Losing Your First Five Premier League Games: Should Everton and Southampton Be Worried?

Everton and Southampton are still both without a Premier League point in 2024-25. With their fifth game of the season coming up on Saturday, would another defeat set them on the way to relegation?

Everton and Southampton supporters have reason to be worried. Both sides are without a single point this season in the Premier League from their opening four games, and they could extend that run to five defeats in 2024-25 on Saturday with respective games against Leicester City and Ipswich Town.

Both teams will be disappointed not to have won any points from their four games so far, especially as they had the fourth- and fifth-easiest starts to the 2024-25 Premier League season based on the Opta Power Rankings.

If they aren’t panicking already, should they be? Does history suggest that losing the opening five games of an English top-flight season often leads to relegation?

Well, not exactly.

In the Premier League era, only five teams have started a season with five successive defeats in 32 years, and three of them have gone on to be relegated.

One of those five sides – Norwich City in 2021-22 – went on to extend that losing run to six games, while Portsmouth in 2009-10 and Crystal Palace in 2017-18 even lost their first seven games… and the latter didn’t even manage a single goal in that awful run.

Despite such a horrendous start, Palace ended that season in 11th place, recovering to secure 44 points from their remaining 31 games.

Southampton have been here before, too. Saints started the 1998-99 campaign with five defeats, before finally winning a point in their sixth game with a 1-1 draw at home to Tottenham.

Just like Palace in 2017-18, Southampton avoided relegation that season, and they even kept the faith with manager Dave Jones, who eventually guided them to safety.

Unfortunately for Frank De Boer, Palace weren’t so kind. The Dutch manager was sacked after four games and four defeats, with his sacking one of the earliest ever in a Premier League season.

Roy Hodgson led Palace’s revival that campaign, but unlike Sean Dyche and Russell Martin this season, De Boer didn’t have credit in the bank to call upon in his time of need.

Dyche, of course, kept Everton up last season despite two separate points deductions and some key injuries across 2023-24. Martin took Southampton back to the Premier League at the first time of asking following a play-off final win over Leeds United at Wembley.

Last weekend’s latest defeat at Aston Villa confirmed Everton’s worst start to a season since 1958-59, when they lost their first six games. It is also only the third time in the club’s history that they’ve started a season by losing as many as their first four games (also five in 1926-27).

On the previous two occasions that they’ve lost their first four games (and eventually five), they recovered to avoid relegation. That should count as a decent omen for them, at least.

Southampton at least gained some confidence in midweek when they worked their way past Everton in the EFL Cup following a penalty shootout at Goodison Park, while a victory this weekend would be welcome comfort to forward Ben Brereton Díaz, who last weekend broke the Premier League record for the most games played in the competition without a single win (18).

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