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What goes up inevitably comes down?

It looks very likely that the three teams promoted from the Championship last season will be relegated from the Premier League.

What is clear is that the number of points required to finish above the dotted line has been trending downwards for a decade, as have the cumulative points haul of the three relegated sides. It now requires mismanagement on a pretty epic scale for an established Premier League club to be relegated.

Seventeenth-placed Wolves are averaging less than a point per game but could feasibly fail to win another point and stay up with 26 points, which is what 18th-place Luton finished on last season. When Charlton were in the top flight the survival target was 40 points.

Usually, however, they are putting up a better fight than this. The nine-point gap between 18th-placed Ipswich and Wolves in 17th is also the biggest gap at this stage in the Premier League era, and by some distance: only once has the deficit been more than three points.

Yet even huge investment, spent smartly, guarantees nothing. According to Transfermarkt, Ipswich’s £106million spree following promotion was world football’s 13th-highest outlay during the summer transfer window.

Southampton, who spent just under £100million, were only two places further behind on that list and in a table of Premier League spending, they ranked seventh and eighth respectively. Leicester’s £72million outlay was a little more conservative, but was still more than Crystal Palace, Wolves, Newcastle United, Everton, Liverpool and Manchester City. But these days, even for a club like Leicester — who won the Championship with 97 points in their first season outside the top flight for a decade — there is no room for errors of judgment.

All three will be cushioned by parachute payments of £49million next season, a figure almost ten times bigger than their Championship rivals receive in Premier League solidarity payments. And that’s the other side to this story: the increasingly distortive effect of the Premier League’s economic model on the competitive balance of the division below.

Sheffield United and Burnley, both relegated last season, are second and third in the Championship, while Leeds United, relegated the season before (after staying up for two seasons), sit top of the table. Yet abolishing parachute payments, as the EFL’s chairman Rick Parry continues to lobby for, would threaten to disincentivise promoted teams from investing.

Indeed, there is a growing sentiment in Premier League boardrooms that granting the EFL’s wish would not be such a bad thing, as it would further entrench their top-flight status.

With American owners increasingly in place in the top flight, it is possible that there will be pressure to reduce the number of promotion places.   Investors don’t like to see their expensive franchises relegated, an unfamiliar concept in the US.

 

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