ON 26 May last year, Southampton celebrated promotion to the Premier League after beating Leeds in the Championship play-off final. It was the third time they’d beaten Leeds, having taken six points off them in the regular league season, the only side to do so.

Fast forward to the present day and Southampton have played 22 Premier League matches and picked up as many points in those as they did against Leeds last season, with one win, three draws and 18 defeats. Leeds, meanwhile, have won 59 points and sit top of the Championship and are enjoying a much happier season, albeit still at Championship level. Sitting alongside Southampton in the relegation places are the two sides who pipped Leeds to automatic promotion, Leicester City and Ipswich Town.

Which begs the question – is it getting noticeably harder for promoted teams to survive in the Premier League?

Last two seasons of struggle

Between 1992-93 and 2022-23, the average points-per-game ratio for newly promoted Premier League sides was 1.04. There were four seasons – 2001-02, 2011-12, 2017-18 and 2022-23 – in which no relegated sides went down, and in 15 seasons only one promoted team was relegated. The win percentage sat at 26.5%, while the defeat percentage was still a little under 50%, at an average of 48.7%.

However, newly promoted clubs have found the last two seasons noticeably difficult. Last season saw all three clubs (Burnley, Sheffield United and Luton) go straight back down. The points-per-game dropped to just 0.58 – the lowest in a full campaign in the Premier League era – and promoted teams picked up just 14 wins in 114 games, a win percentage of just 12.3% which was 5% lower than in any other season. For just the second time in Premier League history, and first since 1997-98, all three promoted clubs were relegated back to the second tier.

This season things have got, statistically at least, even worse. Leicester, Ipswich and Southampton have mustered just seven wins between them in 66 games, with that the lowest win ratio (10.5%) for promoted clubs in Premier League history currently. With just 0.55 points-per game between them, that is also an all-time low. They have shipped 2.14 goals-per-game, with only one season seeing more – you guessed it, quite easily, it was last season (2.34). 66.7% of games have been lost, the joint highest with… yes, it’s 2023-24.

As it stands, all three sides have the highest percentage chance according to the Opta Predictor of being immediately relegated.

Southampton’s woes

It has been a notably bad season for Southampton, who sit bottom on six points. It is the fewest points any side has ever had after 22 matches in the Premier League era, even one lower than Derby County had in 2007-08, when they finished bottom on 11 points. The Saints’ current points-per-game ratio of 0.27 is even lower than Derby ended with that season (0.29), meaning Southampton could break what looked like an impossible Premier League low at current rate. Alternatively, they could win their next two games and immediately go above Derby’s 11-point total. Football can be strange.

The fewest points any side has had after 22 Premier League matches and stayed up was West Brom in 2004-05, who had 13 at that stage, which is an enormous seven more than Southampton have currently. There’s a very good reason the Opta supercomputer has them with a 0.3% chance of survival.

The arrival of new head coach Ivan Juric has also not had the desired ‘manager bounce’ effect. Since his first game, the Saints have faced the joint most shots on target (37), conceded the highest xG (13.8) and shipped the most goals (14), while losing every single game. Juric is one of only three permanent managers to arrive in the Premier League and lose his opening five matches – the others are Mick McCarthy in 2003 with Sunderland (relegated) and Scott Parker in 2019 with Fulham (relegated). The omens are not good.

Leicester’s Ruud awakening

With Enzo Maresca departing Leicester in the summer for Chelsea, the Foxes became the first champions of the second tier to go into their new top-flight season with a different manager since Oxford in 1985 (Jim Smith joined QPR, Maurice Evans took over). Steve Cooper was chosen but after 12 games only yielded two wins, he was sacked with Leicester in 16th place following his final game in charge on 23 November.

Ruud van Nistelrooy took charge (having, bizarrely, beaten Leicester twice as Man Utd’s interim manager) but the results have taken a turn for the worse. Since the Dutchman’s first game in charge, only Southampton (1) have picked up fewer points than the Foxes (4), who have now lost seven consecutive Premier League matches. Another defeat at the weekend will see them equal their worst ever losing run in their league history, which was eight games in March and April 2001.

Tractor Boys to engineer escape?

Although still given a 70.8% chance of relegation, the supercomputer has given Ipswich the best chance of survival of the three promoted clubs.

Ipswich produced an extraordinary run of back-to-back promotions from League One and the Championship, the first side to do so since Southampton in 2010-11 and 2011-12. The Saints endured a tough start of 2012-13, losing seven of their first nine games, but eventually recovered to finish 14th. The Tractor Boys will need a similar recovery to avoid the drop – after winning none of their first 10 games, Ipswich have picked up three wins and 11 points in their 12 games since, which puts them 15th in the form table in that time.

They relied heavily on their home form to get to the Premier League (three defeats in 57 home games in League One/Championship under McKenna) but they’ll need to rediscover some of that Portman Road magic in the top-flight – they’ve lost five of their last six on home soil, including a 6-0 thumping against Man City, their joint heaviest home league defeat ever.

There have never been consecutive top-flight seasons with all promoted clubs going straight back down – will it finally happen in 2024-25?

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