Leeds and Burnley will fight the tide of recent history to stay in the Premier League but there are lessons to be learned, such as sacking Scott Parker.
With all due respect to Ipswich, who can technically still survive in 2024/25, the last six teams promoted to the Premier League have gone straight back down. Leeds, Burnley and whoever wins the play-offs to join them should consider taking the steps of the five most recent teams to survive.
Fulham: Appoint the perfect manager in the Championship
Despite being out of work for 18 months after three consecutive qualified failures in Premier League posts, the appointment of Marco Silva still felt like a significant case of Fulham punching above their Championship weight.
The Cottagers were locked in a dangerous cycle, swapping the top flight for the second tier in four consecutive campaigns under Slavisa Jokanovic, Claudio Ranieri and then Scott Parker. But by tempting Silva, they pledged to break it.
Their most recent relegation culminated in Parker leaving by mutual consent and joining promotion rivals Bournemouth a day later. But Fulham’s rebound was startling, coaxing Silva down a division with the caveat that his time managing outside the Premier League would be remarkably brief.
One record-breaking title win later, Silva had his latest shot at redemption. A reputation tarnished by relegation with Hull, accusations of using Watford as a stepping stone and taking Everton into the bottom three could be rebuilt from a platform of stability and ambition at Fulham.
It was a masterstroke immediately rewarded with promotion, consolidation and now half an eye on European qualification, with Fulham established as a Premier League force and Silva attracting admiring glances once again.
By contrast, Burnley and Leeds brought in two managers with specifically appalling Premier League records.
Bournemouth: Sack Scott Parker
There were, at least ostensibly, no losers in the love triangle between Fulham, Bournemouth and Parker. The Cherries finished two points behind the champions and secured their place back in the Premier League after the combined efforts of Jason Tindall and Jonathan Woodgate were not enough to deliver an immediate return.
But really there should have been a handshake and conscious uncoupling once the celebratory dust settled. And that is not just through the scope of hindsight: it was suggested a mutual parting would be for the best four days after promotion was confirmed.
Bournemouth instead went into the 2022/23 campaign with uncertainty over their ownership situation, £25m spent on a weak squad which lost important loanees in the summer, and a manager who frankly seemed to consider himself above it all.
“Where we currently are, I can see some more, to be honest with you,” said Parker when asked in the aftermath of a 9-0 defeat to Liverpool whether that would mark the lowest point of Bournemouth’s season. He bemoaned how they were “under-equipped at this level” and “way short of where we need to be”.
The Cherries hierarchy happened to agree, although it must have been awkward when the realisation dawned that they were talking about the manager rather than the squad. Parker was sacked, Gary O’Neil was appointed and the rookie coach kept those supposedly hopeless players up with ease.
Nottingham Forest: Sign all the players and risk a points deduction
The seamlessness with which Nottingham Forest have gone from transfer-obsessed laughing stock to ultra-effective Champions League-bound side – with a thankfully brief period as Mark Clattenburg-employing tinfoil hat wearers in between – is startling.
It is not supposed to work that way but Evangelos Marinakis has cracked the code and fast-tracked his masterplan.
The summer of 2022 was crucial. In came 21 new players to rebuild a Championship-level squad shorn of crucial loanees as Forest spent more in that one transfer window after promotion than they had in their entire history.
Their reward was a four-point deduction down the line which would have relegated them in 2022/23, but instead it was a mere footnote in their story of survival in 2023/24 ahead of an unthinkably brilliant 2024/25.
The foundations were ultimately laid by Steve Cooper and the team almost immediately after they beat Huddersfield in the play-off final. They broke their transfer record to sign Taiwo Awoniyi within a month and introduced a new player every four days or so thereafter until the window closed.
While the concept of ‘doing a Fulham’ – spending more than £100m as a promoted club to assemble a squad theoretically too good to go down but doing so anyway – was demonstrated to dreadful effect a few summers prior and debunked soon after by Aston Villa, the idea of ‘doing a Forest’ and signing the equivalent of two new teams to stay up became a viable and hilariously risky possible blueprint to follow.
Brentford: Sign Christian Eriksen
It does Brentford a considerable disservice to boil down their brilliance as a Premier League forceto one single facet or trait, but the winter arrival of Eriksen was critical in helping maintain their top-flight status in 2021/22.
Brentford started well enough, bullying Arsenal on the opening day and sitting 12th at the beginning of January, a couple of points outside the top half.
What followed was a run of seven defeats and a draw to leave them three points above the relegation zone by early March, having played at least a game more than each of the five teams below.
Enter Eriksen, playing for the first time since suffering a cardiac arrest at Euro 2021. Thomas Frank knew their inherent Danish spirit could galvanise a wonderful playmaker and so it transpired: the Bees stayed up comfortably once he was introduced into the team, winning seven of the ten games he started.
That earned him the harsh punishment of a move to Manchester United. With Eriksen’s contract at Old Trafford expiring soon, it might be worth a punt.
Leeds: Just be really good and fun
Of course, the easiest way for a promoted club to withstand Premier League life is for them to just be brilliant. It is slightly weird that Southampton, Leicester, Ipswich, Sheffield United, Burnley and Luton haven’t at least considered taking this route but Leeds were not nearly as foolish.
There was a ludicrous managerial appointment which made Silva at Fulham seem decidedly low-rent and unimaginative, as well as a fair few transfers for Marcelo Bielsa to admire from his bucket.
But ultimately Leeds were just good. Really good. And fun. Their games in 2020/21 involved the most goals of any team in the Premier League, summed up by one December week in which they beat Newcastle 5-2 on the Wednesday and lost 6-2 to Manchester United on the Sunday.
They finished ninth, two points behind Arsenal and four ahead of Aston Villa, with the highest points tally of a promoted Premier League team since the early 2000s. And all it required was an iconic coach, a future Ballon d’Or contenderand the lethal finishing of Patrick Bamford.
