March 31, 1968) also took care of business early. Each deprived neutral fans of what we all love – a titanic title race to the bitter end, but you cannot fault their remarkable achievement of wrapping up a championship with weeks, or even months, to spare.
