Will Spurs take West Ham’s crown as the Premier League’s ‘best’ relegated team? | OneFootball

It very much looks like it’s now a two-way fight to avoid joining Wolves and Burnley in next season’s Championship.

West Ham hold a two-point advantage over Spurs, but with both winning on Saturday while Leeds and Nottingham Forest’s good form continues there is now a high chance that whoever does take the final relegation place can at least console themselves with being among the least sh*t teams ever to fall through the trapdoor.

Spurs might still thinking about the bad news. But they’ve got a win now! And four points from their last two games! As many as they managed in their previous 13!

If – and, sure, it’s a big if – they can now go on A Bit Of A Run having at last discarded their albatross then there is every chance a) they can cobble together 40 points all told but also b) it won’t actually be enough.

There is even an admittedly unlikely but undeniably hilarious scenario where a suddenly freefalling Newcastle get dragged back into the mix. They can’t buy a point right now, and haven’t yet quite nudged beyond a total that historically absolutely guarantees safety.

West Ham currently have 36 points, a final total that would have ensured safety in each of the last nine seasons but seems unlikely to be sufficient this season.

If it is West Ham who go, they are already sure to at least match the points total of the 10th ‘best’ relegated side of the 20-team Premier League era. Spurs are one win from securing their own place on this list if and when their likely fate is confirmed.

The Hammers, of course, already currently hold the dubious honour of being officially the best Premier League team to be relegated. Worra trophy.

Here are the 10 best relegated teams of the 38-game era, based on your standard tiebreaker criteria.

10) Charlton 1998/99 – 36pts

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Charlton’s first season in the Premier League remains the best of various 36-point efforts to end in relegation, although a strong case could be made that Wigan’s 2012/13 – 36 points and a cheeky FA Cup win – is actually better.

We’re going strictly on table tiebreakers, though, and Charlton’s minus 15 is easily the least bad goal difference of the 36-pointers. In the unlikely event West Ham lose all their remaining games, they would fail to knock the Clive Mendonca-powered Addicks out of the top 10. Something to think about there, lads.

9) Newcastle United 2015/16 – 37pts

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Easy now to forget that it wasn’t just the top of the 2015/16 table that looked f*cking mental. Entirely understandable that Leicester’s title triumph is all anyone really remembers, but the fact both Newcastle and Aston Villa got relegated that season should not be overlooked.

Villa, an absolute ungovernable shambles of a club at this time, were worse that season than Wolves have been this season, finishing dead last with a mere 17 points to their name.

Newcastle were not that bad, but still pretty horrific. Steve McClaren made it all the way to March despite managing only six wins. He was eventually replaced by Rafa Benitez, who oversaw a significant improvement and a six-match, 12-point unbeaten run to finish the season that couldn’t prevent the inevitable but did at least propel Newcastle into this list.

Another point to note about the absurdity of 2015/16. Just as the top of the table contained one reassuring note of sanity – Arsenal in second between Leicester and Spurs – so too did the bottom, where Norwich very correctly nestled themselves between Newcastle and Villa.

8) Manchester City 1995/96 – 38pts

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City had finished a couple of places and a handful of points above the four-team relegation zone in 1994/95, the final 22-team Premier League season, but wouldn’t survive their first exposure to the 20-team format.

A pair of 1-0 wins over Sheffield Wednesday and Aston Villa on matchdays 36 and 37 had given City a fighting chance, and a 2-2 draw against Liverpool on the final day ought to have been enough. But Southampton and Coventry also got results on the final day, leaving all three on 38 points and City the losers on goal difference.

7) Sheffield United 2006/07 – 38pts

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One of the most dramatic final-day shootouts saw Sheffield United condemned to the drop by a 2-1 defeat against Wigan on the final day of the 2006/07 season, finishing level on points with the Latics but losing out by one goal on goal difference.

To make matters worse, Wigan’s winning goal that sent the Blades down was a penalty scored by David Unsworth, who had joined Wigan on a free transfer in January from Sheffield United.

To make matters even worse, Sheffield United would still have been okay had West Ham simply lost to champions Manchester United. United had lost only once at home all season, against Arsenal, but having already wrapped up the title fell to a 1-0 defeat on the final day that allowed the Hammers to pull themselves clear and left Sheffield United sh*t out of luck when the music stopped.

The Blades have suffered two further Premier League relegations since, and it’s fair to say neither of those threatened this list. Indeed, across both the 2020/21 and 2023/24 seasons combined they managed only a point more than the unfortunate class of 06/07.

6) Blackpool 2010/11 – 39pts

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Massive bonus points due to Blackpool here for amassing a points total that would have provided a double-digit cushion against relegation in several recent seasons yet 15 years ago wasn’t even good enough for 18th.

