How did surprising Premier League clubs do the next season?

Aston Villa has had a few strong campaigns, but it isn’t long removed from often being in the relegation battle, and even occasionally getting relegated! While the Invincibles Arsenal were the headline of the 2003-04 season, Villa made the jump: from three points away from being relegated to four points away from qualifying for the Champions League. The next season the Birmingham club dropped, but just a bit. It went from sixth to 10th, so still far from the relegation battle.

Everton one-upped Villa’s jump from 16th to sixth. While Villa was finishing sixth in 2003-04, the Toffees were finishing 17th, though admittedly six points away from relegation. With David Moyes at the helm, Everton jumped all the way to fourth, which meant qualifying for the Champions League. Maybe that added distraction hindered the Premier League play, because Everton fell to 11th in 2005-06.

We can’t tell you how West Ham did in the Premier League in the 2004-05 season, because West Ham was not in the Premier League. The Hammers got themselves promoted prior to the 2005-06 season, and they did not find themselves merely battling to stay up. West Ham finished ninth and got a spot in the UEFA Cup because it was the runner up in the FA Cup. That was not the new norm. The Hammers may have finished 15th the next season, but they were only three points above the relegation zone and 18th in goal differential.

It’s been a minute since Reading has been in the Premier League, so some younger fans may not even be aware of it as a club. Like West Ham, Reading was newly promoted, and it actually finished eighth. Hopefully fans of the club enjoyed it, because it fell back down to 18th and got relegated. Since then, Reading has spent all of one season in the Premier League. (This sign is from Craven Cottage, but the sentiment is accurate in terms of Reading.)

This is less about fluctuation in Villa’s success and more about this not being a season with a remarkable surprise in the Premier League. Aston Villa improved by 10 points and went from 11th to sixth and that was about as momentous of an upward trajectory as we got. In a way, Villa was steady. It finished sixth the next season as well and went from 60 points to 62 points. On the other hand, the club went from plus-20 in goals to plus-6 in goals.

Fulham, like Aston Villa, has been an up-and-down club in the occasional relegation battle. In the 2007-08 season, Fulham only avoided relegation through goal differential. The next season saw the club climb up to seventh. Then, the London club had a campaign that fell somewhere between those two levels of play. Fulham finished 12th in the table, which is decidedly average.

Now, Manchester City wasn’t that surprising in 2009-10, because the club had big-money backers and were no longer a club that had to worry about relegation. However, we did want to acknowledge the most significant upward trajectory in Premier League history. Manchester City went from also-rans to one of the most successful clubs in the world. In this case, it made the move from finishing 10th on 50 points to finishing fifth on 67 points. The next season City finished third on 71 points, and the club's first title of many was on the horizon.

Sure, West Brom only finished 11th in 2010-11, but it had been in the Championship the season prior. To go from second-tier football to not sweating relegation is big. If you want to take steady play, here’s a sterling example of that. The next season Albion bumped to 10th, but finished on 47 points for the second year in a row.

Newcastle is Man City-rich nowadays, but that wasn’t the case back in 2012. Though Newcastle’s goal differential only improved by six, it had two quite different campaigns. The club went from 12th on 46 points to fifth on 65 points. Then, the bottom fell out and Newcastle fell to 16th on 41 points. Also, it dropped 28 goals on the differential front.

They did it again. The Hammers, freshly promoted from another stint in the Championship, finished 10th in the 2012-13 season. West Ham didn’t get relegated the next year, but it did fall a bit to 13th by dropping by six points.

Yeah, we know Liverpool is a legendary club that has played in every single Premier League season. That doesn’t mean it couldn’t be a “surprise” team or take a significant jump. Don’t forget that in the days before Jurgen Klopp (and now Arne Slot) the Reds had some down years. Liverpool was seventh in 2012-13, but finishing on 61 points it finished 12 points away from the Champions League. The next year the club soared up to 84 points. Liverpool finished second and, infamously, was one Steven Gerrard slip away from likely winning the league over Manchester City. The frustration got stronger for Liverpool fans the next year when it became clear it had missed its chance. It fell back down to sixth on 62 points.

In a year without anybody really jumping up the table we’ll go with Leicester City. The club had been down in the Championship the year prior. This season the Foxes finished 14th. They avoided relegation by six points and were a minus-9 in goal differential, which isn’t too bad. As to what Leicester did the next season, well…

The Premier League doesn’t have Cinderella clubs, they say. Some American sports fans will quibble about the fact that in European soccer the same clubs win domestic titles and all that changes is which one takes it in a given season. To be fair, that is very much the case in the Premier League for the most part. For the most part, largely because of Leicester City. Truly coming out of nowhere, and specifically going out of the 14th spot in the prior season, Leicester won it all. It took home a Premier League title. Then, of course, the clock struck midnight. The Foxes got raided in the transfer market and finished 12th the next season. Eventually, they would even get relegated again.

Everton only went from 11th to seventh, but it did qualify for the Europa League. However, the Toffees went from 47 points to 61 points and from plus-4 to plus-18 in goal differential. In a similar sense, the next year Everton only dropped one spot to eighth, but the season played out worse than that indicates. It finished on 49 points and was minus-14.

The club that popped into seventh and got a Europa League spot? That would be Burnley, and it had finished 16th the season prior. This is more in line with how many envision a surprise Premier League club. In terms of yo-yoing, Burnley then fell back down to 15th in the table the next season. Soon enough, the club would fall further and get relegated.

In terms of success from a newly promoted club, few can match what Wolves did in the 2018-19 season. These were the glory days of Nuno Espirito Santo. He took over as manager, led the club to a first-place finish in the Championship, and then took them to a seventh-place finish in the Premier League. The next year, even amid the chaos of the COVID-19 pandemic, Santo pulled it off again. That is to say, Wolves finished seventh once more.

Sheffield got promoted and then found itself dealing with the pandemic as a newly promoted club. Fortunately, by the time the pandemic was causing chaos it was already safe, and Sheffield would finish ninth (and with the always-fun zero goal differential). Unfortunately, by the end of the 2020-21 season fans were able to be back in the crowd to some degree and by that point Sheffield was already definitively relegated. It finished last in the Premier League.

Stop us if you’ve heard this before. A club that was newly promoted finished ninth the next season. Would Leeds, like Sheffield, then finish 20th the next year? Of course not! Why, Leeds would finish all the way up at 17th in the table. It also finished minus-37 in terms of goal differential, which is truly awful and would have been relegation-worthy.

Brighton’s rise to staple of the top-half of the table has now solidified, but it had to get there first. During the 2020-21 season Brighton finished 16th, but with an encouraging minus-6 goal differential. The next season it finished ninth, though the goal differential admittedly only improved by four goals. If you were just looking at table placement, though, Brighton popped. The rise was still ongoing, as the club finished sixth the next season, and this time it improved a healthy 21 goals on the differential front.

We come full circle. Aston Villa finished 14th in the 2021-22 season on 45 points. The next season it finished just below Brighton in seventh on 61 points. Fortunately, we get to end on a nice note. Villa improved again, and this time finished fourth in order to qualify for the Champions League for the first time in decades. Then its run in the Champions League proved unexpectedly good, but that’s a story for another day.