The final day holds a dramatic place in the minds of any football fan. Last minute promotions, relegations, title wins and European qualifications which can only be guaranteed in the final moments of the season. For the Premier League in 2020/21, the vast majority of that drama was missing as most of those key positions had been secured. Manchester City won the league while Sheffield United, West Brom and Fulham had all dropped down the trapdoor.
Just as the EUROs kicks off, I want to take one last look at the Premier League table before everyone forgets it. The bit in particular I want to focus on is positions 17 and 18 (occupied by Burnley and Fulham). The gap between those two sides is large. Weirdly large. Fulham finished 18th on 28 points and were relegated, with Burnley safe in 17th on 39 points.
This got me thinking. Considering the low number of points accrued by the relegated sides (West Brom took 26 points and Sheffield United 23 points), is this the easiest year to survive in the Premier League? I have put those points totals in context and considered three models which could help work this out.
To note - I have gone back to 1995/96 because this is the first year the Premier League ran with 20 teams. This makes comparisons between sides much easier, and much more meaningful from a statistical point of view. I could have gone further, via points per game, but this becomes tricky when you can’t so easily build in goal difference. I stand by these decisions, but this admittedly has limited the years I am looking at.
I looked at four factors to try and give a definitive answer:
- Where these relegated sides rank against all relegated sides over this period
- Where Fulham (the 18th placed side) ranked against other 18th placed sides
- The points gap between 17th and 18th
- The average performance of all three relegated sides each year
The Full Table
Since 1995/96, 78 teams have been relegated from the Premier League. And the first thing I did was put them all in one massive table. That is here, and some thoughts follow:
At the top end there is the famous West Ham side who were relegated in 2002/03 despite gaining a mammoth 42 points. In fact, three sides proved the old adage of “40 points keeps you up” does not always ring true. But where do our relegated sides rank?
Starting with Sheffield United, for a side that finished 20th (and for a side who had such a horrendous start), they arguably were the most respectable of the relegated three. While the best performing side to finish bottom is Nottingham Forest (1996/97) who took 34 points, Sheffield United’s 23 points puts them well clear of the embarrassments of Derby (2007/08), Sunderland (2002/03 and 2005/06), Huddersfield (2018/18), Aston Villa (2015/16) and Portsmouth (2009/10) - neither of which even made 20 points. For a 20th placed side, they obviously were not good. But were not awful - by the standards of finishing rock bottom.
West Brom however are a different story. Of all the sides finishing 19th, only Fulham (2018/19) had a worse record - and that was only by 6 goals of goal difference. This is - by the standards of a 19th placed team - almost as bad as it gets.
For Fulham, I need a separate table to contextualise them with the other 18th placed sides, and this shows just how badly they did:
There is no dressing this up. Fulham were the worst performing 18th placed side since the Premier League reduced to 20 teams. 18th is the last relegation spot, meaning teams just need one more goal in goal difference to stay up. Theoretically, a side could have finished this season on 29 points - worse than any 18th placed side in almost 30 years - and still stayed up.
But ranking Fulham among fellow 18th placed sides only gives half the story, going back to the full ranking of relegated sides, eleven teams who finished rock bottom - 20th - had a better record than Fulham.
That’s how bad Fulham were this year.
Mind the gap
But the question I’m not asking is whether Sheffield United, West Brom and Fulham were the worst relegated three, I’m asking if this was the easiest year to survive. And looking simply at their records won’t cut it.
To help illustrate this, I looked at the gap between sides finishing 17th and 18th. That table is here, and some guidance notes follow it:
What this shows is the Points Gap (which is simple enough - the larger the number of points, the further adrift the side in 18th was), but the Goal Difference Gap is slightly more complicated.
A positive goal difference gap means the side in 17th had a better goal difference than the side in 18th.
A negative goal difference gap means the side in 17th had a worse goal difference than a side in 18th.
This is why the negative goal differences are ranked higher than the positive goal differences. It is harder to finish above a side who has better goal difference than you - you must have a higher number of points.
What this table shows is that the gap between Fulham and Burnley was the largest since the Premier League was reduced to 20 teams for 1994/95. On this measure, it again would be the easiest year to survive. It also shows that, on this measure at least, the 2006/07 season was the hardest year to survive as Wigan finished above Sheffield United by a single goal of goal difference.
An alternative look
One final measure - the only one which offers some (but only some, and very minimal) comfort to fans of the relegated three is this admittedly flawed measure of the relegated sides.
Instead of measuring individual sides against other individual sides, I have instead averaged out the performance of all three sides to provide an estimate of the average strength of the sides the Premier League has lost each year. If the average points are high, the Premier League has lost three sides who are stronger on average. If the average points is low, the Premier League has lose three sides who are weaker on average. And it looks like this:
On this (very flawed) measure, the average performance of Sheffield United, West Brom and Fulham - despite both West Brom and Fulham being essentially the worst sides in 18th and 19th in the timeframe measured - are not the worst overall. That title goes to the three relegated sides in 2018/19 (Cardiff, Fulham and the truly awful Huddersfield side who are the third worst overall).
But this is still not much to celebrate. The sides relegated last season only stayed off the bottom of this measure by a third of a point between the three of them. And, perhaps bizarrely, both Fulham and West Brom have Sheffield United to thank for bailing them out on this measure.
In sum
Admittedly, the last measure is flawed. But does show the three relegated sides were incredibly weak by the usual standards of the Premier League. The points gap to 17th was the largest since 1994/95, and Fulham are the worst side to finish 18th in the same timeframe looked at.
This leads me to only one conclusion - since the Premier League was reduced to 20 teams, this was the easiest year to survive. Let’s hope Norwich, Watford and Brentford put up more of a fight next season.
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