Nobody could deny the entertainment value of Blackpool’s first and still only Premier League season – their only top-flight one since 1971. They set the tone early, beating Wigan 4-0 in their first game and losing 6-0 to Arsenal in their second.

Blackpool scored 55 goals – the same as fifth-placed Spurs – but conceded 78 and were left to rue the inability to turn just one of a series of draws on the run-in into victory before going down swinging on the final day, briefly going 2-1 up in the second half before eventually succumbing to an on-brand, entertaining yet heartbreaking 4-2 defeat at Manchester United.

Blackpool have been, fittingly, on a rollercoaster ride around the Football League divisions ever since but not yet managed another crack at the Big One.

5) Birmingham 2010/11 – 39pts

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The fifth season in six to feature either promotion or relegation for Birmingham proved the last decisive drop of that particular yo-yo and remains for now their last season in the top flight.

As well as relegation by a single point in a rare example of the 40-point barrier actually proving to be a thing, it was a season that featured a memorable League Cup triumph before a grisly late-season tumble down the table.

Birmingham were as high as 14th as late as mid-April after a 2-0 win over Sunderland, but would pick up just one further point from their last six games, against a Wolves side that would finish above them by that single point.

4) Middlesbrough 1996/97 – 39pts

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One of the more curious Premier League seasons on the books this. Another team to make this top 10 from a 19th-placed finish, but that tells a fraction of the story for a team that actually won 42 points on the field as well as reaching the final of both cups.

The decision to postpone at short notice a league game against Blackburn just before Christmas proved incredibly costly. Boro already had injury problems before a virus swept through the squad, leaving Bryan Robson with only 12 available senior players. Which is already a struggle before you consider three of the 12 were goalkeepers.

In all, Robson had 17 players technically available, including five youth players, two of whom were themselves still recovering from injuries.

Yet had Middlesbrough simply gone to Blackburn and played out defeat and – this is admittedly a leap – played out the rest of the season exactly as it eventually transpired, they would have survived.

Instead the Premier League hit them with a three-point penalty for failing to fulfil a fixture which eventually ended in a goalless draw, meaning they’d taken a net minus two points from that cursed fixture.

Another draw on the final day left Middlesbrough two points adrift of safety, but with a superior goal difference to Coventry who duly survived but would in another universe have found themselves right near the top of this list after going down with 41 points to their name.

3) Bolton 1997/98 – 40pts

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And now, at last, we get to the only three (for now) unfortunate Premier League teams who can do no more than issue a wry laugh at the idea of 40 points meaning certain safety in a 38-game season.

The 1997/98 season saw all three promoted teams go straight back down at a time this was seen as a novelty, but it goes without saying this was a rather different caper than the recent similar occurrences.

None of Bolton, Barnsley or Crystal Palace succumbed bloodlessly to their fate. Palace made it to 33 points, Barnsley got 35 and Bolton were the best and unluckiest of the lot, losing out to Everton only on goal difference.

Current events also make it worth noting this was perhaps the last time Spurs were in genuine relegation danger at the business end of a season. They dropped into the bottom three during December in a run of seven defeats in nine games, only eventually easing clear to 44 points after issuing a desperate mid-season SOS to Jurgen Klinsmann, whose nine goals in the run-in proved vital.

2) Sunderland 1996/97 – 40pts

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Still getting relegated with 40 points in a season when another relegated team had three points lopped off is a deep misfortune for Sunderland, who were among a bunch of seven teams bunched around the cut line on 39-42 points when the season ended.

Bearing in mind Middlesbrough were among them, that meant on the pitch at least there were seven teams who all finished the season having ‘earned’ 40-42 points. Now that’s a relegation scrap.

Even bottom-of-the-table Nottingham Forest weren’t exactly cast horribly adrift, ending the season with 34 points; two more than would prove to be plenty good enough to keep them up in 23/24 after emerging from their own fun with points penalties.

1) West Ham 2002/03 – 42pts

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The remarkable thing about West Ham in 2002/03 isn’t just that they went down with a whopping 42 points – two more than anyone before or since in the 20-team Premier League era – but that even 44 points wouldn’t have saved them. That’s what Bolton just above them managed with a far superior goal difference.

There is, obviously, a tale of misfortune here. But also one of deep underperformance that will apply with knobs on should either West Ham themselves or Spurs wind up in this position at season’s end this time around.

West Ham boasted an absurdly talented squad to get in this kind of mess. David James, Michael Carrick, Trevor Sinclair, Joe Cole, Jermain Defoe, Paolo Di Canio, Fredi Kanoute and Les Ferdinand is a fair collection of names.

And it has to be noted this wasn’t some unfortunate late tumble into the relegation zone. For much of the season West Ham were bottom of the pile, winning just four of their first 27 games. Six wins, four draws and a solitary defeat in the remaining 11 games showed what they were capable of, but it proved too little, too late to get them anywhere other than top of this bittersweet pile. For now.