Where will newly promoted Fulham and Nottingham Forest finish in Premier League?

What goes up does not always come down. Teams promoted from the Championship can stay in the Premier League. Two of those trying to do so this season will play on Friday night – Fulham are at Nottingham Forest. How do they compare with promoted teams from the past, and how many of them survived?

Every time I have seen Fulham or Forest I thought they played well. Overall, I feel, Fulham have got even better results than they deserved, Forest slightly worse. Expected-goals compilers seem to agree, though in different ways – as I explain elsewhere on this page, there can be significant variations between them. After six games Fulham are tenth with eight points, Forest 19th with four points.

I studied the results of teams promoted from the Championship to play in the Premier League in the 26 seasons from 1996-97 to 2021-22. Those are the last 26 completed seasons, in each of which there were three new arrivals from the Championship – the title-winners, runners-up and playoff winners.

In the Premier League the Championship title-winners averaged 40 points, runners-up 39 points and playoff winners 37 points. How many of them where relegated? Thirty-eight per cent of Championship title-winners, 42 per cent of runners-up and 54 per cent of playoff winners.

The better a team did in the Championship the better they were likely to do in the Premier League. More often than not, a team who finished higher in the Championship also finished higher in the Premier League. But not always. On average the differences between the three types of team were smaller in the Premier League than they had been in the Championship.

In the Championship the title-winners averaged 94 points, runners-up 87 points and playoff winners 79 points. Title-winners averaged seven points more than runners-up, who averaged eight points more playoff winners. In the Premier League the Championship title-winners averaged just one point more than runners-up, who averaged only two points more than playoff winners.

A lot can happen between seasons, even for a team who will not be changing division. Old players can progress or regress, new signings can make the squad better or worse. And luck can turn around.

Promoted teams averaged 87 points in the Championship. Teams promoted with 88 points or more averaged 39 in the Premier League, teams promoted with 86 points or fewer averaged 37 in the Premier League. How many of each group were relegated? Forty-two per cent and 53 per cent.

Last season Fulham topped the Championship with 90 points, Bournemouth were second with 88 points and Forest qualified for the playoffs with 80 points. Since then Forest have signed 21 players.

I also studied the payrolls of promoted teams in the 21 Premier League seasons from 2000-01 to 2020-21. Those are the last 21 seasons for which all accounts have been published.

I believe wages are better than transfer fees as an indicator of how good players should be. A transfer fee varies with the length of a player’s contract with the selling club, and reported transfer fees are mostly hearsay anyway.

I expressed the payroll of each newly promoted club as a percentage of the Premier League total for that season. This controlled for inflation, which in the Premier League can be rampant. The average payroll of a newly promoted club represented 2.7 per cent of the Premier League total for the season. This was £15 million in 2000-01 and £94m in 2020-21.

Eight of the ten promoted teams with the lowest payroll percentages were relegated. Only one of the ten newly promoted teams with the highest payroll percentages were relegated.

By my reckoning wages are better than results in the Championship as a signal of how well teams will do in the Premier League. But payroll analysis has its difficulties too. We will not know exactly how much a club are paying in wages until a season is over. Usually, though, we can form an idea that will turn out to be reasonable.

One thing I have realised is that transfer activity can give a misleading impression of what the wage bill will be. Fulham were also a newly-promoted team in seasons 2018-19 and 2020-21. They signed a lot of players before the first season but not before the second season. In 2018-19 Fulham’s payroll was 3.0 per cent of the Premier League total. In 2020-21 it was 3.3 per cent. Forest have a better squad now than when they were promoted in May, but how much better is something that is more likely to be overestimated than underestimated.

Expectations differ from one data specialist to another

What was the xG? It is a cry I hear after some games. The answer depends on who you ask.

I look regularly at xGs from three sources – FiveThirtyEight, Opta and Understat. And what I have noticed is that they can differ enormously.

Liverpool scored nine goals against Bournemouth last month. Their xG varied from 4.86 with Understat to 3.23 with Opta – a difference of more than one and a half goals.

Manchester City scored six goals against Nottingham Forest, also last month. Their xG was as high as 3.84 with Understat, as low as 2.87 with Opta – a difference of nearly a whole goal.

I have kept xGs for Premier League games from those three providers for up to five and a bit seasons. The average difference between one and another is almost 0.2 goals per team per game.

That is an awful lot. For spread betting firms, two-tenths of a goal is the difference between the levels at which they are willing to buy and sell supremacy or total goals in a match.

Expected goals are subjective, stats such as corners and cards are objective. Data collectors can disagree about those, but when they do and video is available it will be possible in most instances to establish who was right.

Expected goals are not facts but opinions – informed opinions, but those can differ widely. Expected goals can give us a rough sense of the quality of a team’s chances. That is worth having, but it is all we have.

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