Derby and the History of Prem Relegation

By: Ian Rose | March 30th, 2008

It has finally happened. Derby County’s relegation from the Premier League has moved from merely inevitable to official, and they will be headed back down to the Championship next season. Arguments will continue about whether they are the worst team in Premiership history, but I’ll leave that to the Derby (and Sunderland) bloggers to discuss. I wanted to take a slightly different approach, and look at the process of promotion in the Premier League as a whole, and what makes a team who goes up most likely to go straight back down.

In the history of the modern Premier League format, 44 teams have been promoted to the top flight. There are three ways to have gotten there, either by winning the Championship, coming in second, or by winning the promotion playoff, as Derby did last year. In total, just over half (52%) of teams that are promoted stay in the Premiership at least one season, with the other 48% bouncing right back down. But if you look at the playoff teams versus the ones that got there by winning or coming second, there’s definitely a pattern.

If your team wins the Championship, you have a good chance of staying up. Only six of the fifteen league champions have bounced back down immediately. It’s worth noting that even though Sunderland is pretty much safe from relegation this season, two of those six were Sunderland teams. So, if you win the league, you have a 60% chance of staying up. If you come second, your chances actually aren’t that much worse, about 54%. Playoff teams, however, are the only ones with a less-than-even chance of surviving their first season in the Prem, with only 40% making the cut. If they do survive, they stay up a shorter time, too, an average of less than four seasons, compared to more than five for 1st and 2nd placed teams.

Anyway, enough of the numbers. The point is, by winning promotion through a playoff, rather than by winning or coming runner up in the league, Derby had the cards stacked against them from the start. The Championship and the Premiership are very different places, and the jump from one to the other might be one of the most extreme changes in quality of any promotion system in the world. Those that dominate in the Championship, like Sunderland did in the second half of last season, have a chance with the big boys, but those that just barely get out of the small pond have a very hard time with the sharks.

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Category: English Premier League

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surge79uwf

In the US I know an amateur league in SC that does it, plus the NYC high school system does pro/rel, though clearly you can't expect high schools to advance further or the same players to stay every season!

Also, the money thrown around by the big Premier clubs just isn't reaching the Football League anymore. I want the First Division back - but I know it won't happen unless Manchester United, Arsenal, Liverpool et al overspend so much that their house of cards collapses and everyone else gets a chance to rise. But Sir Alex won't last forever, so I will have to wait until I'm 110 (if I ever get there) to compare the progress made by the Premier with the old First Division turnover.
Daryl

Someone recently suggested to me an extra reason why playoff teams tend to struggle in the Premier League after promotion. Not only are they theoretically worse then the two (or potentially five) Championship teams who finished above them, they also have less time to prepare for the Premiership then the other two teams. The eventual playoff winners don't know which division they'll be playing in next season until after the playoff final, whereas the first and second place teams could potentially know what next season holds weeks beforehand and start planning accordingly.
Tybalt

If West Brom had been promoted this year, they'd likely be setting a PL record for goals conceded. They have been utterly unable to distinguish themselves (by results) from the morass of quite mediocre teams at the top of the championship - Watford, Hull, Bristol City, Stoke... I'm afraid that while the Baggies are a pretty team, they're not a good one.
timmyg

I think a lot of people will agree that the playoff final last season was the worst thing that could've happened to both Derby and West Brom. For the Baggies, they blew their chance at eventually becoming a decent prem side. For the Rams, they jumped up too soon and are now a shadow (seriously, I think they've had the highest turnover in the past 10 months than any other club) of their former selves.

So although I agree with your statement, that little nugget of information is quite vital.
Ian Rose

There's no current promotion / relegation system in the US, at any level. Technically, there is a system in place for promotion from USL2 (the third tier of US soccer) to USL1 (just below MLS), but it has never really been used. For now, the only real relegation in the US is by teams that want to play in a lower league because they can't afford to play in a higher one. Even if it was just at the lower, amateur levels, it would be a great thing to try to implement.
mike

Good discussion, Ian. I know there is no promotion/relegation in the US with MLS, but is there anything like it here with our lower echelons of soccer?
Ian Rose

I guess my point is that they weren't just the worst of the teams, but they didn't even technically have to finish third. Several of the clubs that have been promoted in the past have been fifth or sixth placed teams, that just had a nice run at the right time, and that's just not that great of a preparation for the Premier League.
Empshel

The numbers make perfect sense because, based upon Championship performance, the playoff winner is the worst of the teams entering the Premiership. Derby didn't have "the cards stacked against them." They were just the team that was least able to make a hand with the cards that they held.