The stats that show this is the worst start to a Premier League season by the bottom clubs

As the Premier League’s top teams have strengthened and improved, the weaker teams have increasingly struggled to remain competitive

For the first time in the history of the English top-flight, four different teams have failed to win a single match in the opening eight weeks of a season. Wolves, Southampton, Ipswich Town and Crystal Palace are the Premier League’s flailing four, and they are already beginning to fall away from the rest of the division.
It is not especially unusual for one Premier League side to fail to win any of their opening eight matches of a campaign. For four teams to be in this position at once, though, is extraordinary and record-breaking – and it speaks volumes of the changing nature of English football’s most illustrious competition.
Each of these four teams have their own unique reasons for still being winless. Ipswich and Southampton have just been promoted from the Championship, while Wolves and Palace are struggling to adjust to the loss of key players in the summer transfer window.
But there are wider issues at play. The most obvious of those is that the gap between the best teams and the worst teams in the division is widening. Much of the Premier League’s brand has been built on the idea that any team can beat any opponent, but that statement is becoming increasingly hard to justify.
Put simply, the best teams in the Premier League are now more dominant than at any point in the history of the competition. From 1995-96 (the first Premier League season with 20 clubs) until 2017-18, the average number of points won by the champions was 86. Since 2017-18, which marked the start of Manchester City’s era of dominance, that figure has jumped to 94 points.
This improvement at the top of the table is not limited to the title winners. The total number of points won by the top four teams has also increased in recent years. Over the last 10 years, the top four have won an average of 319 combined points over the course of a Premier League campaign. Before then, the average in the competition’s history was 307.
Why is this happening? There is a simple answer: money. With each passing year, the financial gap grows between the leading teams (who earn more prize money, generate more match-day revenue and compete in lucrative European competitions) and the lesser sides. That money gives the big teams access to better coaches and better players, and the cycle feeds itself.
A consequence is that, as the better teams have become better, the weaker teams have increasingly struggled to remain competitive. Last season represented a new low point in this regard, as the three relegated sides (Sheffield United, Burnley and Luton Town) earned a combined total of just 66 points.
This meagre tally was, by some distance, the worst ever posted by a trio of relegated clubs in the Premier League. It was also a huge contrast with the early years of the division: in the first four seasons of the 20-team Premier League, the three relegated teams won more than 100 combined points.
Indeed, from the start of the 20-team Premier League era until 2019, the three relegated teams earned an average of 94 points per season. In the last five seasons, that average has dropped to 80 points.
After eight matches of this season, the current bottom three have accumulated just five combined points. This puts them on course for a combined total of just 23.75 across the entire campaign. Clearly, the sample size for this season remains too small for that to be a predictive figure – but their struggles are in keeping with the wider trend.
Is it a coincidence that the three teams who went down last season were the three promoted clubs from the Championship? It seems unlikely. If the gap between the best and worst Premier League teams is growing, then the gap between the Premier League and Championship must also be expanding, for many of the same reasons.
The good news for Wolves, Southampton, Ipswich and Palace is that they are far from doomed. Of the 29 previous teams in Premier League history who did not win any of their first eight games, 10 of them went on to avoid relegation. That includes Bournemouth last season, who started horribly under Andoni Iraola but ultimately finished 12th.
There is also hope to be taken from the fact that, this year, there are four teams in this unenviable position. Even if they all remain so far off the pace, one of them will survive.
For Wolves, Southampton, Ipswich and Palace, the concern will be simply getting through the next game without further pain. For the rest of English football, though, the struggles of this quartet should raise more alarm about the increasingly pressing issues of competitiveness and balance in the Premier League.