How many points are needed to avoid relegation from the Premier League
‘Relegation.’ To chairmen and fans at Premier League clubs, there is probably no more frightening word.
It doesn’t just mean you drop down a division, but you lose players, riches, visibility and status as you step out of the Premier League spotlight.
More often than not, the sheer financial implications force root and branch change at the club that can take years to bear fruit again. There is no doubt it is a terrifying prospect.
The 2022/23 Premier League season is shaping up to be a cracker if relegation six-pointers and drama is your thing. There are nine teams involved in the fight and none will be feeling comfortable.
Just how many points, though, will they need to stay up this season?
How many points do you need to stay in the Premier League?
There is obviously no set number of points required to stay up as it very much depends on the standard of the league in any given season.
One thing is for sure, though: the days of needing 40 points to survive are long gone.
There are various reasons for that, but the simplest is that the teams at the top of the table have got better and consolidate more of the points, leaving fewer for the rest to scrap it out.
In fact, in the last ten seasons, the most points any team have needed to avoid relegation from the Premier League was 38 in 2015/16.
Even that, though, was something of an outlier in terms of trends. Over the last ten Premier League seasons, 36 points would have been enough to keep you in the Premier League in all but two of them. That comes out at 0.95 points per game across the whole season.
The average amount of points required to avoid relegation from the Premier League in the same period is a smidgen lower than that at 35 (0.92 points per game)
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How many points will be needed to stay up in 2022/23?
In the 2020/21 season, any team who won 29 points did enough to stay up. That is definitely not going to be the case this season.
In fact, at the time of writing, the two teams currently occupying the final two survival positions in the Premier League table – West Ham and Leicester – are currently going along at 0.92 points per game. Maintaining that would see them finish on 35 points.
That does not mean 35 points will be enough for survival this season, of course, but it does tell us that it’s very much on course for an average campaign as far as relegation is concerned.