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

Two clubs in the Premier League cannot make themselves safe. Tottenham Hotspur and Coventry City have no safety clinch number at all, which means that winning every match they have left would still not certify them above the relegation places. Tottenham would need 101 more points and have 99 still on their schedule. Coventry would need 100 and have 99. Two more clubs sit one point from the same blank: Aston Villa need 99 out of the 99 they have left, and Fulham need 102 out of 102. Win everything and each is safe on its own. Drop a single point and the number disappears.

Every figure here is computed from the September 20 update, and at the bottom of the table that update is partial. Aston Villa's 3-2 win at Tottenham on September 19 is in it, and so is Coventry's 1-0 win at Nottingham Forest on September 20. Manchester City against Sunderland, Bournemouth against Liverpool and Leeds against Crystal Palace had not been played, and Fulham against Manchester United is scheduled for Monday, September 21. Forty-six matches have been played across the division in all.

Behind every one of these numbers there is a single bar, and the bar is 103 points. Three clubs go down, so to certify safety a club needs three other clubs that can no longer finish above it, which means reaching the third-lowest maximum in the division. Those maximums today are Tottenham's 101, Coventry's 102, and then 103 for both Fulham and Aston Villa. That third figure is what all twenty clubs are measured against, and it is why every safety number on the board is exactly 103 minus the points a club already has. Just above it sit Bournemouth and Crystal Palace on 105, and they are only that high because each has a match in hand. One Sunday result can pull either of them down to the bar and move the whole ladder.

At the bottom of the table that ladder is short. Manchester United, Sunderland and Aston Villa need 99 more points. Bournemouth and Crystal Palace need 100. Fulham need 102. Tottenham and Coventry need more than they can still win, so they get nothing. The anchor at the other end is Manchester City, top of the table and needing 91, the lowest figure in the division. Eleven points separate the top of the ladder from the bottom of it, and that is all the separation four or five matches have produced.

The useful version of the same figure is dropped points. Subtract a club's safety number from the points still on its schedule and you get how many points it can drop and still settle the question by itself. Manchester City can drop 11, more than anyone. Manchester United and Sunderland can drop 3, Bournemouth and Crystal Palace 2. Nottingham Forest, twelfth in the table, can drop 1, which is less margin than sixteenth-placed Bournemouth has, because Bournemouth have a match in hand. Aston Villa and Fulham can drop none. That is the real content of a number like 102. It is not a target anyone is chasing, it is a measure of how little room the arithmetic has already taken away.

The blanks are that same measure gone one step further. Coventry, Crystal Palace and Bournemouth all have three points, and the ladder issues 100 to Palace and Bournemouth while Coventry get nothing. The difference is one match. Palace and Bournemouth have played four and have 34 left, worth 102 points. Coventry have played five and have 33 left, worth 99. Coventry's number would also be 100 if it could be issued, and they do not have 100 points left to win. Tottenham are a step past that again: two points from five matches, 99 available, 101 needed. A blank is not a relegation. It says only that the club has lost the power to settle this alone, and that other results now count as well.

The other side of the calculation is almost empty. Only two clubs have a relegation tragic number: Tottenham's is 33 and Fulham's is 34, and each of those is that club's entire remaining season. Tottenham would have to lose all 33 of their matches to be mathematically relegated, Fulham all 34. Nobody else can go down on their own results at all, Coventry included. Coventry losing every remaining match still leaves them on three points, and only fifteen clubs currently sit above three, where relegation would need seventeen. The top of Tottenham's board is just as flat. Their top-four tragic number is 31, the lowest in the division, and 31 still means 31 defeats.

Sunday moves the bar before Monday can. Two of the three matches left on Sunday put the clubs that share the 100 in action at once: Bournemouth host Liverpool and Leeds host Crystal Palace. A defeat for either takes that club to three points with 33 matches left and a maximum of 102, which slots in below the 103 held by Fulham and Aston Villa. The bar drops to 102 on that result alone, and a point comes off every safety number on the board. Sunday's third match, Manchester City against Sunderland, cannot move it either way. Then Fulham host Manchester United on Monday, September 21, and that match decides whether the bottom club keeps a number at all. A Fulham win takes them to four points with 33 matches left. If Sunday leaves the bar at 103, their number becomes 99 out of a maximum of 99, exactly their ceiling. If Bournemouth or Crystal Palace have lost first, the bar is 102 and the same win leaves them needing 98 of 99, one point of room. A draw puts their own maximum at 101 and a defeat at 100, both under the bar, and the number goes the way of Tottenham's and Coventry's. Neither Tottenham nor Coventry appears in the next eight fixtures listed, and the schedule then jumps to October 10, when Arsenal host Leeds, Ipswich host Fulham, Aston Villa host Brentford and Chelsea host Bournemouth.

How to read these numbers. A clinch number, here a safety number, is the minimum further points that guarantee the outcome even if every rival wins every match it has left. A tragic number is the further defeats after which the outcome is impossible even if the club wins everything else. A blank means no run of a club's own results settles the question yet. The calculation treats a club as safe once it can no longer be passed on points, so finishing dead level with a rival counts in that club's favour here, and the Premier League would separate such a tie on goal difference, which this arithmetic does not model. A clinch shown here can therefore land a day before the official one. The live table is at, the remaining fixtures at, the relegation and qualification rules at, and lets you enter Sunday's and Monday's results yourself and watch the ladder move. Fulham's own page is at, Tottenham's at and Coventry's at.