RESOLVING THE LEDGER
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Sunderland finished seventh in their first season back in the Premier League [Getty Images]
Sunderland were one of the stories of the 2025-26 Premier League season.
Promoted from the Championship through the play-offs in May 2025, the Black Cats marked their return to the top flight after an eight-year absence with a remarkable campaign.
Tipped for relegation by many, Sunderland ended the campaign in seventh to qualify for Europe for the first time since 1973.
So why - outside newly promoted teams Hull City, Coventry and Ipswich - are Sunderland once again among the bookmakers' favourites for the drop?
There are three main reasons their doubters can point to: their poor underlying numbers last season, the 'second-season syndrome' for promoted sides and a European campaign to contend with.
But are those reasons justified?
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The underlying numbers
While results and where you finish in the table are ultimately all that matter, Sunderland's underlying statistics from last season suggest repeating their success might not be so simple.
Expected goals (xG) tells us how well teams do the basics of creating lots of good chances and limiting their opponents to few low-quality ones, based on how hundreds of teams before them have scored or conceded from those opportunities.
Only relegated Burnley and Wolves had a lower xG difference than Regis le Bris' side last season, while West Ham - with the fourth-worst overall xG - were also relegated.
While Aston Villa and Sunderland made a mockery of xG by finishing much higher in the table, the majority of sides finished mostly in line with their underlying numbers, showing those two overachievers were more the exception that proves the rule.
Indeed, the three sides with the best xG difference finished in the top three in the same order, while - excluding Sunderland - the five sides with the worst made up the bottom five.
Only Man City and Aston Villa overperformed their xG numbers by more than the Black Cats, who scored three more goals and conceded six fewer than expected given the number and quality of shots taken.
So taking the season as a whole, it seems that Sunderland's performances weren't as impressive as their results. But one event significantly affected part of the Black Cats' season: the Africa Cup of Nations.
They were without six players - twice as many as any other side - during the tournament in December and January. While the club's performances had already declined after a strong start, they suffered even more when their squad was stretched.
But once all those players returned, Sunderland's underlying numbers improved throughout the rest of the season and they ended the campaign playing like a mid-table side.
With no Afcon this season, the Black Cats may not suffer such a drop in performance. If they continue the 2026-27 season as they finished the last then relegation should be only a remote possibility.
Second-season syndrome
The belief that promoted sides that stayed up in their first season are often relegated in their second is a popular one, with the phrase 'second-season syndrome' regularly thrown about. But is it as common as people think?
Last season Sunderland and Leeds became the 53rd and 54th promoted sides to survive in the Premier League.
Of the previous 52, only 11 were relegated the following season (21%). The vast majority of promoted teams that stay up do not suffer from second-season syndrome.
However, there is precedent for a promoted side that had a first season as good as Sunderland's to be relegated in their second. In fact, the best promoted side in the 38-game era of the Premier League did just that.
George Burley's Ipswich ended the 2000-01 campaign fifth with 66 points - the highest finish and most points any promoted side has achieved in a 38-game season.
But with European football to contend with, they dropped 13 places and took 30 fewer points the next season as they were relegated in 18th place, with Sunderland the beneficiaries as they finished just one place above them.
Overall, four of the previous 20 promoted sides (20%) that finished in the top half in their first season suffered relegation in their second, with the most recent example being Sheffield United five years ago
The Black Cats were one of the sides that did not as they finished seventh under Peter Reid in 1999-2000 and followed up with another seventh-placed finish a year later (although that position did not bring European football back then).
The added workload of Europe
Sunderland will be playing in Europe this season for the first time in 53 years, with at least eight games in the Europa League on top of their usual domestic commitments.
They are the 10th promoted side in Premier League history to qualify for Europe and just the fifth to do so through their league position, with the others qualifying via cup competitions or fair play.
Despite their squads arguably being the least-prepared to handle the extra fixtures, five of the previous nine teams achieved another top-half finish and just two were relegated - Ipswich in the early 2000s and Hull in the mid-2010s.
Hull were an unusual case as they only finished 16th with 37 points in 2013-14 but qualified for Europe by reaching the FA Cup final.
Their European campaign lasted just four games as they were knocked out in the Europa League qualifying rounds in August and were relegated with 35 points the following May.
But then there is that Ipswich side again.
When Inter Milan knocked them out in the Uefa Cup third round on 6 December 2001, Burley's side had won just one of their first 15 games in the Premier League.
While they did find some form after that - they were 12th with 30 points after 25 games - just one win in their final 13 matches led to relegation.
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