LUton Town’s defeat at West Ham and Burnley’s defeat at Tottenham on Saturday mean that, barring something astonishing in the final weekend (a Luton win over Fulham and a Nottingham Forest defeat at Burnley with a goal difference of twelve), the three teams that came Last season will be the three teams that go down. For those who fear the gap between the Premier League and the Championship will be impossible to bridge, it is a worrying sign.
The truth is that, without Forest’s four-point deduction for breaches of the league’s Profit and Sustainability rules, it wouldn’t have even been close. The other interest at the bottom came from Everton, before their recent run of 13 points from five games. But they wouldn’t have been in the mix either without their own ten-point deduction, which was subsequently reduced to six. The feeling that if points had to be deducted, this was the right season to do so turned out to be justified.
Should Sheffield United lose at home to Spurs on the final weekend, their tally of 16 points would be the third worst in Premier League history, level with Huddersfield in 2018/19, but with a goal difference already 12 points worse is. The 101 goals they have conceded are already the worst ever in a Premier League season. But what makes this season so special is that Burnley’s 24 points are the joint 10th lowest in Premier League history and Luton’s 26 points are the joint 16th worst; the average of the three with one match to go is 22 points; the previous lowest average for the three promoted teams after 37 games was 27.3 in 2007-2008 (Sunderland, Birmingham, Derby). Only once has the average been below 32 – in 2021-22, when Brentford, Watford and Norwich achieved a score of 30.3.
That two of the three worst performances ever have come in the last three years is cause for concern, but each of the three teams that emerged last season had their own problems. Luton, on a shoestring budget and their dilapidated old ground with a capacity of 12,000, were always going to struggle and although they have been out of steam lately, at least they seem to have had fun: perhaps in the end they only have point taken. from the three games, but they led at home against Manchester City, Arsenal and Liverpool.
Sheffield United lost three of their best players from their promotion campaign on the eve of this season, with Iliman Ndiaye and Sander Berge sold and Tommy Doyle’s loan to Manchester City coming to an end. Only their Saudi owners will know why they went about their business the way they did, but it meant manager Paul Heckingbottom fought an uphill battle from the start.
In terms of championship competitiveness, Burnley is the big concern. It’s true they lost Nathan Tella, who was on loan at Southampton but ended up with Bayer Leverksuen and their Bundesliga success, and some of their other business may look a little naive in retrospect – lots of bright young prospects and not plenty of Premier League experience – but given how impressive they had been in winning the Championship, much more was expected of them. They were ultimately undone by the number of mistakes they made at the back, especially when trying to play out.
They will be among the favorites for promotion next season and if Vincent Kompany can develop a slightly less idealistic streak, it wouldn’t be a huge surprise if his second crack at the Premier League is a little more successful than his first. There have long been mezzanine clubs, somewhere between the Premier League and the Championship; the fact that three of last season’s relegated teams finished in the top four of the Championship suggests their status may be more sharply defined.
Only once before, in 1997-98, have all three promoted sides gone down – and it’s worth bearing in mind that last season all three promoted sides (Fulham, Bournemouth and Forest) survived. That said, there have been twelve instances of two or more of the promoted sides going down immediately, and three of those have been in the last four seasons, six in the last ten. Long gone are the days when a Blackburn, a Newcastle or a Forest could finish and finish in the top four, as happened in the first three seasons of the Premier League; In the 2018/2019 season, Wolves are the only promoted team to have finished in the top eight in the past seventeen seasons.
after newsletter promotion
Does it matter? Maybe not. Modern football is designed for the elite and there is clearly a section of the public that doesn’t really care who they beat. But one of the great joys and strengths of the game in England is the pyramid, the idea that the biggest club and the smallest village side all compete in the same vast structure and that everyone can move up or down depending on their form. It is also a proven means of talent development. But a pyramid must be relatively smooth; when there are huge, almost unscalable steps, it becomes something completely different.
This is an excerpt from Soccer with Jonathan Wilson, the Guardian US’s weekly look at the game in Europe and beyond. Subscribe for free here. Do you have a question for Jonathan? Email footballwithjw@theguardian.com and he will provide the best answer in a future edition