Yesterday we were talking about the promotion of Wolverhampton Wanderers to the Premier League. The Wolves are the first Championship team that secured themselves a ticket for the 2018-2019 Premier League. Several other teams are still playing for the remaining two promotion tickets. With three new teams in the Premier League, there are some teams that need to move back to the Championship. In this post we take a look at the Premier League relegation zone.
Premier League relegation zone
West Bromwich Albion
West Brom caused a big shock by beating Manchester United away on Sunday, but the gap with the safe zone is still nine points. With four more matches to go, West Brom needs to win every single match to make a chance on staying up. I don’t see this happening with matches against Liverpool and Tottenham Hotspur still to play. So West Bromwich Albion is going to be the first team that goes back to the Championship.
Stoke City
The Potters got a point yesterday after they lost their previous four matches. They’re now five points away from the safe zone. The upcoming fixtures offer some perspective for Stoke City. They play against: Burnley (home), Liverpool (away), Crystal Palace (home) and Swansea City (away). If they can manage to come within two points of Swansea in the upcoming matches they can seal the deal in the last match against the Swans, but it sure isn’t going to be a walk in the park.
Southampton
I’m really surprised to see Southampton fighting against relegation. The Saints always had a good team and still have some quality players. Nevertheless I don’t see them staying up this season. Southampton plays three out of their last five matches away from home. There’s a big chance things will be decided in the very last match of this season. Southampton plays that match at home against the newly crowned Premier League champions Manchester City.
Looking at the facts I can’t see any of these three teams escaping the Premier League relegation zone in the remaining part of this season.