How many teams get relegated from the Premier League?

West Ham, Nottingham Forest, Everton, Leeds and Leicester are all hoping to avoid the same fate as Southampton who have already been relegated, bringing the curtain down on The Saints’ ten year spell in the top flight.

But time is fast running out to escape the clutches of the relegation trapdoor, with the majority of the teams involved in the scrap only having two games remaining between now and the end of the season.

And so for those who might be unaware, let’s recap how Premier League relegation works ahead of the two final crunch weeks of the season.

How many teams are relegated from the Premier League?

The bottom three teams at the end of the season will be relegated from the Premier League to the Championship.

The only exception to this rule since the Premier League was founded in 1992 was the 1994/95 season, when four teams were relegated from the division.

This is because the league was restructuring from 22 clubs to 20, with the bottom quartet of clubs relegated with only two being promoted from the second tier.

Burnley and Sheffield United will play in the Premier League this season having gained automatic promotion, whilst Luton Town, Middlesbrough, Coventry City and Sunderland are contesting the play-offs.

Burnley, Watford and Norwich were relegated from the Premier League least season in 18th, 19th and 20th respectively.

English football uses a conventional relegation system, whilst a handful of leagues around Europe have a relegation play-off to determine the final relegation spot.

In the Bundesliga, for example, the bottom two clubs are automatically relegated, but the team finishing third from bottom contests a two-legged play-off with the team finishing third in Bundesliga 2.

What happens if any clubs finish level on points?

If two or more teams finish the Premier League season level on points, their final positions will first be determined by goal difference.

If clubs still cannot be separated, then it will go down to the number of goals scored, followed by head-to-head points record, then who scored the most away goals in the head-to-head games.

Remaining fixtures

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