After the weekend’s drama it says something about the career I have had when my eye gets drawn to the bottom of the Premier League table more than it does to the top.
The basement is the accident and emergency department of football. Some surgeons work in high-end cosmetic surgery and others work in the emergency room. The ER guys probably know all the stats about surviving gunshot wounds but not much about botox.
First thing about the relegation zone. There is no rest. It’s all gunshot wounds and blood and stitches. If you put together a little run like Sunderland have over the last few weeks all you can do is keep working harder and hope that it will all pay off for you come judgement day.
There’s generally no talk (sorry to break this to you, Leicester City) about having a run without European games.
And then there is the passion. Corporates don’t generally risk heart disease by mixing a big meal, some drinks AND a relegation six pointer.
Some people might leave Old Trafford or The Emirates thinking that they’ve had a pleasant afternoon’s entertainment.
You leave a relegation battle wondering what just happened and will your pulse rate ever get back to normal, and is it normal to see so many grown men cry at one time?
‘If we didn’t have losing, winning wouldn’t mean so much’
On the last day of the season unless something incredible is happening at the top end of the table the cameras will descend like vultures at the matches where teams stand a chance of falling through the trapdoor. At full time they will scan the crowd looking for faces broken by grief, fans huddling in tears, little kids looking for an explanation for the tragedy.
If we didn’t have losing, winning wouldn’t mean so much.
I would love to be a Chelsea player, scanning the fixtures for the next month or so and making a rough calculation of what is needed to stay top.
They know that on a weekend like this, getting three points at Man City comes gift wrapped with two City players sent off on straight reds at the death and then Liverpool managing to lose by the odd goal in seven at Bournemouth.
But my heart is with the lads turning up for training at the start of a week with the weight of the world on their shoulders. No matter how far away you are from relegation judgement day, every game just seems like a case of life or death.
The bottom eight
The stretch through December and into the transfer deadline period is critical in terms of survival and this past weekend seemed like an important one for those teams living in the basement. And as of this morning the basement houses everybody from Palace in 13th place down to Swansea at the bottom.
Sunderland have been losing fingernails every weekend, clawing themselves out of the grave but they are used to it and keep improving. Beating Leicester was a tonic. They just have to keep clawing and hope that Defoe and Anichebe stay out of the sick bay.
Crystal Palace had a good win over Southampton, a surprisingly good win, but Alan Pardew will know better than anybody that the one way in which his teams are always consistent is that they are streaky. Ending a six-game losing stretch doesn’t mean that there won’t be another wretched run lurking around the next corner.
Whatever injection of confidence Swansea got from scoring five and only conceding four against Palace just a week ago was lost on Saturday when they conceded five and scored nothing at Spurs.
The happy days of recent seasons when Swansea were capable of causing a little upset against top six teams seem over with for now. They have to pick themselves up and get on with the job or wrestling in the mud for points over the long cold winter.
Hull City travel to Middlesbrough on Monday night. They won’t have to acclimatise but they know it will be rough.
Hull will know too that 44% of teams who get promoted to the Premier League go straight back down the following year.
That figure will haunt them a little more than it will hurt Boro for the simple reason that Boro took the precaution of spending some money over the summer.
Boro might also remind Hull tonight that 61% of all teams who get promoted to the top flight via the play-offs go straight back down.
Of the other basement residents Burnley, just up and spooked by the 44% stat, extended their losing run to three in a row.
Leicester and West Ham are probably asking who they need to complain to, there has been some mistake, they don’t belong in the basement. But there is only one way out and on Saturday neither of them looked like they had figured it out yet.
Margins
I don’t know if Slaven Bilic has ever paid attention to things like this but in the last twenty years no team with a goal difference better then -14 has been relegated (apart from Boro who had a three point deduction when they went down on a goal difference of -9 in 1997).
The margins are that slender.
In fact, Sunderland escaped the drop last year on exactly that goal difference but Blackburn went down on a goal difference of -14 in 1999. So the damage which Arsenal did at the London Stadium on Saturday put West Ham on a goal difference of -14. And it is only the first weekend in December.
There’s an old song, Success Has Made A Failure of Our Home. Maybe for West Ham home has made a failure of their success.
In the goal difference donkey derby only Hull (-17) and Swansea (-15) have been haemorrhaging more generously this season.
Newcastle went down last year on just -21 goals. On the other hand Villa, who abandoned all hope early, on finished on -49 goals.
It isn’t Christmas yet so it’s probably a little early to be calling the odds on for whom the bell tolls but the busy festive schedule can be a killer.
Injuries start to hurt and the more shallow your squad is the more they smart. Chelsea were missing Matic on Saturday but they stuck in some lad called Fabregas and got through the day happily.
Mike Phelan, Sean Dyche and co don’t have that luxury.
They say that the magic number of points for survival is 37. Get to there and things look good. But, but, but… get to 43 points and you are making history if you get relegated. Nobody on that many points has ever gone down. No team on 33 points or less has ever stayed up.
Those margins are why you have to love the relegation fight.
Every week teams are clinging to the wreckage just trying to stay afloat. There is literally never a dull moment.
Hollywood calls and wants to make movies about the Jamie Vardys of this world when they win big, but the best drama is away from the bright lights. The story of a relegation season is real life in football.
The basement crew have to get through December and then spend January looking for pennies down behind the sofa and hoping to attract decent players to join the fight against crisis. It’s not what decent players dream of.
And then there is the home run. All the way to that last round of fixtures in May when the stats show you that, of the teams with a chance of survival on final day, playing at home gives you a 61% chance of staying up. Good news there for Burnley, Hull, Leicester and Swansea.
The aim is to scramble to high enough ground in these dark December days to not have to worry about all that in May.
But experience lets me know that there’s a touch of dead men walking about a club coming into the New Year in the bottom three.
Niall Quinn is a former Arsenal, Manchester City, Sunderland and Republic of Ireland striker. He currently works as a pundit and co-commentator for Sky Sports, and also writes for Sportsvibe.
