11 games in - a look at the last 10 Premier League seasons

[IanD]

January is going to be very important. The other side of the coin is that all teams under threat of relegation will be looking to spend as well.

Is there any evidence that teams in the bottom 3 at Christmas who spend a lot in the January window tend to stay up?

[Eric the Half a Bee]

Is there any evidence that teams in the bottom 3 at Christmas who spend a lot in the January window tend to stay up?

Crikey, there's a challenge! My gut instinct is to say probably not. I reckon it's more important to bring in the right players more than how much is spent. January isn't the best of transfer windows to get the right players in, by all accounts. I suspect (though I could be very wrong here) that more clubs bring in players for the sake of it depending on who they can get, rather than what they need, possibly because the players they need are either too expensive or not available. There's also a possibility that bringing in expensive players who aren't necessarily suitable to a squad, especially like ours, could end up having a negative effect on the team overall, making things worse.

That's why I reckon January is going to be important. We need to bring in players, that's a certainty, but not players just for the sake of it.

If I get bored enough later, I'll have a look at the last few seasons to see if there are any trends either way.

[Eric the Half a Bee]

Is there any evidence that teams in the bottom 3 at Christmas who spend a lot in the January window tend to stay up?

Having been seduced by your question, I've had a brief look. A disclaimer first - all stats come from Soccerbase and Transfermarkt, without lots of time consuming cross referencing, so any errors are down to them.

I've looked at the last 5 seasons as I couldn't be bothered to do any more! First thing to note is that in 3 of those 5 seasons, 2 of the bottom 3 at Christmas were relegated; only 1 of the bottom 3 was relegated in the other two seasons. I've looked at the January transfer activity of all the sides that were in the bottom 3 at Christmas, plus the teams that went on to be relegated if they were outside of the bottom 3 when Santa came.

The three biggest spenders from that list were Newcastle, Norwich (both 2015/16) and Stoke (2017/18). All three of those clubs were outside the bottom 3 at Christmas but went on to be relegated. In fact, of the 9 highest spenders, 7 went down.

Of the 7 clubs who were outside the bottom 3 at Christmas but went on to go down, 5 spent in the transfer market. However, 6 of the 7 clubs that were in the bottom 3 at Christmas but survived spent money.

6 clubs spent no money at all. One of those survived (Bournemouth, last season).

7 clubs spent £10m or less. 4 survived.

9 clubs spent over £10m. 2 survived. No team spending over £20m survived. In fact, those clubs went from safety at Christmas to the Championship in 5 months.

In short, there's a suggestion that the more you spend in January, the more problems it causes. However, spending nothing in January is likely to result in relegation as well if you're already down there.