Most promoted sides finish in the bottom half. That is the expected outcome. The interesting data is the other side: the small number of promoted clubs that land in the top half in their first season back.
Across the last six seasons, eight promoted clubs from the Big Five have finished 10th or higher in their first season. The list is short enough to name. It is also instructive.
The eight outliers
| Season | League | Team | Final position | Points |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019-20 | Serie A | Hellas Verona | 9th | 49 |
| 2019-20 | Bundesliga | Union Berlin | 11th | 41 |
| 2020-21 | Premier League | Leeds United | 9th | 59 |
| 2020-21 | Bundesliga | VfB Stuttgart | 9th | 45 |
| 2021-22 | La Liga | Girona | 10th | 49 |
| 2022-23 | Premier League | Fulham | 10th | 52 |
| 2022-23 | La Liga | Alavés | 10th | 46 |
| 2023-24 | Bundesliga | 1. FC Heidenheim | 8th | 42 |
| 2023-24 | La Liga | Alavés | 10th | 46 |
| 2024-25 | Serie A | Como | 10th | 49 |
Ten entries in six seasons, from roughly eighty promoted sides. Heidenheim is the only promoted side to crack the top eight across this window.
These are not random successes. The list has structural features that explain why each of them landed in the top half.
Heidenheim is the cleanest example
- FC Heidenheim came up from the 2. Bundesliga in 2023. They had never played in the top flight before. Their squad was built around a tight group of players who had been together through the promotion run. Their manager, Frank Schmidt, had been at the club since 2009. Heidenheim had no star players. They had a coherent system.
They finished 8th in the Bundesliga in 2023-24 with 42 points and qualified for the Europa Conference League play-off round. It was the highest finish by a promoted Bundesliga side in the last six seasons. It was also one of the highest in Bundesliga history.
The reason it worked is the reason most promoted sides do not. Heidenheim did not buy their way into the top half. They arrived with a system that was good enough to beat half the league on any given matchday. The squad could not rotate, but they did not need to. Schmidt ran a tight 20-man squad, with no European distractions in their first season.
Heidenheim then collapsed in 2024-25. They finished 16th and went to the relegation playoff, where they beat Elversberg to survive. The lesson is sharper because of the second season. The Heidenheim of 2023-24 was the outlier. The Heidenheim of 2024-25 is closer to the expected outcome.
Leeds was the model promoted project
Leeds United in 2020-21 is the cleanest case of a promoted project that worked exactly as designed.
Marcelo Bielsa’s side came up from the Championship after a 93-point season. The squad was full of players Bielsa had coached for two years. The owner, Andrea Radrizzani, had backed the project with significant transfer spending. Leeds kept Bielsa in place for the second season.
The result was 9th with 59 points. It was the highest finish by a promoted Premier League side since Ipswich Town in 2000-01. The points tally broke the Premier League record for a promoted side in a 38-game season. The model is clean: identity-driven manager, stable squad, owner willing to spend, and a tactical system that translated to the top flight.
Leeds then collapsed in 2021-22 and went back down. The Bielsa project was brilliant for one season, then ran out of budget and squad depth. The second season is the typical failure pattern. The first season is what people remember.
Como is the latest outlier
Como in 2024-25 finished 10th in Serie A with 49 points. They came up from Serie B after a playoff win. Their squad was built on a clear identity. Cesc Fàbregas was the on-field leader. The club, owned by the wealthy Mirwan Suwarso family, invested carefully in players who fit Fàbregas’s system.
The Como result is the freshest data point. A 49-point finish for a newly promoted side is unusual in Serie A. The Serie A points threshold to survive is roughly 38 to 40. Como cleared that by 9 to 11 points and ended in the top half.
The structural reason Como worked is similar to Heidenheim. A coherent squad, a defined tactical identity, a manager who knew his players, and enough budget to fill two or three positions. The combination is rare enough that it produces roughly one Serie A top-half finish per promoted side every two or three seasons.
The four patterns behind the outliers
Looking at the eight outliers across the six seasons, four structural patterns explain why each landed in the top half.
A manager who had been at the club for multiple seasons. Schmidt at Heidenheim, Bielsa at Leeds, Fàbregas at Como, Michel at Girona, Iraola at Leeds before. The promoted sides that succeed are almost always managed by someone who already knows the squad.
A squad built for the system. Heidenheim’s players had played together for two years in the 2. Bundesliga. Leeds’s squad had two years of Bielsa-ball behind them. Como’s squad was rebuilt around Fàbregas. The outlier finishes come from squads with shared footballing vocabulary, not from squads assembled by transfer.
Limited European distractions. Heidenheim had no European football in 2023-24. Leeds had no European football in 2020-21. The promoted sides that finish top half almost always avoid the Europa League or Conference League in their first season. The added fixture load is too much for a squad without depth.
An owner willing to fund two or three targeted signings. Alavés in 2022-23 spent carefully to fill specific positions. Girona in 2021-22 used the City Football Group network to bring in loanees who knew the system. The promoted sides that land top half are rarely the highest spenders in the division. They spend just enough to be coherent.
What this means for the model
For a model covering promoted sides in their first season, the base expectation is bottom half. Roughly 5 to 10 per cent of promoted sides in any given season finish top half. The model has to weight that probability low.
But the model has to look for the patterns that signal an outlier candidate. A returning manager. A squad with shared system play. No European fixtures. A coherent transfer window. When three or four of those conditions are met, the model can lift the top-half probability above 10 per cent.
Heidenheim 2023-24 is the test case. The model should have flagged it as a top-half candidate before the season started. The data was there.
What this means for following the promoted sides
If you follow Goalsforge across the Big Five, 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. By matchday 25, it knows whether any of them will land top half.
Outlier finishes are rare. When they happen, they happen because of structural preparation, not because of luck. The eight outliers on this list are the ones who got the four patterns right.
The rest are the data we usually write about. The graveyard pattern. The bottom-half finishes. The mid-table consolidations.
This list is the other side of that pattern. The promoted sides that came up and landed where most promoted sides never land.