Premier League players who have suffered stark drop-offs this season

By any measure, the 2025-26 Premier League campaign has been unforgiving to a handful of previously prolific stars. From record-setting forwards to surprise breakthrough talents, a series of high-profile names have seen their form fall off a cliff, leaving clubs scrambling for solutions.

Mohamed Salah’s decline has been the most startling. Fresh from rewriting the record books last term—he topped the league in both goals and assists during Liverpool’s title-winning 38-game march—the Egyptian has looked a shadow of himself. Through the opening months of the new season he has supplied only four goals and six assists, but the raw numbers do not capture the full story. Observers note that Salah’s trademark burst past full-backs has waned; at 33, he is currently mired in a nine-match Premier League scoreless run, the longest of his English top-flight career.

Bournemouth’s Justin Kluivert experienced a career renaissance in 2024-25, firing 12 league goals and earning a Netherlands recall six years after his international debut. His hat-trick of penalties against Wolves last April entered the history books as the first such feat since 1967. This season, however, Kluivert has started only 10 league fixtures and found the net just twice before knee surgery sidelined him indefinitely.

Wolves, meanwhile, have been stung by the reversal of Jorgen Strand Larsen’s fortunes. The Norwegian’s loan arrival at Molineux yielded 14 goals, a tally bettered by just seven players when penalties are excluded. After making his permanent switch to Crystal Palace in January for a club-record fee, Strand Larsen marked his Selhurst Park bow with a brace, yet his overall return stands at one league goal prior to the move. With Palace mid-table and Wolves bottom, neither side has seen the striker reproduce last season’s impact.

Nottingham Forest captain Chris Wood completed the finest campaign of his career in 2024-25, striking 20 times to secure European qualification for the City Ground outfit. Only Salah and Erling Haaland outscored the New Zealander across the division. Wood began the new term with a match-winning double against Brentford, but a subsequent seven-game scoreless streak coincided with a winless run for Forest. A knee injury sustained in October has since kept the 33-year-old out entirely, leaving the club without its primary attacking reference point.

As the season enters its final third, each of these players will hope to rediscover the rhythm that once made them indispensable—yet the evidence so far suggests that reversing such stark drop-offs is among the toughest tasks in football.