West Ham, Burnley and Wolves Will All Be Relegated Unless Premier League History Is Made

We are 21 rounds of fixtures into the 2025/26 Premier League season and things look very bleak for the teams currently inside the relegation zone.

Those three clubs — Wolves, Burnley and West Ham United — have a combined win-rate of just 11.11%, having recorded just seven victories between them in 63 matches.

Wolves look the most doomed. They have only seven points from a possible 63 and, for much of this season, had appeared on track to be the worst team in Premier League history.

However, Wolves are actually unbeaten in three games, having beaten West Ham 3-0 last weekend, with 1-1 draws away at Manchester United and Everton either side of that victory.

Despite this mini-revival, Wolves have just seven points after 21 games. They are 14 points behind Nottingham Forest in 17th place.

Burnley and West Ham are better off than Wolves in terms of overall points. They have 13 and 14 points respectively. But neither team has won a game in the last two months.

Burnley have now gone 12 Premier League games without a victory, while West Ham’s 2-1 defeat at home to Nottingham Forest on Tuesday night was their 10th winless match in a row.

It had been expected that Nuno Espirito Santo would be sacked if West Ham lost to Forest, but he remains in the job for now.

Premier League table after round 21

West Ham, Burnley and Wolves will be relegated unless something unprecedented happens

History suggests that even West Ham’s seven-point gap to safety may already be too large to bridge.

According to Opta data, before this season there had been 18 instances of a team sitting at least seven points from safety after 21 Premier League matches. None of them went on to survive.

The outlook is also bleak when looking at the absolute totals. Across Premier League history, there have been 27 cases of teams having 14 points or fewer after 21 games. Only two survived: Southampton in 1993/94 (14 points) and West Brom in 2004/05 (12 points).

Unless one of the bottom three can deliver a recovery that defies Premier League trends, the numbers point firmly towards Wolves, Burnley and West Ham all being relegated.

Relegation is bad news for any club, but Wolves and Burnley are arguably better placed to deal with such a blow than West Ham.

West Ham’s estimated yearly wage bill is around £30 million higher than Burnley’s and also significantly higher than that of Wolves.

If West Ham are relegated then their London Stadium will make history as the biggest arena to host games in the Championship since the league’s rebrand in 2004.