The Christmas season is meant to bring holiday cheer to those around the world who celebrate, but there are some Premier League fans who are dreading the coming months.
For supporters of clubs sitting in or near the relegation zone, there is a sense of foreboding as the holidays arrive and the calendar turns.
As the festive period comes right before the new year, many fans see Christmas Day as the perceived halfway point of the season, even if it technically is not quite at that point. In the 2025-26 season, teams will have played 17 matches when Christmas Day arrives, just one matchday before the official midway point.
So how much hope do the clubs at or near the bottom of the table truly have? As AllSportsPeople explains, it turns out there is still some festive joy to go around the basement of the Premier League standings, even if the odds are stacked against them.
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How often do teams get relegated while bottom on Christmas?
Only four teams in the 33 seasons of Premier League football have ever been bottom of the table on Christmas and managed to avoid relegation, a paltry 12% of clubs since the 1992 rebrand.
Incredibly, three of those four teams finished a significant distance from the relegation zone. Only 2004-05 West Brom escaped a close shave, finishing just one point above the drop. The other three finished 14th twice and 13th once, ending up safe with room to spare.
Unfortunately for Wolves, their situation as 2025-26 basement-dwellers on Christmas looks bleak. No team bottom of the table on Christmas has ever overcome more than a five-point gap from safety to avoid relegation by the end of the season. With just two points to their name through 17 matches, Wolves face a massive 16-point distance between them and the first safe club in 17th, meaning they are almost surely on their way down by this point.
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Premier League teams bottom on Christmas to survive relegation
| Season | Team | Finished (Pts clear) | Relegated |
| 2004/05 | West Brom | 17th (1 pt) | Crystal Palace, Norwich City, Southampton |
| 2013/14 | Sunderland | 14th (5 pts) | Norwich City, Fulham, Cardiff City |
| 2014/15 | Leicester City | 14th (6 pts) | Hull City, Burnley, QPR |
| 2022/23 | Wolves | 13th (7 pts) | Leicester City, Leeds United, Southampton |
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How often do teams get relegated in bottom 3 at Christmas?
For those in the bottom three places at Christmas, there is still plenty of hope, especially if they are not bottom of the table.
As covered before, teams bottom of the table on Christmas only survive 12% of the time (4 of 33). However, those in 19th have managed to end up safe nearly half the time, or 45% (15 of 33), while those in 18th on Christmas have a strong survival rate of 64% (21 of 33).
On only four occasions in the history of the Premier League have all three teams in the drop zone on Christmas been consigned to the lower division by the end of the season. However, there has never been an instance in Premier League history where all three teams in the relegation zone on Christmas managed to survive the drop.
In the 2025-26 season, however, there is a significant gap building in the relegation race, and teams will have work to do to avoid worsening those numbers.
Nottingham Forest in 17th have a five-point cushion between them and West Ham in the first relegation spot, while 19th-placed Burnley are two points back of that, and 20th-placed Wolves have secured just two points all year long, putting them nine back of anyone else.
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