How Many Football Teams Have Survived The Christmas Curse?
Christmas is a fantastic time for football, and not just because so many people will receive football team kits as the types of presents they will not soon forget.
There are matches on Boxing Day, the Winter transfer window and a lot of football to enjoy even outside of the main fixtures.
However, one group of people who tend not to enjoy the festive season are the players, managers and fans of any Premier League club that happens to be at the foot of the table, as the superstition goes that whoever is bottom of the league will be relegated.
This happened to the very first basement-dweller in the first Premier League season (1991/92), Nottingham Forest, and despite the protestations of longtime manager Brian Clough, they would end up going down to what was then Division One.
This was also the case for Sheffield United in the 2023/24 season, who failed to rebound after sacking future Preston North End Manager Paul Heckingbottom and ended up with one of the lowest points tallies in the history of top-flight English Football.
Usually, if a team is at the foot of the table at Christmas, enough of the season has gone past to make it clear that it will be very difficult to survive. However, it is not impossible.
West Bromwich Albion were the first in 2004/05, only securing safety after beating Portsmouth 2-0 on the final day of the season in what has since been dubbed “The Great Escape”.
It would take nearly another decade for the next escape artist, Sunderland, to escape the drop following an exceptional run of form that saw them finish as high as 14th. Ironically, another near miss in 2014/15 led to the Black Cats ending up in a legal mess over an obligation to sign Ricky Alverez.
That same year, the most remarkable Great Escape at Christmas was Leicester City, who looked completely doomed, not only bottom of the table at Christmas but staying there as late as the middle of April.
However, they not only survived thanks to winning seven of their last nine matches, they then did the utterly unthinkable and won the Premier League in 2015/16.