How Many Points are Needed to Stay in the Premier League?
The Premier League relegation race is always fascinating after the turn of the year, with teams fighting to stay in the English top flight. If ever you ask anyone about Premier League survival and what is needed the common response is 40 points. Is there any truth to that, or is it simply a myth? There are stats from the past five seasons that show the days of needing 40 points could well be over, something clubs such as Bournemouth will be interested in.
Points Needed to Avoid Relegation – Stats
Let’s take a look at the last five seasons here to get a picture on recent years in the Premier League.
The team in 17th position, so the worst placed team to survive the drop have finished the last five seasons on the following points:
18/19 36
17/18 36
16/17 40
15/16 39
14/15 38
As you can see, just once in the last five years has a team got to 40 points, the others have been close but haven’t got there.
However, there is something else to factor in here, which proves that 40 points are no longer needed. This is the number of points that those teams needed to stay up, not what they got, but the minimum they needed. In the same years these were:
18/19 35
17/18 34
16/17 35
15/16 38
14/15 36
So looking at that, there has been no need to get 40 points on the board in any of the past five seasons. In three, just 34 or 35 have been needed to stay up, and at the bottom when points are at a premium, that is a huge gap.
What was the Last Time 40 Points was Needed?
The last time a team needed 40 points to stay in the Premier League was during the 2010/11 season. Birmingham City and Blackpool were both relegated with 39 points, while Wolves finished 17th with 40 points and needed all of them to stay up.
The case for 40 points may have been there a decade ago, but in recent Premier League years we haven’t really got anywhere near to teams needing to get 40 points on the board to stay up. This is important for those who are looking at the relegation betting markets for the Premier League and how they are shaping up.
Bets can be placed on who will finish bottom as well as who will be relegated this season, while those looking to back a team to avoid the drop can use the ‘to stay up’ market. There are many football betting offers available at the moment that can used when placing this type of bet on teams to stay up or go down.
With the gap between the top and bottom of the Premier League getting bigger, the task for teams at the bottom is no longer what it used to be. Gone are the day of needing 40 points, with the mid-30s looking like a more realistic gauge to use.