Once again a discussion at the coffee break posed an interesting question. Is this the closest the relegated teams have been to each other in the history of the Premier league. Some quick googling suggested it probably wasn’t and 2011-12 would be the closest with the 3 relegated clubs being Bolton Wanderers,Blackburn Rovers and Wolves. And much like last time I wasn’t content with guesswork and wanted to try and calculate this properly.
From the previous blog post I had the locations for all of the football league grounds ( one caveat is that i haven’t considered that the clubs may have played at a different ground [although I did use Selhurst Park for Wimbledon and not Milton Keynes ) . so it was a very simple piece of analysis where i used PostGIS to calculate the distance between each of the relegated clubs and summed the value together per year.
From the results below you can see that the guess was correct and 2011-12 did have the shortest distance with 16-17 coming second.
| Year | Teams | Distance |
|---|---|---|
| 2011-12 | Bolton Wanderers-Blackburn Rovers-Wolverhampton Wanderers | 259.08Km |
| 2016-17 | Middlesbrough-Sunderland-Hull City | 292.89Km |
| 2000-01 | Manchester City-Coventry City-Bradford City | 322.44Km |
| 2003-04 | Leicester City-Leeds United-Wolverhampton Wanderers | 336.20Km |
| 2007-08 | Reading-Birmingham City-Derby County | 357.57Km |
| 2001-02 | Ipswich Town-Derby County-Leicester City | 407.20Km |
| 1996-97 | Sunderland-Middlesbrough-Nottingham Forest | 441.72Km |
| 1993-94 | Sheffield United-Oldham Athletic-Swindon Town | 472.91Km |
| 2006-07 | Sheffield United-Charlton Athletic-Watford | 473.37Km |
| 1999-2000 | Wimbledon-Sheffield Wednesday-Watford | 488.97Km |
| 2004-05 | Crystal Palace-Norwich City-Southampton | 539.73Km |
| 2005-06 | Birmingham City-West Bromwich Albion-Sunderland | 550.98Km |
| 1995-96 | Manchester City-Queens Park Rangers-Bolton Wanderers | 560.10Km |
| 2008-09 | Newcastle United-Middlesbrough-West Bromwich Albion | 562.12Km |
| 2012-13 | Wigan Athletic-Reading-Queens Park Rangers | 595.27Km |
| 1998-99 | Charlton Athletic-Blackburn Rovers-Nottingham Forest | 608.68Km |
| 1997-98 | Bolton Wanderers-Barnsley-Crystal Palace | 622.42Km |
| 2014-15 | Hull City-Burnley-Queens Park Rangers | 659.24Km |
| 2010-11 | Birmingham City-Blackpool-West Ham United | 663.29Km |
| 2013-14 | Norwich City-Fulham-Cardiff City | 707.28Km |
| 1992-93 | Crystal Palace-Middlesbrough-Nottingham Forest | 730.06Km |
| 2009-10 | Burnley-Hull City-Portsmouth | 796.63Km |
| 2015-16 | Aston Villa-Norwich City-Newcastle United | 817.20Km |
| 1994-95 | Crystal Palace-Norwich City-Leicester City-Ipswich Town | 830.88Km |
| 2002-03 | West Ham United-West Bromwich Albion-Sunderland | 833.77Km |
