These are both exciting and nervous times for fans of Norwich, Swansea and Queens Park Rangers. A return to the top flight is just days away, but will they be the toast of the country or another Derby? What lies ahead over the next nine months? A blaze of glory, a scrap for survival or sheer embarrassment?
The gap between the Premier League and the Championship is getting wider, we’re told this all the time. In purely financial terms there is no disputing that fact. While ‘parachute payments’ have undoubtedly helped soften the blow for those who suffer the ignominy of relegation, the money pit that is the Premier League seems to grow exponentially with every new round of rights negotiations.
One would expect then with the Premier League wallowing in sickening vats of cash while many Championship clubs eke out a meagre living, that it is getting harder to bridge the gap, harder for those promoted to survive in the cut throat world of England’s top division. But is it?
In the nineteen years since the inception of the Premier League, fifty-six teams have won promotion to share in its glorious promises. Twenty-six of those sides have been relegated in their first season while another fifteen have had stays of five or more years in the top flight. Indeed, should a team survive its first season in the Premier League, the average stay there is 5.96 years.
During the first ten years of the Premier League, thirteen of the twenty-nine teams promoted (only two teams were promoted in 1995 as the league moved from twenty-two to twenty teams) dropped straight back down to the second flight. In the last nine years, another thirteen promoted sides have suffered the same fate.
On the face of it, that suggests that little has changed in the challenge of Premier League survival, and that trend continues the further you look into the statistics.
The average number of goals conceded by those teams who drop straight back down has stayed roughly consistent (67.22 between 1995 and 2001; 69.77 between 2001 and 2011), as has the number conceded by those promoted teams who survive their first season (54.88 between 1995 and 2001; 55.18 between 2001 and 2011).
An average stay in the Premier League for those who survive their first season (5.96 years, discounting Newcastle and West Brom who avoided relegation last season) likewise shows very little discrepancy, dropping only from 6.07 years (1991-2000) to 5.87 years (2000-2009).
Finally, the number of points from safety that, on average, teams who go straight back down find themselves come the end of the season has risen only from 7.54 to 7.69. So if the statistics tell us that it is no more difficult for teams to stay up in 2011 than it was in 1992, what does that mean for Norwich, Swansea and Queens Park Rangers?
Well, if the past nine years are anything to go by, Q.P.R. are twice as likely to stay up than Swansea. Since 2002, only three Championship title winners have fallen at the first Premier League hurdle (Norwich, 2005; Sunderland, 2006 & West Brom, 2008) whereas six of the last nine play-off winners have found themselves teary-eyed the following May.
Norwich aren’t exactly safe, either. Their defensive record in the Championship last season (58 goals conceded, the highest of any side in the top six) does not bode well, nor does the general record of sides who have won successive promotions from League 1 and the Championship. Paul Lambert doesn’t seem too fussed by trying to improve that defence though, as only two of his seven summer signings so far (Ritchie De Laet and Kyle Naughton) are defenders.
So if Swansea are damned by the fact that they only won promotion through the play-offs and Norwich are condemned by their leaky defence while Q.P.R. are likely to be spared thanks to their status as champions, their incredibly mean defence in winning that title plus the fact that not since the 1997/98 season have all three promoted teams gone straight back down, then who will join them in relegation?
Survival on the final day of the season followed by the sale of their star player does not bode well for Wigan. Charles N’Zogbia seemed only too happy to fly the nest and Roberto Martínez will have to bring in a quality replacement for the Frenchmen if they are to extend their stay in the top flight past seven years. Some would also consider that building a defence of which Gary Caldwell is a major part is a nice way to ensure a struggle at the very least.
Wolves, likewise, survived thanks only to a last day comeback against Blackburn and a wonderful goal from the ever popular Steven Hunt, and they too must be considered in the mix. The purchase of Roger Johnson for £7M from Birmingham is an excellent move from Mick McCarthy in an effort to shore up a defence that leaked sixty-six goals last season. The permanent addition of Jamie O’Hara in the midfield is also good business, and I fully expect Wolves to still be a Premier League team come August 2012.
It is more likely to be the team who beat Wolves on that final day in May, Blackburn, that find themselves in serious trouble. With new owners who say they want Champions League football and talk of Ronaldinho yet seem to want to spend as little money as possible, they stumbled towards safety last season. Phil Jones has already been sold and there remain doubts over Christopher Samba’s future. Tearing out two excellent centre backs is hardly the best way to prepare for a season, and the signing of David Goodwillie is unlikely to produce at one end of the pitch what they lose at the other.
Continual turmoil at Newcastle could certainly make them candidates for the drop while the seemingly inevitable loss of Gary Cahill and the broken leg suffered by Lee Chung-Yong at Bolton could be cataclysmic, though Kevin Davies is likely to win them enough chances for set piece goals to keep them clear of trouble. The appointment of Roy Hodgson at West Brom gives them a good chance of maintaining their Premier League status and the additions of Shay Given and N’Zogbia at Aston Villa should go a fair way to compensating for what they have lost.
If you want to go by the statistics, Sunderland are the closest to the average stay in the top flight. Come May 2012 they will have been in the Premier League for five seasons and without Darren Bent’s goals, Jordan Henderson running their midfield and if they continue the form that plagued them in the second half of last season, their current price of 10/1 to go down might not be the worst money ever spent.
If it were my money however, I’d be placing it on Norwich, Swansea and Blackburn to be filling the relegation places at 5:00pm on May 13th 2012.
