Southampton aim for first win against struggling Leicester | Is the gap in quality widening? |Soccer News

This weekend could be a crucial clash between newly promoted Southampton and Leicester City in the battle to avoid relegation.

Saints are one of four teams in the top half who are yet to win the league, with third-placed Ipswich, Crystal Palace and Wolves also aiming for their first win.

At the same time as this clash takes place at St Mary’s Stadium, 16th-placed Everton are due to face Kieran McKenna’s side at Portman Road, another match that will be closely watched by all relegation candidates. It will be.

Leicester tasted victory last time out against Bournemouth, but with all three promoted teams remaining in the bottom six, it’s fair to assume that life hasn’t been easy since moving up to the Premier League.

So is the gap between classes widening? The statistics would suggest so…

What does the data show?

The graph below shows the average points per game for the top three teams in each Premier League campaign since the 1995/96 season, when the league was reduced to 20 teams and 38 games per season.

Data shows significant spikes have been seen in three of the past six years, while the current projections for the top three this season are for each team to post a record of 2.48 points per game if they maintain their current returns. I will do it.

In contrast, relegated clubs took a record 66 points last season when Luton, Burnley and Sheffield United failed to return to the Championship immediately.

The graph below shows that relegated teams have increasingly struggled since the 2017/18 season, while the current bottom three teams would have won an average of points per game if they maintained their current ratios. This would be an all-time low of just 0.24.

Over the past 30 years of Premier League football, the performance of relegated teams has declined at both ends of the pitch.

Meanwhile, the attacking power of the top teams has improved, with the top three teams averaging 2.14 goals per game over the past 10 seasons.

Of course, the team can recover from a slow start. In total, 79 teams in the Premier League are without a win after five games, of which 47 are still alive.

Magic 40?

The table below shows the minimum number of points needed to avoid relegation (not taking into account goal difference) since the 1995/96 season, and shows how points needed to secure survival have been in recent years. It is clear that it is decreasing.

The 40 point requirement was often required in the late 90s and most recently in 2011, but that number has dropped to 35 or less in every campaign since 2015/16.

If we convert these numbers into a moving average, the club has typically been able to survive with just over 32 points over the past five years. This is 6 points lower than the five-year average at the turn of the millennium.

Does spending increase chances?

Naturally, spending certainly increases the chances of survival. All three promoted clubs – Nottingham Forest, Bournemouth and Fulham – maintained their top-flight status into May of the 2022/23 season.

In fact, Forest made a staggering £173.3m net in both terms that season, more than any other promoted club.

Sometimes things don’t work out. Fulham wasted £100m of net spending in the 2018/19 season. Conversely, Newcastle profited from transfer deals after winning promotion in 2010, but retained their Premier League status at the end of 2010/11.

Promoted clubs spent more money than ever this summer, with Ipswich, Southampton and Leicester investing a total of £314.5m into their teams.

Despite this heavy spending, Opta predicts all three teams will fall back in the Championship.