Premier League winners and losers: Emery, Slot, Leeds, West Ham, Sunderland, Van Hecke, Mane

 Arne Slot is an inevitable casualty of this Liverpool civil war and managersplaining won’t help, but Leeds, Unai Emery and Mateus Mane are all flying.

There is praise for Sunderland and Evangelos Marinakis, too.

Less so for West Ham and Jan Paul van Hecke, mind.

Premier League winners

Adam Wharton

Not the most obvious successor to Lomana LuaLua.

Unai Emery

It is difficult to gauge where Aston Villa doubly qualifying for the Champions League would sit on a list of all-time Premier League achievements. But it is a remarkable – if not Manager of the Year-shortlist-worthy – accomplishment.

What felt agonisingly precarious a fortnight ago has been fashioned into an almost perfect sprint to the finish of a marathon season. The Burnley draw notwithstanding, Emery has gambled with the highest stakes imaginable to secure a top-five place and European final for his team.

The group of clubs and managers who have qualified for European competition through league position in four consecutive Premier League seasons is miniscule. Emery and Villa taking their place among them, especially in the circumstances, is ludicrous.

Leeds United

From the moment of Daniel Farke’s half-time epiphany at the Etihad, Leeds have legitimately been among the best sides in the Premier League.

They are sixth in a table from December onwards, with only Manchester United, Bournemouth and Manchester City suffering fewer defeats. It is form sustained over almost two-thirds of an entire season, enough to suggest these are sturdy foundations which can be built on going forward.

But it’s at the back where the improvement has been most obvious. In that 24-game, six-month timeframe, only Brighton, Manchester City and Arsenal have conceded fewer league goals than Leeds, whose solidity and sturdiness provides a platform which Dominic Calvert-Lewin and friends can maximise at the other end.

The most encouraging sign is that the system does not rely on those playing within it.

There was perhaps more desperation defending than Farke is overly comfortable with, and 35-year-old Darlow Zoff was needed as the last line of resistance. But Sebastian Bornauw slotted in seamlessly on his fifth start of the league season alongside Jaka Bijol, who has missed 13 games, and Joe Rodon, without whom Leeds are unbeaten in the five matches he has not started.

Some teams merely adopt the three-man defence in a hopeless bid to avoid relegation; Leeds were born in it, moulded by it.

Sunderland

The response to shipping nine goals against Aston Villa and Nottingham Forest has been heartening. Sunderland have reaffirmed their identity by eliminating daft mistakes, recalibrating their standards and, without particularly wanting to single anyone out, removing Dan Ballard from the equation.

A win against Chelsea on the final day – they have already beaten them at Stamford Bridge – combined with defeats for Brighton against Manchester United and Brentford at Liverpool will catapult Sunderland into the Europa League.

It would be an unfathomable achievement, but as Regis Le Bris said after the Everton win when citing the “painful” Forest defeat: “When we start dreaming it’s a distraction.” As cliched as it is, when Sunderland take things one game at a time they are a powerful force.

Manchester United

As Ford mused:

‘There won’t be too many who believe it’s sustainable and neutrals should perhaps be more keen on a lack of evolution than Man Utd fans, though those Red Devils can can look forward to being hailed as the greatest-ever Premier League champions if they win it like this.’

It is wonderful stuff in the one-game-a-week reality Michael Carrick inherited. And a great start for Bryan Mbeumo’s basketball team, too.

Mateus Mane

Rob Edwards sounded remarkably confident about retaining the singular silver lining to this absurdly dark cloud of a Wolves season. Perhaps naively so, considering the club’s penchant for cashing in on an asset as soon as it accrues tangible value.

The hope ought to be that Mane and his representatives are wise enough to realise a year in the Championship is comfortably the most beneficial next step in his development.

He has already played the most Premier League minutes of any teenager this season. That has been a formative experience; a Championship campaign in a more possession-dominant side honing his craft away from the spotlight could be transformative.

The alternative is to be fully Tyler Dibling’d. The entire season he has spent on Everton’s bench after impressing as an exciting young forward in a relegated team has underlined the inherent need to time an inevitable climb up the ladder well.

Southampton raked in £40m but the extra budget for dedicated spying iPhones, coffee and substandard espionage training has not really been worth it when they could have been patient and extracted far more.

That is the challenge for Wolves: resist the temptation to sell to Manchester United for £50m or fuel Chelsea’s teenage wide-forward obsession, even just for the sake of an extra year which should increase that fee and provide Mane with a better grounding.

Evangelos Marinakis

A sign of genuine character growth that he didn’t stand over a fear-stricken intern while watching them type out a tweet casting aspersions over who the VAR supports. Nor has he furiously employed Mark Clattenburg as a lobbyist again. Yet.

It was a ridiculous decision which befell Nottingham Forest but Vitor Pereira quite calmly calling for a summit to clarify the rules was the sensible, if far less hilarious, reaction.

Premier League losers

West Ham

It was not quite the unbridled mess of picking a right-back at left-back and a left-back at right-back in a team with no recognised striker. But this wasn’t a great deal better from Nuno Espirito Santo, whose three-at-the-back muscle memory kicked in at the wrong time.