From 500/1 to 5/1: The relegation market sounds the alarm on Spurs | OneFootball

English Premier League Tips

Premier League: Are Spurs too good to go down?

Once backed at massive odds, Betfair Exchange punters now give Tottenham a 16% chance of relegation. With just four home wins in 28 and the worst recent form in the league, is the current 6.0 actually value? Lewis Jones takes a look...

Too big to go down or too fragile to survive?

The Betfair Exchange doesn't deal in emotion. It deals in cold, hard numbers. And right now, they are sending a shiver down the white half of north London about Tottenham's relegation probabilities.

Another north London derby thrashing at home on Sunday left Spurs in 16th place, just four points above a West Ham side who edged closer to them over the weekend.

Sours are now a price of 6.0 to be relegated. This is getting very real.

That's the market assigning a 16% chance that Spurs will be playing Championship football next season. With 11 games to go, that's a number you can't just laugh off as "banter pricing". It's real, it's been matched and it's shortening week-by-week for a reason.

Wouldn't it be just so Spurs to win the Champions League and suffer relegation?

But this predicament is no joke.

Spurs relegation odds shift from triple figures to 6.0

The highest price matched was 500.0 - admittedly for just 86p, but it shows you how unthinkable this scenario once was.

From 500.0 to 6.0 in a matter of months. We're no longer discussing the unthinkable. We're talking about the plausible.

As a punter looking to get involved at either the back or lay side of the argument, at 6.0, you're being asked: are Spurs really a bottom three team over the final 11 games? Or is the market overreacting to a bad run?

If you believe their squad quality, experience and attacking threat are still comfortably superior to at least three sides below them, then you'll argue that 6.0 is too short.

If you think confidence is shot, upcoming fixtures are awkward and momentum is everything in a relegation scrap, then suddenly 6.0 doesn't look outrageous at all.

Worst form in the league, so why are Spurs still 6.0?

If you strip away the name, the stadium and the badge, then the current odds being dangled on Tottenham dropping out of the Premier League could be quite appealing to some. Because this isn't a blip anymore. It's a pattern. Yes, the Champions League has offered escapism but that comes with caveats of a very soft schedule.

Home form is supposed to be your insurance policy in a relegation scrap. It's where you grind. It's where the crowd drags you through. But Spurs have won just four times in their last 28 Premier League games at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium and have kept just six clean sheets there in 53 league games.

Home isn't where the heart is.

And right now, Spurs are operating like a bottom three team. Over a 12-game sample, they are the worst side in the division in terms of points collected (7).

If you extrapolate that kind of form across the remaining 11 fixtures, they're in enormous danger. And unlike teams lower down who might be scrapping for every inch, Spurs look caught between identities and remain having to deal with an injury crisis.

They are missing more players than any other Premier League side, with 12 players unavailable. That doesn't include Cristian Romero, who remains suspended for the next two league games.

Look at this team: Kinsky, Porro, Danso, Romero, Udogie, Bentancur, Bergvall, Maddison, Kudus, Odobert, Kulusevski.

Most Premier League clubs would probably swap their first XI for that XI, yet Spurs can't pick any of those players as it stands. It's a remarkable situation.

And one that might just end in a remarkable relegation.

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Pressure yes, relegation no - why Spurs will find a way to survive

Such is the beuty of the Betfair Exchange, there's a way to play this Spurs relegation price from the other side of the coin.

If you believe the true chance is, say, 8-10%, then in pure value terms laying makes sense if that's the way you do business on the Exchange.

You're opposing an outcome the market thinks happens once in six, but you think it's more like once in 10 or 12 based on all the reasoning that goes into the pot. This is less about whether Spurs are "too good to go down" and more about whether the market has moved too far.

This theory is backed up by Opta's supercomputer, which reckons there is just a 4.4% chance of Spurs going down. A true price of 25/1.

Laying at 6.0 means you're effectively "backing" Spurs to stay up at around 1/5 in fractions. It's chunky liability. No getting away from that. You're risking £500 to win £100.

Let's live in the real world for a minute, historically, clubs with this wage bill and depth don't collapse into the bottom three this late unless something catastrophic is happening. And is this situation at Spurs catastrophic? Absolutely not.

This is a shrewdly and highly successful run club off the pitch in terms of finances with quality packed deeply in their squad.

Eleven games is enough time for that quality to assert itself and the fixture list in terms of difficulty does look favourable to Spurs.

Nottingham Forest, West Ham and Burnley all have more difficult games left to play than Spurs, based on opposition league position.

Spurs are still to play Crystal Palace, Forest, Leeds and Everton at home.

If Igor Tudor can get some stability and inject some confidence into this talented squad of players, points are there to be taken in those home games. They also still have to play Wolves at Molineux, who could be relegated by the time that fixture comes around on Matchday 34.

If Spurs are truly a bottom-three side, 6.0 is of course generous - but if they're just underperforming, it's a gift to layers. Make your choice.