#FootballFocus: Premier League set for tense relegation scrap

With just 12 games to go in this year’s Premier League race, the relegation battle has never been closer.

The bottom nine teams are divided by seven points, which means any run of form – good or bad – could be season defining at this juncture.

In the Premier League, a win grants three points, a draw just one, while a loss obviously means zero.

There are no bonus points available as each of 20 teams play each other home and away for a season of 38 games.

Three teams at the bottom of the table are relegated to the lower level Championship, with the top three performing Championship teams being promoted.

Typically, there is a team or two that look doomed to go down for most of the season, following a bad transfer window, major injuries or a host of other issues.

But this year, as the Premier League continues to dominate in global revenue, every team is legitimately strong and could beat any other on a given day.

A perfect example came this past weekend when 18th placed Bournemouth, who entered the weekend in 20th, beat Liverpool 1-0.

Liverpool had run rampant, beating a strong Manchester United 7-0 the week before.

It goes to show just how impressive it is to avoid relegation year-on-year when one bad string of luck can prove catastrophic for any team.

Only six teams have never been relegated from the Premier League, which started in 1992, most of which you would suspect.

It’s five of the traditional ‘top six’, with only Manchester City spending time in lower divisions before they became a powerhouse with oil-backed money in the late 2000s.

The other is Everton, once a top team in the country, who have not left the highest division of English football since 1955.

They currently sit in 15th, just one point above the relegation zone.

Although they have settled under Sean Dyche since Frank Lampard was relieved of managerial duties, their relegation could be an historic one.

League winners in 2015, Leicester City, are also among the group, as are regulars West Ham and Southampton.

This aside from teams with massive fanbases such as Leeds and Nottingham Forest, who have only just got back to the summit of the English game.

As Arsenal continue to pile on the wins at the top of the league, bottom-9 games are equally worth watching and could mean just as much to their representative cities.

It may not be the beautiful game, but it contains just as much desire and heart from the players, for whom the Premier League means larger salaries and global exposure.

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