Villa spending v our spending

[Eric the Half a Bee]

If you don't bounce back straight away in the first season after relegation, the task becomes exponentially more difficult. I think Villa are going to struggle now, as obviously last season's rebuilding exercise failed to gain them promotion. A similar thing happened to us and many other relegated teams.

Since the first Premier League season there have been 73 relegated teams (4 went down in 1994/5). Here's a list of the number of seasons it took teams to get back to the top flight:

1 season - 21 (28.8%)
2 seasons - 7 (9.6%)
3 seasons - 2 (2.7%)
4 seasons - 3 (4.1%)
5 seasons - 3 (4.1%)
6 or more - 11 (15.1%)
Never returned - 26 (35.6%)

I have no idea when "parachute payments" started to be handed out to relegated clubs. Google isn't helpful in finding out this information, either, so I've looked at the fortunes of relegated teams over the last 10 years as a cutoff point. The results are even more stark.

1 season - 9 (30.0%)
2 seasons - 0 (0.0%)
3 seasons - 1 (3.3%)
4 seasons - 2 (6.7%)
5 seasons - 0 (0.0%)
6 or more - 2 (6.7%)
Never returned - 16 (53.3%)

It's quite remarkable that, out of the 14 promotion winning teams (out of 30 relegated over the last decade), 9 bounced straight back up while only a third of that amount returned within 2-5 seasons. Over half never returned.

To compare that with figures taken since the formation of the Premier League slightly skews things as teams have longer to get back to the top flight, so I did a comparison with the first 10 seasons of the Premier League (1992/3 to 2001/2, teams not returning by 2002/3 counted as not returned). The results were similar - 9 teams went straight back up (same as 2007-16), 15 didn't return (16 between 2007-16) though 7 took 2-5 seasons (only 3 between 2007-16 though an additional 2 took 6+ seasons while no teams took that long between 1993-2002).

It appears that parachute payments haven't made much, if any impact, on teams winning promotion back to the top flight. If anything, the number of teams winning promotion while still receiving the payments is slightly lower than winning promotion in a similar timescale during the first decade of the Premier League.

[Wales-Bales]

Since the first Premier League season there have been 73 relegated teams (4 went down in 1994/5). Here's a list of the number of seasons it took teams to get back to the top flight:

How many of the teams relegated from the Premier League made it down to League 1?

[Eric the Half a Bee]

How many of the teams relegated from the Premier League made it down to League 1?

I make it, of 73 relegations, 22 teams ended up in League 1. That means more teams eventually ended up in League 1 than went straight back up.

Of those 22 teams, 4 are currently in the Premier League (Man City, Watford, Leicester and Southampton) and 8 are in the Championship (Barnsley, Bolton, Leeds, Norwich, Forest, QPR and both Sheffield clubs). 9 are currently in League 1 (Blackpool, Blackburn, Bradford, Charlton, Oldham, Portsmouth, Swindon, MK Dons (as Wimbledon) and Wigan), with long-time first tier side Coventry in the bottom division.

In total, 38 teams have been relegated from the top division. 14 of those have never returned to the Premier League (us, Villa, Barnsley, Blackpool, Bradford, Coventry, Fulham, Leeds, Oldham, Portsmouth, Sheff Wed, Swindon, Wigan and MK Dons (Wimbledon). Southampton are the only side to have been relegated from the PL on only one occasion and return.