This Sunday, either Tottenham Hotspur or West Ham will be relegated from the Premier League. Here, we assess each team’s chances of beating the drop.
The title race may be over but at the other end of the table, the relegation battle is very much not done and dusted.
Rivals Tottenham and West Ham head into the final day of the season on Sunday knowing that one of them will survive, and the other will be relegated.
Spurs have the advantage of knowing that, thanks to their two-point cushion over West Ham, they can guarantee survival with a win at home to Everton, while a draw is almost certain to be enough, too, given they have the far better goal difference. Lose, and that will open the door to West Ham, who will need to hold up their side of the bargain by beating Leeds.
Tottenham have not been relegated in the Premier League era, last dropping down to the second tier in 1976-77, while West Ham have been sent down twice since the Premier League began, first in 2002-23 – with a record 42 points – and most recently in 2010-11.
Both teams have been present in the top tier for the last 14 seasons, and it will be a big deal when one of them goes down.
So, who will it be? Here, we look at four elements that may affect the relegation battle.
History
The relegation battle tends to go to the wire. In 34 Premier League seasons, this will be the 24th time that the identity of at least one of the relegated sides is confirmed on the final day of the season.
It probably isn’t all that surprising to learn that most of the time, teams that start the day in the drop zone are ultimately relegated. There have been 14 occasions when that has happened.
However, that leaves nine seasons out of the 23 final-day relegation-battle deciders when a team has begun the final matchday in the drop zone, but has clawed their way out to safety.
That means 39.1% of seasons when the relegation battle went to the final day witnessed a team jumping out of the drop zone with a better result than the team or teams immediately above them. That should give West Ham some hope.
It is worth noting, though, that five of those nine occasions came before the end of 1999-2000, meaning it has only happened four times in the last 26 years.
And there’s more. Since 2011, only once has a team wormed their way out of the relegation zone on the final day of the season – when Leeds did so on the final day of 2021-22 with a 2-1 win over Brentford that sent Burnley down.
That means the feat West Ham need to manage on Sunday has only been achieved once in the last 15 Premier League years. Recent history therefore suggests it’s not that likely.
Form
Funnily enough, considering these two teams are in such real danger of being relegated, neither should be too worried about their form.
Tottenham have improved drastically since Roberto De Zerbi was appointed as manager, and had been on their longest unbeaten run of the season (four matches) until Tuesday night’s defeat at Chelsea, when they arguably did enough to deserve a draw.
West Ham, meanwhile, might be on their joint longest losing streak of the whole season (three matches) but, for them, it is important to focus on their home record.
They lost last time out on home soil, but that was against eventual champions Arsenal, and they came within a long VAR review of drawing that game. And before that match, they had not lost at home since January, a run of six league matches, plus three more in the FA Cup. It should be said that one of those FA Cup games was a draw against, of all teams, Leeds, who then won on penalties.
Nuno Espírito Santo’s side were poor in defeats at Brentford and Newcastle in the last few weeks but, crucially, they have home form, and that’s all they need this weekend. They have every chance of beating Leeds.
They will then be relying on Tottenham who, put simply, absolutely do not have home form of any kind. They have struggled at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium all season, winning just two Premier League games, none of which have come since December and only one of which has come since the opening day of the season, when they beat Burnley 3-0 back in August.
It isn’t clear what exactly the problem is at home but something is clearly persisting. Their issues have continued under De Zerbi, too. They could not cling on after being 2-1 up against Brighton deep into second-half stoppage time, and they self-destructed against Leeds after going a goal up.
Spurs did at least draw those two games, and a point will be enough for them this weekend against an Everton side without a win in six, barring West Ham producing a Premier League record win.
Vibes
Speaking of that winless Everton streak, Tottenham should be making no assumptions about doing what they need to do and extending that run.
That’s because of Dr Tottenham.
“Dr Tottenham” is a term that sums up Spurs’ ability to solve opponents’ problems, namely in allowing them to end their poor runs of form. It has persisted for years, and while it is likely confirmation bias rather than empirical evidence behind the widely-held belief that Tottenham really can cure other teams, there is perhaps some truth behind it this season.
Out of 10 winless Premier League streaks this season of at least seven games that have also ended (and are not still ongoing), Tottenham have been the team to end them on four occasions. And one of those streaks was Tottenham’s 15-game winless run, so they couldn’t have been the opponent against whom that run ended.
So, Spurs are responsible for defeats against teams struggling desperately for victories 44.4% of the time this season, ending four of the nine longest (and concluded) winless streaks by any team in the Premier League.
The most dramatic of those was ending Bournemouth’s 11-game winless run before they started their current 17-game unbeaten run, while the most recent was ending Chelsea’s seven-game winless run this week. The others were West Ham (10 games without a win) and Nottingham Forest (7 games).
While there is no science to prove the existence of Dr Tottenham, there is every chance these previous incidents will play on the Tottenham players’ minds, and that might mean there is no point playing for a point. They may not be able to handle the pressure of trying to hold on to a draw late on. The crowd certainly won’t be able to take it.
West Ham, on the other hand, face a Leeds side on an eight-match unbeaten run of their own. The Hammers have not beaten a team on anything like as significant an unbeaten run this season. They’ll have to change that this weekend.
The Opta Supercomputer
When in doubt, turn to the Opta supercomputer.
We asked it to run 10,000 simulations of the rest of the season, and West Ham were relegated 85.5% of the time. Spurs went down in the remaining 14.5% of the simulations. Those numbers show just how big the task is that West Ham face.
That is because the supercomputer only looks at the quality of the two teams involved in each match and bases its projections on what has come before. Tottenham, ranked 32nd in the world in the Opta Power Rankings, are closer to Everton (24th), than West Ham (43rd) are to Leeds (25th), and Spurs have lost only one of their last five games.
Therefore, they have a better chance of getting a result than West Ham do, and the combination of a Spurs defeat and a West Ham win is pretty unlikely in the eyes of the supercomputer.
However, the supercomputer, being a machine and all that, does not factor in emotion. It does not think about the impact 60,000 anxious Spurs fans could have on their team, or how the pressure of needing to win could mean West Ham’s players find it more difficult to execute the skills they normally do well.
There is more at play with the pressure on this weekend. Spurs may be in the driving seat with one round of games to go, but West Ham certainly shouldn’t give up just yet.
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