Premier League: The season which had a bit of everything - including 39 managers
Last updated on .From the section Premier League
The Premier League season came to an end on Sunday, with Everton staying up at the expense of Leicester and Leeds.
It was a season with engaging battles for the title, European places and relegation. But it was a strange season, too.
We should be used to anything after the year of Covid-era football with seasons ending in July - and empty stadiums.
But we did have another break this season for a winter World Cup, and that was just the tip of the iceberg.
BBC Sport takes a look at some of the unusual things to happen this season...
A record amount of managerial changes
This was a season of unprecedented managerial overhauls, with 14 changes in total. Chelsea, Leeds and Southampton sacked two managers each.
Including caretakers and interims, several of whom were chopped and changed, 39 people took charge of at least one Premier League game this season.
Only one of the managers - Graham Potter going from Brighton to Chelsea - left out of choice. And he ended up being two of the 14 changes as he was sacked by Chelsea after less than seven months.
Only nine of the 20 Premier League teams ended the season with the same manager who started it.
All three relegated teams - Leicester, Leeds and Southampton - ended the season with short-term managers whose deals have expired.
Chelsea are set to appoint Mauricio Pochettino to replace stop-gap Frank Lampard, who started the season as Everton boss. Roy Hodgson and Ryan Mason are out of contract at Crystal Palace and Tottenham respectively.
Chelsea's mess of a season
Chelsea's 2022-23 season will live long in the memory, but not for the right reasons.
The Blues finished in the bottom half (12th) for the first time since 1995-96, but that is barely half the story.
Since Todd Boehly took over as owner at the end of last season, they have spent £583m on players and had four different managers (including interims) this season.
The £300m+ spent in January and £270m splurged in the summer are two of the three biggest transfer window spends ever - with Real Madrid's £292m in the summer of 2019 in between.
Boehly sacked Champions League-winning manager Thomas Tuchel before appointing Potter on a five-year deal and paying £21m compensation for him and his coaching staff.
Seven months later, Potter was sacked and his deputy Bruno Saltor took interim charge. He was given one game before Boehly brought back Lampard - the man who had been sacked a couple of years ago, leading to Tuchel's arrival. They only won once in his 11-game spell.
Tuchel, meanwhile, ended the season winning the Bundesliga with Bayern Munich. And Pochettino is now on his way to Stamford Bridge.
Such was their glut of January signings that summer recruit Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang, who started all their Champions League group games, Benoit Badiashile, Noni Madueke, David Datro Fofana and Andrey Santos were left out of their squad for the knockout stages.
In total, £168m worth of 2022-23 signings (Aubameyang, Badiashile, Mykhaylo Mudryk, Madueke, Carney Chukwuemeka and Fofana) failed to play 1,000 minutes for Chelsea this season.
Forest's maverick approach works
Chelsea went for quality (in theory, if not in practice) with their signings - but for Nottingham Forest it was about quantity.
They signed 29 players across the course of the season after many of the 2021-22 Championship promotion squad had left.
Even transfer windows did not stop them, signing free agents in September and February.
For all the 14 managerial changes, it was a big surprise Steve Cooper was not one of them. He was widely expected to be sacked when Forest were bottom after eight games, but instead he got a new contract.
In April, he was again rumoured to be on the brink but Forest issued a club statement saying he would remain in charge.
It worked in the end as Forest stayed up, with all four teams below them changing managers.
A really open relegation tussle
This season we all - well, not the teams involved - enjoyed a really open relegation tussle.
On 31 March, the bottom nine clubs were separated by just four points with 10 or 11 games to go. Crystal Palace, in 12th, had 27 points. Southampton, who were bottom, had 23.
Eventually teams started to pull away - and Southampton stayed where they were - but it was still the first season since 2017-18 that no team were relegated after 35 games.
Two of the teams down there changed managers after the end of March - and both went down. Leicester hired Dean Smith, and Leeds turned to Sam Allardyce and Karl Robinson, with the pair thought to be on deals with huge bonuses if they stayed up. Leeds' money was safe.
By the final day it was between Everton, Leicester and Leeds for the final two relegation places - with Abdoulaye Doucoure keeping the Toffees up with the only goal against Bournemouth.
Difficulties with VAR
Referees' body PGMOL spent more time than it would want apologising for video assistant referee mistakes.
On one Saturday in February, it said sorry to Brighton and Arsenal for separate games. In one, the VAR did not draw the offside lines; in the other they drew them from the same player.
In September, again on the same weekend, PGMOL acknowledged Newcastle and West Ham had goals against Crystal Palace and Chelsea respectively wrongly disallowed by the VAR for fouls.
There are not always apologies for mistakes - and apologies are not always public - so there is no way to know how prevalent it is.
But we do know Brighton have had three apologies.
After 30 rounds of games, there were 10 incorrect VAR interventions, 19 missed interventions and 30 VAR errors for on-field offences. There were 83 correct interventions during that time.
That's not even mentioning Liverpool defender Andy Robertson claiming he was elbowed by an assistant referee and Reds boss Jurgen Klopp injuring his hamstring after shouting at a fourth official.
By the end of the season, PGMOL chief Howard Webb gave his time to Sky Sports and BBC Radio 5 Live to explain some of the mistakes.
A mid-season break?!
Clubs had about six weeks without Premier League games from mid-November to 26 December because the World Cup in Qatar took place in Europe's winter.
Some teams gave players who were not going to the World Cup anywhere between a few days to a couple of weeks off, while other teams flew to the other side of the world.
The United Arab Emirates, Australia, Saudi Arabia, Spain and Portugal were some of the destinations - with about half of the Premier League teams playing friendlies during that time.
Liverpool and Arsenal played games in the Dubai Super Cup, Everton were in the Sydney Cup, Crystal Palace hosted Brazilian side Botafogo, a few teams faced La Liga clubs and Fulham even hosted West Ham in a London derby the week before Christmas.
The table looked quite different then, with Arsenal top at Christmas, Chelsea only off the European places on goal difference and Wolves bottom.
And Cristiano Ronaldo was a Manchester United player.
The amount of World Cup players did not seem to have a detrimental effect on the second half of the season. A league-high 16 of Manchester City's squad went to Qatar and they won the title, while only two Southampton players, a joint low, did and they sank to the bottom.
A proper title race (until near the end)
For much of the season, it looked as though Arsenal were going to win their first title since the 'Invincibles' of 2003-04.
Arsenal were eight points above City - albeit having played a game more - coming into April. They topped the table for 29 games in total.
But they suffered the same fate Liverpool have in recent years and were unable to keep up City's relentless winning form in the second half of the campaign.
Mikel Arteta's side spent 248 days top - the most without finishing first in English top-flight history - yet City wrapped up the title with three games to go.
Since Guardiola took over in 2016, City have taken between 21 and 30 points in their final 10 games of a Premier League season - an average of 2.43 points per game.
City have been favourites to win the league every year since 2015-16, with Arsenal starting the campaign at 50-1 sixth favourites.
Premier League champions City now turn their sights to the Treble. They face Manchester United in the FA Cup final and Inter Milan in the Champions League final in the next two Saturdays. Win both and they become the second team to win all three after United in 1998-99.
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