Betfair Official Blog

Footnotes:

• In its first three seasons the Premier League featured 22 teams playing 42 games.
• The bottom three were relegated except in 1994-95 when four teams went down.
• Only two sides – the champions and winners of the play-offs - were promoted in 1994-95 in order to switch to the 20-team, 38-game league that has existed since 1995-96.

Harsh truths for the newly promoted

Only once have all three newly promoted sides survived – Fulham, Blackburn and Bolton in 2001-02. All three have been ever present since.

On the only occasion that all three promoted sides went straight back down – Bolton, Barnsley and Crystal Palace in 1997-98 – none of them returned for four years.

Only 24 of the 47 clubs promoted into the Premier League have survived their first season.

Ten of the 16 Championship winners have survived, including five of the last seven, while four of the last five play-off winners have gone straight back down, three by finishing last.

Just under 28% of newly promoted teams have finished in the top half. In ten of the 16 Premier League seasons at least one newcomer has finished in the top half.

Two newly promoted sides have finished in the top half on two occasions: Ipswich and Charlton in 2000-01, and West Ham and Wigan in 2005-06.

Since the Premier League switched to 20 teams in 1995, only one team has gone down with more than 40 points: West Ham, who finished with 42 points in 2002-03.

West Brom (2004-05) are the only team in Premier League history to have stayed up after being bottom on Christmas Day.

Indeed, if a promoted team is in the bottom three at Christmas, they should fear the worst – only 20% of promoted teams in the drop zone when Santa Claus arrives have ever survived come May.

Since the Premier League switched to 20 teams in 1995-96, only one team with fewer than seven points at the end of September (West Brom, with four points in 2004/05), has survived.