Everton are the club most likely in danger of relegation this season among the Premier League’s ‘established’ teams – a group of 13 clubs who have each spent at least three consecutive seasons in the top flight ahead of the 2023-24 campaign.
Detailed analysis of troubled Premier League clubs over the past 20 years points to Everton being in a classic ‘circling the drain’ cycle where relegation will become increasingly likely without dramatic off-field investment and innovation.
This type of boost does not appear to be on the horizon at Goodison Park; in fact the opposite is true. Everton are weighed down with huge debts. Uncertainty persists over their ownership, with fans increasingly frustrated at Farhad Moshiri.
Of most imminent concern is the prospect of a points deduction this Autumn if Everton are found guilty as charged of a breach of the League’s financial fair play rules. That case should come to a head with a hearing in October, and any punishment involving points would be hugely problematic.
On the pitch things look no rosier, with more than £45m of talent sold this summer already, including strikers Moise Khan and home-grown starlet Ellis Simms.
Sean Dyche’s Everton have been predicted to be relegated by detailed analysis of the league
Everton only confirmed their top flight survival with victory on the last day of last season
The Toffees have only added Ashley Young and Arnaut Danjuma to their squad this summer
A further 10 players have been released or allowed to leave for nothing, including Yerry Mina, Tom Davies and Andros Townsend, while on-loan Conor Coady has also departed. The only confirmed incoming players so far are 38-year-old Ashley Young, on a free from Aston Villa, and Dutch forward Arnaut Danjuma, 26, on loan from Villarreal.
A lack of goals fundamentally undermined Everton in 2022-23, with only Wolves scoring fewer than Everton’s total league tally of 34, a meagre average just shy of 0.9 goals per game. The average across the division was 1.43 GPG.
The injury-prone Dominic Calvin-Lewin scored two goals in 17 league appearances while Neal Maupay scored once in 27 league games. Everton scored either no goals (14 times) or just one goal (18 times) in 32 of their 38 league fixtures. In this pre-season they scored a total of four goals in their first four friendlies, against opponents from second-tier divisions (Nyon of Switzerland and Stoke) and the English third tier (Wigan and Bolton).
So far, so uninspiring, even allowing for the managerial acumen of Sean Dyche, who over a decade at Burnley proved he could make his side hard to beat, and consistently punched several places higher in the table than financial resources would predict.
The macro view, however, is clear: Everton have been ailing for years, as the Mail on Sunday’s analysis of the medium-term form of this season’s clubs shows.
Barring major environmental changes such as takeovers and boardroom meltdowns, Premier League clubs, generally, finish within a few places of the previous season.
Looking solely at what happened in the last campaign is problematic because exceptionally good or bad seasons can skew the picture. Cases in point in 2022-23 would be Arsenal’s unexpectedly brilliant season and runners-up spot, and Chelsea’s woeful season, as Todd Boehly and Co spent £600m on players, went through four managers including an interim and a caretaker, and drove their clown car to 12th place.
How the predicted Premier League table could look, with Everton in the relegation spots
The positions of Premier League teams over the last twenty top flight campings
Wider context shows that Arsenal had previously spent six years outside the top four, and while hot title favourites at one stage last season they ended up taking just 15 points from their last 30. Chelsea’s previous four seasons had all ended in third or fourth place.
Our analysis therefore includes the last three full seasons, taking the average finish for each club over that period, from Manchester City’s average placing of first (after three titles in a row), to Everton’s average placing just below 14th, including 17th last season and 16th the season before that.
As our accompanying predicted table for 2023-24 shows, Everton had the lowest average finish of all 13 clubs who have spend the last three seasons in the Premier League.
That left us with seven other clubs to consider: the three clubs who joined last season and all survived (Fulham, Bournemouth and Forest), the three clubs coming up this season (Burnley, Sheffield United and Luton), plus Brentford, who have now completed two consecutive PL seasons, averaging 11th place on an upward trajectory of 13th and then 9th.
Dealing first with this season’s newcomers, 20 years of data shows that the most common fate of the promoted sides (nine times in 20 seasons) is that two of them go straight back down. The next most common occurrence (eight times) is one goes down, and on three occasions (2011-12, 2017-18 and 2022-23), they all stayed up.
On the basis that Luton and Sheffield United arrive with meagre budgets in comparison to even the ‘smaller’ existing clubs, our model suggests they will be relegated. (There is a strong correlation between wage spending and finishing position in the Premier League).
Our analysis also shows a strong, emerging pattern over the past six years that the best upcoming club not only survives but does so comfortably. Fulham did last season (in 10th), and before that so did Brentford (13th in 2021-22), Leeds and Sheffield United (both 9th, respectively in 2020-21 and 2019-20), Wolves (7th in 2018-19) and Newcastle (10th in 2017-18).
On this basis and also because of the barn-storming manner in which Vincent Kompany’s Burnley romped to the Championship title with 101 points last season, our model products Burnley will be safe in 2023-24.
And thus we are left with four clubs vying for the third relegation spot: Everton plus Fulham, Bournemouth and Nottingham Forest, the last three all finishing above Everton last season.
The analysis sees Vincent Kompany’s Burnley survive on their return to the Premier League
There’s no surprise that Man City have been predicted to make it four titles in a row this year
It should be noted that, generally (and with exceptions), promoted clubs who stay up often then wobble relatively in their second season. We might therefore expect the trio just mentioned to do less well this season, and be embroiled in a scrap.
Yet the ‘circling the drain’ phenomenon now effecting Everton is real. Southampton went down last season after four of the previous five seasons ended in 15th-17th place. Burnley went down in 2022 after a similar run, as did Sunderland in 2017, Aston Villa in 2016, Wigan and QPR in 2013, Wolves in 2012 and so on.
The club finishing in 17th place in the past 15 seasons has, more often than not (eight times v seven) been relegated the next year. The future of Everton, 17th last season, is in the balance.
It goes without saying our predicted table will not pan out precisely. Arsenal and Newcastle might handle Champions League football well AND improve their league placing. Liverpool and Manchester United, or even Manchester City, might stumble unexpectedly. Brighton’s Seagulls may continue to soar, not fall back slightly, while Aston Villa may maintain momentum and not revert towards mid-table.
That we cannot know which is these scenarios is about to unfold is precisely what makes the game.
