Leeds United, Burnley and Sunderland will head into the 2025/26 season desperate to buck what has become a worrying trend in the Premier League.
The teams promoted from the Championship have each been relegated in the past two seasons and the trio will be eager to avoid suffering the same fate.
However, United Kingdom based sports betting firm Spreadex have predicted that all of the newly-promoted teams will finish in the bottom three this term.
Their annual Premier League Points Spread Predictions forecasts that Leeds have the best chance of staying up with a tally of between 35.5 and 37.5 points.
Burnley are tipped to accrue 28 – 30 points, while Sunderland are expected to finish bottom with 24.5 – 26.5 points according to the Spreadex data.
“Last season was a damp squib for bettors with the title and relegation places all decided long before the end of the season,” Spreadex’s Josh Osgood said.
“While this year’s title race should prove to be a much more exciting affair, the data predicts that the same can’t be said of the relegation battle.
“Once again, we expect the promoted sides to drop straight back down and the likes of Wolverhampton Wanderers, Brentford, West Ham United and Everton to be untroubled by the prospect of Championship football.”
“Relegation battles going down to the wire on the final day of the season used to be part of the real pulling power for the Premier League, but that now appears to be a thing of the past.
“The established sides are getting richer and richer and those from the second tier simply can no longer compete.”
The last two Premier League campaigns have made grim reading for the promoted teams, with all six clubs failing to stay afloat in the top flight.
It was a different story in 2022/23, when Fulham, Bournemouth and Nottingham Forest all managed to stay up. They have since established themselves in the Premier League.
Intriguingly, they have each achieved the feat by being astute rather than frivolous in the transfer market in terms of their overall net spend.
From 2020/21 to 2024/25 inclusive, Forest’s net spend of -€262.54m was the largest of the three clubs promoted in 2022. By contrast, Bournemouth’s bottom line was -€172.70m, while Fulham’s net spend was -€146.47m.
Each club had differing results with their record signings, further indicating that splashing the cash does not necessarily guarantee success in the Premier League.
Ipswich were a prime example of this last season, with a net spend of around €150m failing to prevent them from making an immediate return to the Premier League.
Their strategy of paying over the odds for top Championship players rather than exploring better value markets overseas ultimately proved to be their undoing.
Leeds, Burnley and Sunderland each appear to have learned lessons from Ipswich’s demise by spreading their transfer net wide this summer.
As per Spreadex Sport’s data, Leeds are the team most likely to avoid making an immediate return to the Championship at the end of the season.
They have made several shrewd signings this summer to add to a squad which already contains numerous players with Premier League experience.
The Whites have done well to rebuild after suffering relegation in 2022/23 and look better placed to steer clear of the drop zone this time around.
It will likely be a different story for Burnley and Sunderland, neither of whom look capable of garnering enough points to stay in the top flight.
Spread betting carries a high level of risk and can result in losses larger than your initial stake/deposit.
