“I keep saying and thinking and feeling that the second last season was one of my biggest achievements in the game.” That was Jose Mourinho talking about Manchester United in 2018, and at the time people focused on the apparent absurdity of a vastly successful football manager showing pride at finishing 19 points behind his club’s local rivals, but hindsight has shown that yes, second that season was actually pretty good. What seems strange about the statement here in 2021 is it’s a rare example of someone in football talking positively about second place. In the sort of sports that see the Olympics as their summit, the silver medal position is cherished but football, rightly, sees it as the first loser.
Have you ever seen anyone list the eight teams to have finished as runners-up in England without ever being champions? Bristol City, Oldham, Cardiff, Charlton, Blackpool, QPR, Watford and Southampton. Well, now you have but it doesn’t make it any more impressive for the clubs involved. Second place is just 19th bottom in some respects, so why should we care?
It’s a reasonable question, but after Manchester United dropped points at Palace this week, after Leicester dropped points at Burnley and after Liverpool lost yet again, it looks like we have ourselves a full spectrum low-quality race for second place. Two seasons ago Liverpool were the highest quality runners-up English football has ever seen, one defeat all season and 97 points. That blows all but two champions in English top-flight history (Man City in 2018 and Liverpool last year) out of the water. Now Jurgen Klopp’s team can only reach a maximum of 76 points and, let’s be honest, they’re not going to even make that. Meanwhile, Manchester United seem set on breaking the Premier League record for 0-0 draws in a single season and Leicester’s squad of about nine players is again struggling to sustain itself over an entire campaign.
That has opened up a path for Chelsea more than any other club. Thomas Tuchel’s trademark solution of coaching players and giving them clear instructions has seen the club rise from mid-table to fourth. Everton and West Ham, aka the Moyes University colleges, would both be popular entrants to the Champions League on variety grounds alone. If either of them finish second they’d be the first clubs who aren’t part of the current ‘Big Six’ to finish as runners-up since Newcastle in 1996-97. And that feels significant because as we explore the lowest quality second place finishers in England’s top division, the overwhelming candidate is that Newcastle side.
Matchweek 26: ✅ pic.twitter.com/hdFL6yAXIN
— Premier League (@premierleague) March 4, 2021
Judging the lowest quality runners-up is not an exact science because what actually constitutes a good season has varied so much over the past 150 years. Switching the entire history of the English top-flight to three points for a win to make a ‘fair’ comparison makes sense, but it’s not entirely objective because had three points been on the table before the 1980s then lots of teams may have approached games differently. Or, equally, they may not have. Either way, it’s all we can do, and it throws up Derby County in 1935-36 as the least consistent runners-up, winning only 1.57 per game as they finished a huge eight points behind Sunderland. It was Sunderland’s sixth title and remains both the last time they were champions and the last time a team in stripes finished as the country’s top team. Derby finished above third place Huddersfield on goal average and in points terms were as close to Wolves in 15th as they were to Sunderland. Derby also won fewer away games than relegated Aston Villa, so this season certainly feels low quality/intensely even [delete as preferred]. Manchester City came ninth this season, would be champions 12 months later and then relegated a year after that. In conclusion: this was the 1930s and none of us are truly qualified to make judgements on it.
Based on points per game, only two of the 12 ‘worst’ runners-up have come since WWII and they are Wolves in 1955 (1.60 pts/game) and Blackpool a year later (1.64). This is surely not an indicator of quality but rather the natural flux and evenness of a competition in which Sunderland were still the second most successful league club in England (Arsenal in 1953 were the first team to reach seven league titles). A different sport? Not quite but not far off. We surely have to look at teams in the modern era to make a more definitive judgement, and using the cut-off point of 1981 (the point when three points for a win came in) it gives us a top three of:
Watford 1982-83 (1.69)
Aston Villa 1992-93 (1.76)
Newcastle 1996-97 (1.79)
Of those three, Watford were the only side to win more than half their games, and given it’s arguably the highlight of the club’s history, it feels harsh to label the Hornets as the lowest quality runners-up, although if someone has access to their pass completion figures from that season then I’d be happy to make a complete 180 degree turn on this. That leaves us with ‘Big’ Ron Atkinson’s functional Aston Villa in 1992-93, persistent but ultimately feeble challengers to Manchester United in the first Premier League season, and that Newcastle side of 1996-97. A year earlier Newcastle had provided football with one of its all-time great second place finishes as they were slowly and cruelly hunted down by Manchester United in the spring. The scars of that meltdown were largely responsible for the events of the following campaign. Even with Alan Shearer, who scored 25 times, added to the squad Keegan was unable to shake off his gloom and resigned in January. Dalglish, looking to win the English title with a third different side, only saw his new team lose two league games in the remaining five months of the season but the club’s final points total of 68 was not only the same as Arsenal in third and Liverpool in fourth, but the lowest points total by a second place team in the three points for a win era. No runner-up has gone so low since then, either. Sub 70 is not a good look for second place teams.
Will the runners-up in 2020-21 challenge that 68 point low? It seems unlikely, especially if Chelsea continue to improve, and 1996-97 should live on as one of if not *the* most underwhelming Premier League campaigns. This season has at least had a lot more narrative, for good or bad. Sometimes seasons are classics, sometimes they are not, but as we were about to find out this time last year, any football is better than no football.
