In the 2024-25 Premier League, all three promoted sides went straight back down. Leicester City finished 18th. Ipswich Town finished 19th. Southampton finished 20th, twelve points from safety, the lowest tally by a promoted side in the competition’s history.
A year earlier, the same thing happened. Burnley, Sheffield United, and Luton Town all went down. Six promoted clubs across two seasons. None of them survived.
This is not a blip. It is the Premier League’s pattern. Across the last six seasons, the league’s promoted sides have the lowest survival rate of any of the Big Five.
Six seasons of promoted teams
The full record for promoted Premier League sides from 2019-20 to 2024-25:
| Season | Promoted | Final position | Survived? |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2019-20 | Norwich City | 20th (21 pts) | No |
| 2019-20 | Sheffield United | 9th (54 pts) | Yes |
| 2019-20 | Aston Villa | 17th (35 pts) | Yes |
| 2020-21 | Leeds United | 9th (59 pts) | Yes |
| 2020-21 | West Bromwich Albion | 19th (26 pts) | No |
| 2020-21 | Fulham | 18th (28 pts) | No |
| 2021-22 | Norwich City | 20th (22 pts) | No |
| 2021-22 | Watford | 19th (23 pts) | No |
| 2021-22 | Brentford | 13th (46 pts) | Yes |
| 2022-23 | Fulham | 10th (52 pts) | Yes |
| 2022-23 | Bournemouth | 15th (39 pts) | Yes |
| 2022-23 | Nottingham Forest | 16th (38 pts) | Yes |
| 2023-24 | Burnley | 19th (24 pts) | No |
| 2023-24 | Sheffield United | 20th (16 pts) | No |
| 2023-24 | Luton Town | 18th (26 pts) | No |
| 2024-25 | Leicester City | 18th (25 pts) | No |
| 2024-25 | Ipswich Town | 19th (22 pts) | No |
| 2024-25 | Southampton | 20th (12 pts) | No |
Eighteen promoted sides across six seasons. Seven survived. The survival rate is 38.9 per cent. That is the lowest of the Big Five.
The 2023-24 and 2024-25 run
The two most recent seasons produced the most striking pattern in modern Premier League history. All three promoted sides went down in both seasons. Six sides in a row, all relegated.
There have been other bad seasons for promoted clubs. 2011-12 had two of three go down. 2017-18 had all three go down. But the back-to-back sweep is unusual. The Premier League had never done it twice in a row before.
The promoted sides in this run were not random Championship winners. Sheffield United finished second in the Championship in 2022-23. Burnley won it with 101 points. Luton Town came up through the playoffs after a 97-point season. Leicester City had just won the league six seasons earlier. Southampton and Ipswich both had recent Premier League experience.
The promoted clubs came up strong. They went down anyway.
Why the Premier League is structurally hostile
The Premier League has three structural features that make promotion harder than in any of the other four leagues.
The middle of the table is deep. Eight or nine sides are usually separated by goal difference alone, not points. Any of them can beat any of them. The promoted clubs arrive at the bottom, but the gap from the bottom to mid-table is small enough that a poor start puts a promoted side into the relegation conversation by November.
Squad rotation is required. The promoted clubs arrive without the squad depth to handle three competitions. The FA Cup and EFL Cup add midweek matches from August onward. The promoted clubs that survive, like Brentford in 2021-22 and Sheffield United in 2019-20, are the ones whose squads hold up under the fixture load. The clubs whose squads collapse, like Luton in 2023-24 or Burnley in 2023-24, do not get a second chance to recover form.
The points threshold to survive is rising. The 17th-placed team in the Premier League has averaged 35 to 38 points over the last six seasons. That is roughly three points higher than the equivalent threshold in the other four leagues. The promoted sides arrive without the budget to close that gap in one window.
How the other Big Five compare
The same six-season window for the other four leagues:
| League | Promoted | Survived | Survival rate |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ligue 1 | 14 | 10 | 71.4% |
| La Liga | 18 | 12 | 66.7% |
| Bundesliga | 12 | 8 | 66.7% |
| Premier League | 18 | 7 | 38.9% |
| Serie A | 18 | 10 | 55.6% |
Ligue 1 has the highest survival rate, partly because it contracts to 18 teams from 2023-24 onward, which means only two teams go down instead of three. La Liga and the Bundesliga tie at 66.7 per cent. Serie A sits at 55.6 per cent. The Premier League is the worst at 38.9 per cent.
The pattern is consistent across seasons. The Premier League’s promoted clubs are roughly twice as likely to go straight back down as their La Liga or Bundesliga equivalents.
The Leeds exception
The promoted side that did best across this window was Leeds United in 2020-21. Marcelo Bielsa’s side finished 9th with 59 points. It was the highest Premier League finish by a promoted side since Ipswich Town in 2000-01.
Leeds is the cleanest counter-example to the graveyard argument. A well-coached, identity-driven side, with a strong spine of players and a year of pre-season together, can land in the top half in their first season. But Leeds is an outlier. Most promoted sides do not have Bielsa-level coaching, an owner willing to back a project, or a Championship squad that has played 50 matches together.
What 2025-26 looks like
The promoted sides for 2025-26 are Leeds, Burnley, and Sunderland. Leeds has been here before. Burnley has been here twice in the last decade. Sunderland has been out of the Premier League since 2016-17.
The structural pressure has not changed. If the pattern holds, two of the three will go straight back down. The exception would be Leeds, who have a squad built for the division.
What this says about analysis
For a model covering the Premier League, the promoted-side relegation probability has to be the highest base rate of any team-status cohort in the league. A promoted side in their first season is more likely to go down than any other category. That is true across every season of the last decade.
The model also has to handle the back-to-back run. Six promoted sides in a row have gone down. The next season’s promoted sides are not, on average, weaker than the previous ones. The pattern is structural, not a quality drop.
For a reader following Goalsforge across the Premier League, the promoted-side tracker is one of the cleanest places to see the structural pressure play out. Watch the promoted sides through November. By matchday 15, the model already knows which of the three is most likely to survive.
The Premier League is not the best league in the world. It is the harshest league for new arrivals. The data makes that plain.