Features

Points mean survival

Author: Lynda Collins
Date: 19/03/2010
Football betting

With less than ten games to go the battle to beat the Premier League drop is really beginning to hot up.

Forty points usually guarantees top-flight survival, but all the experts are predicting a lower total could be good enough to stay in the Premier League this season.

Some pundits believe teams could survive with just 35 or 36 points this season with Portsmouth hopelessly adrift at the foot of the table.

However, the likes of Wolves, Hull City and Burnley - who are all favourites with the sportsbooks to go down this season - may take little comfort from a glance through the record books.

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Which are the teams who have been relegated from Premier League with the highest number of points since its inception in 1992?

42 points - West Ham United

Manchester United won the title, Newcastle qualified for the Champions League and 16-year-old by the name of Wayne Rooney blazed on to the scene.

However, the 2002-03 season is best remembered for the year in which a team went down with a record number of points.

Club legend Trevor Brooking stepped in as manager for the final three games of the season after Glenn Roeder was diagnosed with a brain tumour but he was unable to keep the Hammers afloat as the likes of Leeds, Aston Villa and Bolton narrowly survived.

40 points - Bolton Wanderers

All three teams who were promoted from the Championship the season before were relegated at the end of the 1997-98 campaign.

Of the trio of Bolton, Barnsley and Crystal Palace, it was the Trotters who were treated most harshly as they had managed to amass 40 points.

To rub salt into the wounds, it was their inferior goal difference to Everton which cost them their place in the top-flight.

40 points - Sunderland

The same total also accounted for Sunderland 12 months previously as they waved goodbye to the Premier League on the final day of the 1996-97 campaign.

The 1-0 defeat to Wimbledon at Roker Park in the last-ever game at their historic home sealed their fate and ensured their move to the Stadium of Light as a Championship club was a bitter-sweet experience.

39 points - Middlesbrough

1996-97 was also a miserable season for Sunderland's north-east rivals Middlesbrough as they went down with 39 points.

To make matters worse, their expensively assembled side which contained the likes of Emerson, Fabrizio Ravanelli and Branco had been docked three points earlier in the season after failing to fulfil a league fixture.

They claimed 23 players had been laid low by a virus before a game against Blackburn but the loss of points eventually saved Coventry City.

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