Scratching the Bottom of the Barrel

Typically, this point in the season marks the start of the race towards safety for the clubs languishing at the bottom of the table. However, since the turn of the new year, the bottom three seemed condemned to relegation.

This season’s relegation battle may end up being the worst one in recent memory.

The relegation battle will usually only feature one team that is truly dead on arrival. This year’s race sees three teams that are clearly not Premier League material. 

All three teams promoted from the Championship have stuck to the bottom of the table like glue. While they each played well in a few games, each team’s season has been a disaster. For a few of these clubs, they shocked viewers by how badly they prepared for the Prem.

Each year, the race to safety features bad teams, but they can at least stay competitive. This year’s edition, however, feels like the worst one in quite some time. It’s not just that the teams are disastrously bad but also wholly uncompetitive.

Never receiving the attention of the title race, the relegation is a treasured part of the Premier League season.

Unfortunately, fans continue to be treated to one of the weakest in recent memory this season.

Getting promoted to the Premier League is a massive achievement in itself. Given the financial aspects at stake, as well as those of pride, clubs give their full effort to stay up.

Ipswich, constrained by their lack of experience and finances, attempted to bring in the right talent, combining a mixture of the Championship’s best talents with fringe Premier League talent, which should have worked. Unfortunately, their failure to build out a competent defense doomed them to relegation.

Southampton, on the other hand, feels like more of a failure. With a reputation of having a great scouting department, most expected their transfers to propel them towards the mid-table.

PHOTO: Premier League/Facebook

Instead, however, their squad seems to be close to becoming the worst squad in Premier League history. None of their transfers panned out, especially Brereton Díaz, as they can’t seem to score. Nothing about this team works, and they may not see the Premier League again for a long time.

Leicester continued their struggles in the Prem, as losing Enzo Maresca may have killed their chance. Unlike their other bottom dwellers, the Foxes found some gold in their transfers, specifically Bilal El Khannouss. While Vardy remains a Premier League legend, not having another consistent striker promised to hurt them coming into this season.

Another bad defensive team; they failed to really pick up on their lessons from previous years. Faes and Vestergaard both struggled in their previous stints in the Prem, and those struggles have yet to disappear. Mads Hermansen flashed glimpses of being a decent keeper, but he finds himself as one of the worst keepers in the league.

While Ipswich’s struggles are somewhat understandable, their relative success compared to their fellow promoted clubs should scare their competitors.

Leicester and Southampton needed to show that their drop was a once-in-a-decade thing, but perhaps their recent Premier League stints were the outliers.

No one expects the best football out of these bottom dwellers. However, most want a race that is, at a bare minimum, competitive. 

Rather than this being the case of the rest of the bottom of the table being good, this reflects more on how bad the promoted clubs have been. The clubs hovering around the bottom in any other season would be in a proper relegation battle. Instead, they found safety in the worst clubs the league has seen in a while.

The Wolves’ poor play over the past seasons would doom them in any other season besides this one. Rivaling Ipswich for the third worst defense in the league, they field one of the weakest defenses in recent memory. Similar to Bournemough in the past, Wolves continue to flirt with relegation and will not be saved unless they are relegated. 

Everton and West Ham, despite some mid-table hopes, continue to prove that they belong in the bottom of the table. In comparison, Tottenham and United’s positions symbolize their clubs’ chaos more than their potential.

Looking at previous seasons, while they may not have been the most exciting, other relegation battles at least had more parity. For example, the 2022/23 season, which featured both Leicester and Southampton, saw 18th and 14th separated by six points. Compared to this season, the difference is 16 points.  

Additionally, Southampton, at the time of writing, only won two games, making that the lowest amount in 17 years. One needs to return to 2007/08, when Derby County won one game, to find actual competition to the Saints. Their May 3rd game against Leicester provides them their only real chance at avoiding becoming the first-ever two-win Premier League club.

A historically lousy relegation battle provides nothing besides shame to fans.

Even a weak bottom half did little to give competition to three truly bad clubs.

Unless you root for these clubs, there is no reason to care for these bottom three. This set of teams also may not see the Premier League again for quite some time.

So much combined to produce the worst relegation battle in over a decade. 

PHOTO: Premier League/Facebook