The Premier League is only a few days away now and as the promoted clubs are herding new signings through the doors en masse, the optimism of May is starting to give way to fear.
The panic is setting in, and rightly so, because the truth is Coventry City, Ipswich Town and Hull City might be the weakest trio of new additions the Premier League has had in a very long time. And that panic, by the way, goes beyond fans of the three teams in question.
Sunderland’s march into Europe last season, and the hugely surprising competence of Leeds United, has calmed nervous onlookers who had begun to worry the Premier League was a closed shop. But the sad reality is that 2025/26 was probably the anomaly, not the two years preceding it, when all three promoted clubs plummeted straight back down without much of a relegation fight.
Sunderland have at least offered a template for others to follow, which is to say spend wildly, and all three of this year’s set have copied that model to the best of their abilities. All three clubs have made at least 10 first-team signings and at least two, Coventry and Ipswich, will be hitting the £100 million mark by the beginning of September.
But that does not count for too much, not when starting from such a low base.
Premier League relegation odds (via Sky Bet)
- Hull - 1/7
- Ipswich - 8/13
- Coventry - 8/11
- Sunderland - 3/1
- Fulham - 4/1
- Crystal Palace - 5/1
- Leeds - 7/1
- Bar - 17/2
Odds correct 10:00 BST (18/08/26)
Ipswich’s prospects are so bleak that Kieran McKenna resigned over the summer, presumably fearing the impact on his career if he tried (and failed again) to keep them up. That does not point to a healthy league, or to the rebalancing of power needed to give us a proper battle – and therefore anything to care about in the bottom half of the table.
Their transfer business does not look good either. Celtic’s Daizen Maeda is a good buy but most of Ipswich’s new additions read like top-end Championship players. Their chances of doing better than in 2024/25 look slim.
Coventry City haven’t been in the top flight for 25 years and have all the hallmarks of a team who just won’t have the quality to survive. An alarming absence of Premier League experience will hold them back.
Then there’s Hull City, who essentially got promoted by mistake, ranking 23rd out of 24 clubs on Opta’s ‘expected points’ table based on their xG data. Hull have struggled to spend money this summer compared to their fellow promoted clubs and are in genuine danger of beating Derby County’s longstanding points record.
Coventry are the best bet, but even if they exceed expectations it’s hard to see who exactly will fall apart badly enough to finish below them. Leeds and Sunderland might slip back, although both have strengthened impressively, and however badly Fulham and Crystal Palace drop off it is hard to see them getting fewer than 40 points.
However we argued similar last year before Sunderland exploded out of the gates and Leeds proved to be a far more physically robust side than was understood. But again, it’s hard to see history repeating here. Ipswich and Coventry don’t have the power or Premier League know-how of Leeds, while both face very difficult opening fixtures that will almost certainly prevent fast starts.
The Premier League enjoyed a sudden return to competitive action at the bottom end last year, a jolt so sharp it almost saw Tottenham Hotspur drift into oblivion. But like Spurs’ collapse it was just an anomaly. The future still points towards promoted clubs flailing badly; towards all the joy of promotion dissipating by the end of August.
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