Ranked: The 10 least successful Premier League teams in relation to expenditure
Last year appeared to be the worst possible outcome.
Almost everything went awry for Tottenham Hotspur. The team faced numerous injuries. They experienced significant misfortune in tightly contested matches — scoring 64 goals while allowing 65 — and ultimately shifted their focus away from the Premier League, concentrating instead on securing victory in the Europa League, which they accomplished.
Consequently, Tottenham, ranked as the ninth-wealthiest football club globally by Deloitte, concluded the previous season in 17th position in their domestic league. Nevertheless, they were never at risk of relegation, finishing 12 points ahead of 18th-place Leicester City, with a goal differential that was 46 goals superior to that of the Foxes.
This situation seemed to confirm that the “Big Six” clubs in England are indeed too large to fail. This is, after all, the reason these teams are valued in the billions, while others can be acquired for a few hundred million.
However, it appears that circumstances can always deteriorate further. With nine matches left this season, Spurs find themselves just one point above 18th place, which is the relegation zone. They still have to visit Anfield to take on Liverpool and Stamford Bridge to face Chelsea, and they will host Nottingham Forest, who are tied for 18th on points, later this month.
Forecasting models, betting markets, and general sentiments all indicate a significant possibility that Tottenham may face relegation and find themselves competing in the Championship next season.
This would represent a historic, nearly unimaginable failure, and it could be regarded as the worst Premier League season of the modern era … correct? Let’s investigate.
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Identifying the Premier League’s ‘worst’ teams
A primary issue with the Premier League — both in general and from an analytical perspective — is that the competition is imbalanced. Not all teams have the same financial resources, making it unjust to directly compare Manchester City’s point total with that of Brentford. Instead, we must account for the financial investment of each team and then evaluate it against an expected performance level.
This is the approach taken here. Initially, I examined the estimated market value from Transfermarkt for every Premier League squad since the 2010-11 season. These figures typically correlate strongly with the financial outlay each team makes on its players. Next, I analyzed each season individually and calculated an expected point total based on the correlation between points earned and a team’s market value for each specific season.
Thus, to generate these rankings, I compared each team’s actual point total with their expected point total. The following teams are the ten clubs that finished the furthest below their anticipated projections.
10. Manchester United, 2024-25
• Expected points per game: 1.57
• Actual points per game: 1.1
During Sir Alex Ferguson’s last three years at the club, Manchester United exceeded their expected point totals by an average of 0.23 points per game — nearly nine points per season. Since then, they have underperformed by approximately 0.09 points per game, or about 3.5 points per season.
This figure may not seem particularly low, but consider all the “Manchester United are back” articles you’ve encountered over the last decade. Football is inherently unpredictable, and United consistently possesses talented squads, which has led to some standout seasons amidst an overall decline. The question for the future is: Are we merely witnessing a continuation of this trend?
Last season marked United’s worst performance in the dataset, while this season thus far could be their best. This is largely due to their roster currently being valued as the sixth-most valuable in the league, but this narrative has played out before.
Is the club on a path toward sustainable success, or is this merely another temporary improvement in a longer narrative of decline?
9. Southampton, 2022-23
• Expected points per game: 1.21
• Actual points per game: 0.7
Stats Perform has shot-stopping data available from the 2018-19 season. This data assesses where every shot landed on the goal frame, estimates the likelihood of each shot resulting in a goal, and then compares the total goal probability of all shots faced by a goalkeeper to the actual goals conceded.
These statistics can be quite erratic from season to season, but goalkeeper Gavin Bazunu’s 2022-23 season with Southampton was the worst recorded:
Orange dots represent goals, purple dots indicate shots, and larger dots signify higher expected goals (xG) per attempt. He was anticipated to concede 35.42 goals but ended up conceding 52.
8. Huddersfield Town, 2018-19
• Expected points per game: 0.92
• Actual points per game: 0.4
At that time, Huddersfield’s 16 points and minus-54 goal differential were both the worst in the league since 2010. While these figures have been matched and surpassed multiple times since, it is hard to envision the following record being equaled anytime soon: Huddersfield’s leading non-penalty goal scorers were Mathias Jorgensen and Karlan Grant, each with three goals.
7. Chelsea, 2015-16
• Expected points per game: 1.82
• Actual points per game: 1.3
Chelsea has 16 seasons recorded in this database, and they have surpassed their expected point total … only once.
Interestingly, that was during the 2014-15 season, when they comfortably secured the Premier League title under Jose Mourinho, only to completely collapse the following year. Eden Hazard was named Player of the Year with 11 non-penalty goals and nine assists in 2014-15. The subsequent season, he scored four goals and provided three assists. Mourinho was dismissed in mid-December, and Chelsea finished in 10th place.
Chelsea was previously owned by a Russian oligarch who invested $2 billion of his own wealth into the club, and they are now owned by a consortium of billionaires striving to maximize spending on players within the Premier League’s regulations. Despite this, they have only genuinely contended for a title in two of the last 16 seasons — winning both times.
6. Tottenham Hotspur, 2024-25
• Expected points per game: 1.52
• Actual points per game: 1.0
It may not appear so, but Spurs have actually established a fairly consistent performance trend. Or, at least, they had established a fairly consistent performance trend.
