Premier League relegation 2026: Fulham, Tottenham and Coventry have no safety number at all

Fulham and Tottenham Hotspur have three things their own results can still settle this season, and every one of them is an exit: the title at 29 more defeats, the top four at 31, relegation at 33. What they cannot settle alone is survival. Neither has a safety number. Neither does Coventry City, and neither does Bournemouth. Four clubs at the bottom of the Premier League cannot certify their own survival even by winning all 33 matches they have left. The safety bar is 103 points. Fulham and Tottenham top out at 101, Bournemouth and Coventry at 102.

Every figure here comes from the September 21 update. Fifty of the season's 380 matches are played, all twenty clubs are on five, and every club has 33 matches and 99 points still in front of it. The last result in the data is Fulham 1-1 Manchester United at home on September 21. The fixture list then jumps to October 10, so for 19 days none of these numbers moves.

Behind every safety figure on the board sits one total, and it is 103. Three clubs go down, so to certify safety a club needs three rivals that cannot even finish dead level with it. The lowest ceilings in the division are Fulham and Tottenham on 101 and Bournemouth and Coventry on 102. The third lowest is 102, and 103 clears it. That is why every safety number in the table is 103 minus the points a club has already banked. Manchester City have 15 and need 88, Chelsea have 7 and need 96, Manchester United have 5 and need 98.

Sixteen clubs have a safety number, and the last three of them hold the largest one the arithmetic allows. Sunderland, Crystal Palace and Aston Villa are on four points and need 99, which is all 99 still available: 33 wins, nothing dropped. Manchester United and Nottingham Forest are on five and need 98. Ipswich Town need 97, Chelsea 96, Hull City and Newcastle United 95. Manchester City, five wins from five, need 88, the smallest figure in the division.

The same number reads better as dropped points. Subtract the safety figure from the 99 still available and you get how many points a club can lose and still settle the question alone. Manchester City can drop 11. Arsenal can drop 8, Brighton 6, and Brentford, Leeds United, Liverpool and Everton 5 each. Hull and Newcastle can drop 4, Chelsea 3, Ipswich 2, Manchester United and Nottingham Forest 1. Sunderland, Crystal Palace and Aston Villa can drop none. Five matches in, the whole division fits inside an eleven point spread and the bottom of it is already at zero.

Below that the numbers stop. Bournemouth and Coventry have three points and would need 100 with 99 available. Fulham and Tottenham have two and would need 101. The line between a number and a blank is one point wide, and it runs between Aston Villa in sixteenth on four points and the two clubs directly below on three, Bournemouth in seventeenth and Coventry in eighteenth. Coventry's three points came from a single goal, the 1-0 win at Nottingham Forest on September 20, and that is the only goal they have scored in five matches. A blank is not a relegation. It says the club can no longer finish this question by itself, and that other results now count too.

The elimination side of the board is nearly empty. Only Fulham and Tottenham have a relegation tragic number, and for both it is 33, every match they have left. The reason it is exactly 33 is worth following. Lose all 33 and each club finishes on two points, with 18 clubs already certain to be above that, which is more than the 17 needed to go down. Take a single draw in those 33 and the finish is three points, with 16 clubs certain to be above, which is not enough. Bournemouth and Coventry have no relegation tragic number at all, because losing everything still leaves them on three and only 16 clubs are certain to beat it. Nothing has closed at the other end either. All twenty clubs still have a reachable range of first to twentieth, Manchester City and Tottenham included. Fulham and Tottenham hold the lowest top four tragic number in the division at 31, and 31 is still 31 defeats.

Nothing on the board moves before October 10. On that day Arsenal host Leeds United, Ipswich Town host Fulham, Aston Villa host Brentford, Chelsea host Bournemouth and Sunderland host Brighton. On October 11 Manchester United host Tottenham, Crystal Palace host Nottingham Forest and Hull City host Everton. The round ends with Liverpool at home to Manchester City on October 12 and Coventry at home to Newcastle on October 13, so all twenty clubs play; the dates here are Korean time. Six of the ten fixtures can move the bar for the whole division. Bournemouth and Coventry are the two clubs on the 102 ceiling that currently sets it, so anything short of a Bournemouth win at Chelsea, or a Coventry win at home to Newcastle, drops that club to 100 or 99. Aston Villa, Crystal Palace and Sunderland are on four points and a ceiling of 103, and a draw or a defeat takes each of them to 101 or 100, which is under the current bar as well. Manchester United and Nottingham Forest are on five points and a ceiling of 104, and a defeat takes either of them to 101, so a Tottenham win at Manchester United does it too, and Crystal Palace against Nottingham Forest moves the bar whatever the result. Any one of those results pulls the bar below 103 and cuts the safety number of every club that keeps one. Fulham get a number back only if they win and the bar falls to 101 or lower: a win leaves them on five points with 96 still available, and 96 is exactly what a bar of 101 would ask of them.

Correction, September 29: An earlier version of this article listed only eight of the round's ten fixtures, leaving out Liverpool against Manchester City and Coventry against Newcastle, and so said Coventry, Manchester City, Liverpool and Newcastle did not appear. It also said four matches could move the safety bar. Six can: Coventry against Newcastle was missing from that count, and so was Manchester United against Tottenham, where a Manchester United defeat moves it, while Crystal Palace against Nottingham Forest moves it whatever the result. The paragraph above now says so. None of the clinch or tragic numbers changed.

How to read these numbers. A clinch number, here a safety number, is the minimum further points that guarantee the place even if every rival wins everything it has left. A tragic number is the further defeats after which the outcome is impossible even if the club wins everything else. A reachable range is the highest and lowest finish still arithmetically open. Zero means already decided, and a blank means no run of a club's own results decides it yet. Ties count against the club being judged, in both directions. On the clinch side a rival that can finish exactly level counts as a threat, so a clinch shown here can land a day later than the official one. On the elimination side a rival must be strictly above to count, so finishing level sends nobody down in this arithmetic. Goal difference, head to head records and the league's own tiebreakers are not modelled. The live table is at, the fixtures at, the qualification and relegation rules at, the full clinch board at and the method at. Enter October's results yourself at and watch the bar move. Club pages: Fulham, Tottenham, Coventry and Bournemouth.