Welcome back to The Athletic’s relegation battle tracker, where our data and tactics writers examine the key trends behind the fight for Premier League survival.
It was all change in the bottom half last weekend as statement wins from West Ham United and Leeds United plunged others — including Tottenham Hotspur — deeper into trouble.
With the help of Opta’s supercomputer, allow our analysts to assess the latest twists and turns.
What has changed since the last gameweek?
There has been a reshuffle in the relegation zone.
West Ham put pressure on Spurs with a Friday night thumping of Wolverhampton Wanderers, lifting themselves into 17th place before Spurs’ trip to Sunderland on Sunday afternoon. Spurs failed to respond, tepidly losing 1-0 at the Stadium of Light and adding further misery to their season. They have registered the fewest Premier League points (five) in 2026, with no team scoring fewer (13 goals) or conceding more (28) since the turn of the year.
Nottingham Forest can be quietly pleased with their 1-1 draw with Aston Villa, extending their unbeaten run to four games. They rode their luck defensively against Unai Emery’s side, but Forest are starting to offer a consistent attacking threat, logging an expected goals (xG) of one or more in seven of their past eight league games.
Meanwhile, Leeds pulled further away from the drop after a deserved 2-1 victory over Manchester United. Their first win at Old Trafford since 1981 takes Daniel Farke’s side six points clear of the relegation zone with six games remaining, but the context of those remaining fixtures is revealing.
Leeds play each side in the bottom four, meaning they not only have an opportunity to pull themselves further from the drop, but they can also have a huge say in which teams might be relegated to the Championship next season.
Who is looking stronger?
With each passing week, West Ham more accurately resemble a classic Nuno Espirito Santo side — spirited in defence and incisive on the counter, while maximising set pieces and pace out wide to cause damage with their minimal ball possession.
Friday’s 4-0 win over Wolves saw them register five shots from fast breaks, the joint-most of any team in a single Premier League game this season. One counter-attack saw Jarrod Bowen drive inside and smash a shot against the far post, while their crucial second goal came from a clinical breakaway, as Crysencio Summerville snapped into a challenge and set bustling strikers Taty Castellanos and Pablo away.
In addition to those pitch-sweeping attacks, West Ham were dominant in the penalty area from corners and wide free kicks, as towering centre-back Konstantinos Mavropanos helped himself to a double. Four of their last eight goals have come from set pieces, with the playstyle wheel below outlining the team’s steady transformation into an efficient attacking side, much like Forest when they were pushing for the top four under Nuno last season.
Though their remaining fixtures are not straightforward, they look well-equipped to soak up pressure and nick precious points over the next six games.
The standout performance of the week, however, belonged to Leeds at arch-rivals Manchester United.
Until Monday night, Farke’s survival blueprint had been built on pragmatic, defence-first foundations. The head coach’s approach was inching Leeds towards safety through a succession of low-scoring draws, but it was also leaving them worryingly blunt in attack. Before their trip to Old Trafford, no side had scored fewer Premier League goals per 90 minutes in 2026 than Leeds’ 0.92.
Perhaps it was all part of an elaborate long con, a tactical ruse to lull Manchester United into a false sense of security. Leeds flew out of the traps, adopting an aggressive, front-foot approach that stunned their opponents.
In particular, wing-backs Gabriel Gudmundsson and Jayden Bogle wreaked havoc with their relentless overlapping runs and crosses into the box, with Leeds completing five crosses in the first half, their joint-most this season. Even those that missed their target carried danger, with Okafor’s fifth-minute opener stemming from a Bogle cross that Leny Yoro failed to fully clear under pressure from Dominic Calvert-Lewin.
Okafor’s two goals were just reward for an utterly dominant first half, with Leeds generating 2.1 xG (above), their most in the opening 45 minutes this season. By releasing the attacking handbrake, Farke masterminded Leeds’ most memorable display this season, steering them clear of any real relegation danger.
Who has the tougher upcoming schedule?
Are Leeds out of the woods?
Based on Opta’s Power Rankings, they have the easiest run-in of any team in the division — never mind their relegation rivals. Home victories against Wolves and Burnley should be enough to confirm Premier League status for next season, potentially rendering subsequent clashes with Spurs and West Ham irrelevant to their own relegation battle.
Burnley’s tricky end to the season will only rub further salt into their wounds as they become further cut adrift with every passing week.
The real interest lies between the other three teams, with West Ham’s upcoming games deemed the most challenging. They face trips to Crystal Palace, Brentford and Newcastle United.
Fixtures are one thing, but momentum is far more important at this stage. With Spurs’ morale plummeting, their upcoming games suddenly look far trickier than Opta suggests.
Former head coach Thomas Frank said the club is “like a supertanker turning in the right direction” before his dismissal a month later. With only six games remaining, a speedboat is required to pivot quickly towards a better outlook.
What does the supercomputer say?
An advanced statistical simulation model has stumbled upon a staggering discovery: Tottenham are in trouble.
While blindingly obvious to despairing Spurs fans, Opta’s supercomputer quantifies the precise level of gloom that hangs over the north London club. For the first time this season, they are deemed the most likely candidates to fill the final relegation spot (Opta already considers Wolves and Burnley near-certainties to go down), at 49.1 per cent.
The graphic below shows how precipitous their decline has been. At the start of February, their chances were still estimated at less than one per cent, as they held a nine-point buffer to the drop zone. Since then, they have picked up just two points.
Meanwhile, Leeds’ relegation chances have followed almost the opposite trajectory, tumbling from 63.8 per cent at the end of November to just 1.6 per cent after their statement win at Old Trafford. Farke’s side are not quite in flip-flop, sun-lounger territory just yet, but they are in a far more comfortable position than the teams beneath them.
Tottenham’s primary rivals in the relegation fight are West Ham (39.3 per cent), who are in greater peril than Forest (10.1 per cent), with Vitor Pereira’s side continuing to steadily pick up points.