How the final Premier League table would look if every refereeing error was erased

Things would have looked very different.

The 2025/26 season ultimately ended with Mikel Arteta's Arsenal as champions, finishing seven points ahead of Manchester City, after the Citizens dropped five points over their final two matches.

Manchester United secured a third place finish, while Aston Villa and Liverpool also made Champions League qualification, with Bournemouth and Sunderland also making it into Europe, at the expense of Chelsea.

While those final results have been confirmed, and are a matter of immovable historical record, they did come to pass as the result from a not small number of errors from officials.

There aren't many fans across the land who wouldn't be interested to learn how the season may have ended, if officials had always made the correct calls.

Thanks to the Athletic, it is now possible to view what the final Premier League table would have looked like without those errors.

As part of an explanation for their new table, the Athletic detailed: "We assume that penalties would have been scored, and that early red cards would have much greater impact than those in the final few minutes.

"The biggest beneficiaries were Arsenal, Chelsea and Sunderland, who we reckon were each four points better off.

"By contrast, Bournemouth were down by four points, and Fulham by three."

How do the Premier League review mistakes?

Regularly throughout the season, the PGMOL's Key Match Incidents Panel (KMI) have met to review decisions made by Premier League officials.

The KMI panel is made up of former players, coaches, and representatives from the Premier League and Professional Game Match Officials (PGMO), who meet weekly to discuss decisions made the previous week, and conclude as and where errors are made.

Following a release of the details from these meetings, the Athletic say they have trawled through the outcome of each review, "and compiled a list of on-field errors that were not corrected by VAR, and the three decisions that were right in the first place, but the video official overturned wrongly."

"After removing factual decisions relating to offsides and the ball being out of play, we then assessed whether the incorrect call had an impact on the match."

Premier League table with every refereeing error erased:

1. Arsenal, 81pts, (-4)
2. Manchester City, 80pts, (+2)
3. Manchester United, 70pts, (-1)
4. Aston Villa, 67pts, (+2)
5. Liverpool, 61pts (+1)
6. Bournemouth, 61pts (+4)
7. Fulham, 55pts (+3)
8. Brighton & Hove Albion, 54pts (+1)
9. Brentford, 51pts, (+2)
10. Everton, 50pts (+1)
11. Sunderland, 50pts, (-4)
12. Nottingham Forest, 50pts, (-1)
13. Newcastle United, 49pts (-)
14. Chelsea, 48pts, (-4)
15. Leeds United, 48pts, (+1)
16. Crystal Palace, 43pts, (-2)
17. Tottenham Hotspur, 39pts , (-2)
18. West Ham United, 37pts ,(-2)
19. Burnley, 21pts, (-1)
20. Wolves, 21pts ,(+1)

Immediately looking at the alternative table, not many clubs can claim to have lost out on a major change to their final position — save for Fulham who would have qualified for Europe, which just maybe would have been enough to persuade Marco Silva to stay — but that isn't to say the season wouldn't have been different.

Had things played out as the Athletic's model suggest, although the Gunners managed to make it back on top by the end of the day, the Premier League title race would have entered the final day with Man City two points clear at the top.

Under that new context, who knows whether Man City may have secured a result over Aston Villa, and in doing so, won the title.

Another major area of change is in the position of Chelsea, who would have actually ended up in 14th according to this new model.