Here’s how their non-penalty expected-goals differential compares across every full season since 2010:
Four successful years, followed by one poor year, then four successful years again, and so forth.
Considering that Tottenham has predominantly operated as a selling club in the modern era, this pattern is understandable. They acquire a number of promising young players, enjoy a four-year period together (the average duration of a player’s prime), and then either depart for larger, wealthier clubs or remain and decline. This cycle then repeats.
The troubling aspect is that the most recent “peak” was notably low, occurring during a time when Tottenham had finally established themselves as one of the wealthiest teams globally. Even more concerning, the chart does not account for the current season …
5. Wolverhampton Wanderers, 2025-26
• Expected points per game: 1.07
• Actual points per game: 0.5
The notion of “form” often lacks significance beyond merely reflecting recent outcomes. A recent improvement in results does not guarantee future success.
That said, Wolves have secured 13 of their 16 total-season points since the beginning of the year. Their expected-goal differential during this period? Slightly worse than it was prior to January 1.
4. Tottenham Hotspur, 2025-26
• Expected points per game: 1.62
• Actual points per game: 1.0
It is difficult to comprehend how we arrived at this point, but I would attribute it to a combination of injuries, a team-building strategy that overlooked the fundamental skill of “passing a soccer ball,” and the increasing overall competitiveness of the Premier League.
However, the most astonishing aspect of this situation is that it cannot be attributed to mere misfortune. If someone told me that one of the “Big Six” clubs was genuinely in a relegation battle with fewer than ten matches remaining, I would assume that luck was playing a significant role. Teams often experience season-long slumps in finishing and shot-stopping, and one would expect that to occur for a team with Tottenham’s resources to find themselves so low in the standings.
That, however, is not the case — at all. Here’s how the league currently ranks by non-penalty expected-goal differential:
Indeed. With West Ham United and Nottingham Forest positioned ahead of them in that chart, one could reasonably argue that Tottenham is fortunate to be in 16th place.
3. Southampton, 2024-25
• Expected points per game: 1.05
• Actual points per game: 0.3
Here is the renowned John Maynard Keynes discussing soccer tactics:
“For it is in the essence of his behaviour that he should be eccentric, unconventional and rash in the eyes of average opinion. If he is successful, that will only confirm the general belief in his rashness; and if in the short run he is unsuccessful, which is very likely, he will not receive much mercy. Worldly wisdom teaches that it is better for reputation to fail conventionally than to succeed unconventionally.”
Fine, he was referring to investing — but he might as well have been discussing soccer coaches and why they tend to adopt similar strategies. Here is a chart that, I believe, encapsulates both the advantages and disadvantages of being different. It compares the points earned with each team’s pass completion percentage outside of the attacking third:
In the upper left and lower right, you will observe two significant outliers. The team in the upper left, which deviated from patient passing to an extent few teams ever have, is Leicester City, who won the Premier League in 2016. And in the lower right? It’s Southampton, who attempted to control possession like Manchester City and ended up being one of the worst Premier League teams in history.
2. Chelsea, 2022-23
• Expected points per game: 1.95
• Actual points per game: 1.2
Chelsea invested over €600 million in transfer fees during Clearlake Capital and Todd Boehly’s inaugural season as owners of the club. The players they acquired included:
• Enzo Fernández: €121.00 million from Benfica
• Wesley Fofana: €80.40 million from Leicester
• Mykhailo Mudryk: €70.00 million from Shakhtar Donetsk
• Marc Cucurella: €65.30 million from Brighton
• Raheem Sterling: €56.20 million from Manchester City
• Kalidou Koulibaly: €41.90 million from Napoli
• Benoît Badiashile: €38.00 million from Monaco
• Noni Madueke: €35.00 million from PSV
• Malo Gusto: €30.00 million from Lyon
• Carney Chukwuemeka: €18.00 million from Aston Villa
• Cesare Casadei: €14.86 million from Inter
• Andrey Santos: €12.50 million from Vasco da Gama
• Pierre-Emerick Aubameyang: €12.00 million from Barcelona
• David Datro Fofana: €12.00 million from Molde FK
• João Félix: €11.00 million loan from Atlético Madrid
• Gaga Slonina: €9.09 million from Chicago Fire
• Denis Zakaria: €3.00 million loan from Juventus
Not only was there no immediate success — they dismissed two managers while finishing in 12th place with 44 points — but there has been minimal long-term success as well.
Most of these players are no longer part of the squad, and only two of them, Enzo Fernández and Marc Cucurella, have started 20 matches this season.
1. Aston Villa, 2015-16
• Expected points per game: 1.15
• Actual points per game: 0.4
“Tim Sherwood is at his best when he is backed into a corner.”
-Tim Sherwood
Tim Sherwood made this statement after managing Villa to a 1-0 defeat against West Brom. Backed into a corner, with four points from their first six matches, Villa went on to lose their next five matches, resulting in Sherwood’s dismissal. They won only two of their subsequent 27 games and were relegated with what was then the third-lowest point total in league history.
Villa was one of only seven clubs that had not faced relegation since the Premier League’s inception. Now, there are six: Manchester City, Manchester United, Liverpool, Everton, Arsenal, Chelsea, and Tottenham.
