Geographical spread of teams relegated from the Premiership

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.

As a Norwich City fan relegation is something I've grown very used to
As a Norwich City fan relegation is something I’ve grown very used to

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

Author: Neil

Software Engineer/ Research Assistant Urban Observatory

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