Changes of manager, good form, and points already on the board: the sides near the bottom of the Premier League may need bigger totals than usual to stay up.
Only a few weeks ago, the relegation battle looked over for 2025-26.
In mid-January, after each team had played 21 games, West Ham were, along with Burnley and Wolves, adrift at the bottom of the table.
Nuno Espírito Santo’s side were 18th, in the final relegation spot, seven points behind Nottingham Forest in the safety of 17th.
At that point, West Ham had just 14 points, which, history told us, meant almost certain relegation. Of the 24 previous teams to have taken 14 points or fewer from their first 21 matches of a 38-game Premier League season, only one managed to avoid relegation: the West Brom team from 2004-05 that produced one of the most famous ‘great escapes’ in Premier League history.
Forest (on 21 points at the time), Leeds (22), Bournemouth (26), Tottenham (27) and Crystal Palace (28) would have felt they had little to worry about.
But West Ham have stormed back with three wins and a draw – which came against Manchester United this week and was very, very nearly another win – from their last five games to move to 24 points from 26 matches. In that time, Forest have been on a decent run, too, taking six points from their last five games.
That run was enough for Sean Dyche to be nominated for manager of the month for January but it wasn’t enough to keep Forest owner Evangelos Marinakis happy. In the wake of a goalless draw against Wolves on Wednesday night, Dyche was sacked, meaning Forest will now become the first team in Premier League history to have four permanent managers in a season. There is no guarantee it will work, but they’ll be hopeful a new manager can improve their form further.
Suddenly, Spurs, who also sacked their manager, Thomas Frank, this week, are only five points ahead of West Ham. Leeds and Bournemouth have both overtaken them. That’s after their first eight-game winless run in Premier League games since 2008. Having been 13 points clear of safety after 21 games, the club have slid ominously towards the relegation zone and so decided to act.
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16 hours ago Ali TweedaleLike their worried fans, the club’s hierarchy might well have started looking at their remaining fixtures this season, trying to work out where the 11 points they need to reach the supposedly magical 40-point mark will come from. They hadn’t shown much in the way of signs under Frank that they could beat any Premier League opposition on current form and with their current injury problems, but the hope is a change in manager will spark a change in fortunes.
What this all boils down to is some reason to believe that each team has what it takes to make it out of trouble. Even Burnley are showing signs of life, having come back from 2-0 down at Palace this week to record their first league win since October.
It’s reasonable to consider whether we are looking at a particularly strong relegation battle. Several teams down there are picking up points at a decent rate. There’s a chance that 40 points will not prove to be the magic number that everyone needs to reach to guarantee survival.
There’s no way of knowing this for sure before the event. In only three of the 30 previous 38-game Premier League seasons has a team been relegated with 40+ points, and never since 2002-03. So, 40 points has always been enough in the last 23 years.
The Opta supercomputer agrees. Based on its predictions for every remaining game of the 2025-26 season, West Ham are projected to finish in 18th place with 36.1 expected points, or xPts (this is essentially the average total they finished on in 10,000 simulations of the rest of the season by the supercomputer). That would make 37 points enough to survive this season (though Forest are projected to finish well clear of them on 40.5 xPts, and Spurs and Leeds even further ahead on more than 44 xPts).
But shock, horror – and with apologies to our overlords – the supercomputer doesn’t always get it right. It didn’t predict West Ham’s recent improvement, for example, suggesting that they were likely to lose to Tottenham, Sunderland and United, only for the Hammers to win two and draw one of those games. And even following that run, the supercomputer likely sees it as a purple patch that may not last.
But confidence and momentum are intangibles that even the almighty supercomputer cannot fully grasp or measure, and so cannot include in its simulations of the rest of the season. West Ham’s current chances of going down are rated at 70.8%, but their form suggests they are more than capable of getting to more than the 36.1 points the supercomputer predicts. Having picked up 10 points from their last five games, it’s reasonable to suggest they could manage more than 12 from their final 12 games, right?
As well as having more belief following a very good recent run, they are also on a relatively good points total already.
In the 30 previous 38-game Premier League seasons, there have only been four in which the team in 18th place after 26 games have had more points than West Ham have now. And in two of the seasons when the 18th-placed team had exactly 24 points (like West Ham now), a side went down with 40 points: 1996-97 and 1997-98.
Meanwhile, only one team in 17th has ever had more than the 27 Forest have now. In short, the teams around the crunch point of the relegation battle (17th/18th) have good points totals already on the board.
This doesn’t mean they are going to keep on picking up points, but the teams down there do look stronger than in recent years. After two years of the promoted clubs going straight back down, the fact that Sunderland and Leeds could survive has made the relegation battle interesting this time around.
Spurs are in 16th on 29 points and will surely hope to be able to pick up 11 more from their remaining 12 games. They still have to play seven of the other nine teams currently in the bottom half of the Premier League table. They desperately need a ‘new-manager bounce’, and have enough quality in their squad to move up the table if they get one.
Leeds are one point ahead of them but have won two and drawn two of their last five games, this week coming from two goals down to draw at Chelsea. Daniel Farke will believe he can guide them out of trouble given their current situation.
Perhaps Brighton, on 31 points but without a win in six, should be starting to worry. Palace, on 32 points, might not be completely out of trouble either.
With 12 games still to go this season, there is an awful lot still to play for at the bottom of the Premier League, and many of the teams involved are showing they are all very capable of picking up plenty of the points available.
The relegation battle is looking as strong as ever, and that could mean nothing should be taken for granted, even after making it to what should be the safety of 40 points.
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Premier League Relegation Battle: Will 40 Points Be Enough to Survive? Opta Analyst.
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