Premier League relegation battle: A club-by-club guide to how the top-flight’s bottom three will be decided

While the Premier League title is all but sewn up, the relegation battle remains intriguingly unresolved, and the international break marks the last chance to take stock before a scramble to the finish.

Perceived wisdom is that 40 points guarantees safety, and this year anything above 37 points is very likely to be enough. So Everton (40 points) are staying up, Bournemouth and Watford (both 36) are probably there, and Brighton (34) are almost home and dry.

These may be famous last words, but let’s tentatively put Newcastle (32) in the safe bracket too, given they have the best goal difference in the bottom half, have some momentum and are the only candidate with a Champions League winning manager.

At the bottom, West Brom are gone, if not mathematically then psychologically, fading away, trundling off a cliff in a stolen taxi. That leaves six clubs circling four chairs as the Premier League theme tune plays, with only four points separating Swansea in 14th from Stoke in 19th.

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With all the talk of survival it is worth reminding ourselves that the alternative to survival isn’t actually death, it’s the Championship, a place ostensibly the same as the Premier League where winning is a little easier, and these days that drop comes with enormous parachute.

Then again, both Sunderland and Hull City have made a mess of bouncing back this season, now stuck in a battle to avoid falling to League One, proving that once you begin to slide it’s not easy to stop. Here are six clubs at the heart of the Premier League’s relegation fight desperately hoping to avoid going the same way:

Swansea are the best placed of the group. They are in the strongest run of form, still riding the wave of aggressive positivity which swept in with Carlos Carvalhal. But they have some difficult fixtures to come, including Manchester United, Manchester City and Chelsea, so it’s essential they find a win either against West Brom or Everton to ease their path.

Their final game, against Stoke City at the Liberty Stadium, might be first up on the season’s closing Match of the Day – a potentially defining fixture at the bottom of what is such a congested league table.

Carlos Carvalhal: “When we came to the club everything was burning. The first thing we had to do was put water on the fire because you have a big fire around you. We are still focused on trying to make the fire disappear. In this moment, it’s much better – we’ve used a lot of water. Sometimes the fire can appear again if you don’t care about your position in the forest.”

​Date TBC Southampton H
Manchester United A
West Brom A
Everton H
Manchester City A
Chelsea H
Bournemouth A
Stoke H

Huddersfield are three points clear of the drop zone, yet they feel so much closer because of that great intangible: momentum. Their graph of Premier League places against weeks passed illustrates an inexorable slide towards the bottom, and the manner of that slump is cause for alarm. They have conceded three goals on eight occasions this season; only Stoke have a worse goal difference than Huddersfield’s -27.

David Wagner appears as calm as ever, and he can rightly claim expectations have already been surpassed in their debut Premier League season, but it would be galling to end the campaign in the bottom three having started so well. Huddersfield’s recent 2-0 defeat to Crystal Palace was particularly limp, and they have one of the most difficult run-ins around, but oddly that could work in their favour against opponents like Everton, Manchester City and Arsenal who may have very little to play for come the end.

David Wagner: “To be totally honest I don’t have the feeling that the players are starting to panic. I think first of all we have to separate each game from another. In the last game against Swansea [which they drew 0-0 despite taking 30 shots] we were unlucky, hit the post, hit the bar. Against Palace we underperformed, but we know exactly what was our mistake and if you know what went wrong you relatively easily can deal with it.”

Date TBC Chelsea A
Newcastle A
Brighton A
Watford H
Everton H
Manchester City A
Arsenal H

When Frank Lampard was asked seven games into the season about the team at the foot of the table on zero points and zero goals, he understandably predicted that Palace would be relegated. They needed to accrue the points of a mid-table team thereon, just to give themselves hope of survival, and under Roy Hodgson that’s exactly what they’ve done.

That improvement has slowed a little, but the 2-0 victory at Huddersfield last weekend ended a run of seven games without a win, and crucially they now have their toughest fixtures behind them. Their final match, playing bottom-side West Brom at Selhurst Park, is a handy insurance policy should things get dicey.

Roy Hodgson: “We’ve tried to avoid discussing [relegation] certainly as a team because we know that with seven games to go there’s going to be twists and turns. We know how difficult it is, we had to make up eight points to get out of the relegation zone the first time. We had to win a lot of games to get a lot of points; I think we went on an unbeaten run of about 12 or 13 games to do that so we know how tough it is.”

Liverpool H
Bournemouth A
Brighton H
Watford A
Leicester H
Stoke A
West Brom A

West Ham seemed in a good place in January, ending the month in 12th place having played relegation rivals West Brom, Huddersfield, Bournemouth and Crystal Palace without defeat. But they’ve only won once since, and the disastrous 3-0 defeat by Burnley at an anarchic London Stadium was worrying, painting a picture of a dysfunctional club in crisis.

The owners are under increasing pressure while David Moyes’s top-level career would take a potentially terminal blow if he were to lead the Hammers down. He has taken the players away on a warm-weather training trip to Miami to lick their wounds before their next game, at home to Southampton on 31 March, which could be of season-defining significance.

David Moyes: “Obviously, we left [for Miami] on the disappointment of the result against Burnley, but I have to say it was the right time for us. We’ve come through a really long winter. We trained hard, the players will tell you they worked hard on the days we had [sessions] and they had a bit of time in the afternoons, so some played golf and some went fishing and some sat at the pool so, all in all, it was good. We know what the task is ahead of us.”

Date TBC Manchester H
Southampton H
Chelsea A
Stoke H
Arsenal A
Manchester City H
Leicester City A
Everton H

Southampton are the unpredictables in the relegation equation. The sacking of Mauricio Pellegrino could prove to be the catalyst for a resurgence and the early signs are that Mark Hughes will certainly bring something different to St Mary’s – a good starting point when more of the same seemed certain to end in the drop.

In his first game in charge, a shaky 2-0 FA Cup win over Wigan Athletic, Hughes deployed a functional 4-4-2 with Guido Carrillo and Manolo Gabbiadini leading the line. The former was anonymous, the latter was wasteful, and it is clear that the manager’s biggest challenge will be coaxing goals from a front-line bereft of confidence.

Mark Hughes: “Clearly our Premier League status is a huge concern for us and we’ve got to retain that. But the time I’ve been with them, I’ve see good quality and application and maybe they’ve been hurt by the criticism of themselves, as individuals and as a group. [Against Wigan] was the first step towards addressing those criticisms. We haven’t been able to work with them very long but I’m excited by the group.”

Date TBC Leicester A
Date TBC Swansea A
West Ham A
Arsenal A
Chelsea H
Bournemouth H
Everton A
Manchester City H

It is hard to know exactly what Paul Lambert brings to the table but it certainly looks like he means business, with his sleeves rolled up and refusal to wear a woolly hat in the snow; perception is half the game. Unfortunately the other half is football, which hasn’t been going well lately, and the dispiriting defeat to Everton last weekend – having pulled level – was a significant setback.

Optimism is in short supply in the Potteries but it hasn’t been totally extinguished: Stoke are only three points from safety and the fixture list gives them an element of control over their destiny, with games against West Ham, Crystal Palace and that finale at Swansea. However, their goal difference is the worst in the league and realistically they need to win three of their remaining seven games to stay up.

Paul Lambert: “It’s my job to keep them upbeat, as long as the effort and the commitment is there, that’s got to be a given, but you can’t keep shooting yourself in the foot and mistakes are costing us at the minute. There’s still time. We’ve still got to get above that line at all costs and there’s still a long way to go, but the games are must-win now.”

Arsenal A
Tottenham H
West Ham A
Burnley H
Liverpool A
Crystal Palace H
Swansea A