Originally Posted by
Eric the Half a Bee
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.
Reply With Quote