How Many Teams Have Ended A Season With Negative Points?
The start of a new season of football is always exciting and filled with optimism. Every player and every fan dons their team’s kit and hopes they can have a fantastic run.
In a competition where two teams in England alone (Preston North End in 1888-89 and Arsenal in 2003-04) have gone through an entire season without tasting defeat once being immortalised as “invincible” in the process.
However, arguably an even more remarkable achievement, albeit for all the wrong reasons, is for a team to end a season on zero points, or have a “reverse invincible” season.
Only six teams throughout the worldwide centuries-long history of football have ever reached that level having played a full season, only two of which played in the top tier of their country’s football pyramid.
There is one achievement even lower than this, however, and that is to end a full season of football with fewer points than you started.
Many teams have started a season or ended up on minus points due to deductions in points, but only two teams in history have ended with minus points having played a full season of football.
The first was in 2006-07 in the A Group, the top tier of Bulgarian football, in a situation that was a mix of curse and karma for a team that now no longer exists.
Initially founded as FC Conegliano, the team based in German, Sofia, controversially changed its name to Chernomorets Burgas Sofia, because it was registered in the former but played its games in the latter. It was confusing and fans naturally hated it.
After rapidly rising the ranks of the B Group, their first season in the A Group ended with one draw, 29 losses and a three-point deduction for not registering enough youth players, ending on a grand total of -2 points.
The only team to do worse than this was in the 2022-23 Cymru Premier League, the top tier of Welsh football dominated by Total Network Solutions.
At the opposite end of the table was Airbus UK Broughton, who did manage to draw twice but having fielded ineligible players against Caernarfon Town and Pontypridd United, were deducted six points in all, making them numerically the worst top-tier team in history.
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