One down, another ready to fall. Should Leicester City, a side that hasn’t scored a home league goal since the start of December, somehow fail to beat Premier League champions-elect Liverpool on Sunday their relegation will be confirmed.
Ruud van Nistelrooy’s side will join Southampton with their bags packed and their tickets stamped for an instant return to the Championship. Ipswich Town will shortly follow.
All this has led to the question: is this the worst Premier League bottom three of all time?
That’s the easy bit: yes.
Southampton’s relegation was the earliest in Premier League history. They are still yet to beat Derby’s record of 11 points, though their late equaliser at West Ham on Saturday put them level with it.
Leicester have lost their last eight home league games without scoring a goal, a record for the top-flight. Fail to score against Liverpool and they will be the first side in top-flight history to go nine games without a goal, regardless of the results.
Leicester City will be relegated from the Premier League if they don’t beat Liverpool on Sunday
Southampton’s relegation was the earliest in Premier League history and they have 11 points
Ipswich also look doomed, meaning all three promoted teams will be relegated straight away
Only two other teams in history across all four divisions have ever done so, Mansfield in the third tier in 1971 and Wolves in the second between 1984-85.
If Leicester do go down on Sunday, it will be only the third time in the Premier League era that two teams have had their fate confirmed with five games still to go.
This doomed trio is also on course to smash the lowest combined points tally for the relegated teams.
Luton, Burnley and Sheffield United set a new low last season when they mustered just 66 points between them, 10 fewer than the previous lowest of 76 in of Cardiff, Fulham and Huddersfield in 2018-19. It was the first time none of them reached 30 points.
At their current points rate Southampton, Leicester and Ipswich won’t reach 60. They’re on course for the fewest wins and most defeats. Their goal difference is already worse than all but two other Premier League seasons.
So, unless something remarkable happens and the sun ceases to rise in the morning, they will be the worst.
The more interesting questions are whether this is a blip, nothing to worry about, or the start of a trend courtesy of the ever-growing financial gulf between the Premier League and the Championship and what, if anything, clubs can do to straddle it.
Because it never used to be like this. Across nearly 100 English top-flight seasons from the very first that included automatic relegation in 1898-99 until 1996-97, not a single one ended in all the promoted sides going straight back down.
They are statistically on course to be the worst Premier League bottom three in history
The trio are also projected to reach a cumulative points tally of 59, the lowest of all-time
The first was in 1997-98 when Crystal Palace finished bottom, Barnsley went down despite reaching the FA Cup quarter-final and Bolton got relegated on goal difference despite reaching that mystical target of 40 points.
We had to wait until last season to see it for a second time when Sheffield United, Luton and Burnley all endured an immediate return to the Championship.
And now it’s about to happen again, two years on the trot. When Leicester and Ipswich’s fates are sealed it will mean 10 of the last 15 promoted teams have suffered instant relegation.
That Sheffield United and Burnley, so dismal in the Premier League, are now both in the mix for an instant return to the top flight, as Leicester and Southampton did before them, suggests we might be starting to see a cluster of parachute-paymented yo-yo clubs in a never-ending loop of being too good for the Championship but don’t have what it takes for the Premier League.
So, how do you make the leap and, crucially, stay there? Because other teams are showing you can. The season before last, none of the promoted teams went down.
One of them, Nottingham Forest, is about to qualify for the Champions League while the others, Bournemouth and Fulham, are both in the mix for Europe.
It was the same in 2017-18 when Newcastle, Brighton and Huddersfield all stayed up.
Newcastle have since been in the Champions League and just won the League Cup. Brighton have played in Europe and until recently were the race for the top five.
Burnley were relegated last season, but are closing in on an instant return to the top flight
Leeds also look set to be promoted, just two years after they were relegated back to the EFL
Southampton spent 11 seasons in the top flight but they have been relegated in their last two
Money helps. Nottingham Forest splurged £165million when they went up and got hit with a points deduction for their troubles.
They probably think that was a price worth paying from where they’re looking now, though others may feel it’s a depressing outlook on modern football that having to breach PSR rules is one’s only hope.
Newcastle are backed by a nation state. Even Brighton, long heralded as the standard for astute bargain hunting thanks to their super-secret transfer algorithms, now spend big. Data collected by website Transfermarkt shows Brighton had the biggest net summer spend in world football at more than £150m.
But money isn’t everything. Only Brighton and Napoli had a bigger net spend than Ipswich in the summer at nearly £110m. They’re goners soon. Southampton spent more than £100m. Forest only just survived that first season despite their outlay. Do you need more than one big summer trolley dash to make the jump now?
Even that’s not always enough. Even if you think you have established yourself, you are fools if you think you’ve earned a Premier League place for life – just ask Leicester.
Heralded since their title win as the model for a modest-sized club, they finished fifth twice and then went down with the seventh highest wage bill in the division.
The Foxes and Southampton both spent nine and 11 seasons in the top flight respectively before going down two seasons ago. All of Leeds, Burnley and Sheffield United have finished in the top half of the Premier League in the last six seasons.
More than ever, clubs need to be run well. This column revealed last week that the gap between mid-table and the top four was closer than ever. Manchester United, Tottenham and West Ham can thank their stars the promoted teams were so bad.
If clubs of that size can be dragged towards the mire through mistakes and mismanagement, promoted sides have no margin for error, whatever they spend.
It’s possible to survive, even to thrive, but the odds on doing so are more stacked against them than ever before.
