Could Premier League give promoted clubs an FFP holiday?

So three is about to become six. When the final formalities of Ipswich’s relegation are confirmed, almost certainly this weekend, the last six teams promoted from the Championship will have gone straight back down.

It’s not new information, with the trapdoor closing inexorably on the promoted three from the moment Wolves finally pulled their fingers out a couple of months ago, but the sheer scale of that trio’s failure grows starker by the week.

The traditional ’40-point barrier’ has only very occasionally been an actual requirement for Premier League survival, but the sight of teams stumbling to mathematical safety over a month before the season ends without yet reaching that mark is still jarring.

And things really weren’t all that different last season, with Nottingham Forest’s points deduction giving a misleading idea of how close the promoted-and-immediately-relegated teams actually were to those above them. Forest were Not Good last season, yet without the points deduction would still have ended a cosy 10 points clear of Luton.

Everyone else was at least 13 points clear of the bottom three.

Last year’s relegated teams between them managed a meagre 66 points from 114 games, and this year’s are trending even lower, with an unlikely 16 points needed from their final 15 games just to match last year’s historically weak bottom three.

And just like last year, the bottom three have, as a group, got worse and worse as the season has gone on. These are not teams taking just a fraction too long to get up to the speed of the Premier League and adjust; these are teams who have realised to their horror just how far short they are and sliding ever further out of their depth as the early-season bubbles of post-promotion optimism pop one by one.

One year of this could be dismissed as a freak occurrence, but two is starting to get uncomfortable. It might not yet be at the point where the Premier League have to consider taking direct measures to tackle the problem – another valid question is whether the Premier League even consider this to in fact be a problem – but if anything like this happens again next season the discourse will be unavoidable.

Especially if it is indeed Sheffield United who join Leeds and Burnley in having another failed crack at the top flight. If three large clubs with significant recent Premier League pedigree can no longer bridge the gap, what hope for anyone else?

Leeds were tremendous value the last time they got promoted and should at least be expected to give it a good old go, but it’s also worth remembering that last time they got promoted they somehow ended up with one of the world’s most iconic and influential coaches, as well as a man who may well be about to win the Ballon d’Or and a Patrick Bamford who scored several goals. That’s an awful lot of lightning to try and bottle again.

And even then it only worked briefly. Burnley and Sheffield United are already two of the clubs to have gone straight back down after coming up, highlighting a contingent parachute-payment-related issue of a developing coterie of clubs who exist in perpetual limbo, too small for the Premier League and too big for the Championship.

It must also be noted that the six clubs who have completed the promotion-relegation double-header in the last two years have all f*cked it in various ways. Some have foolishly believed the football that got them out of the Championship could just as effectively keep them in the Premier League. Others have simply got promoted too early in their cycle to be able to cope. Some have done both. Some have insisted on Chris Wilder.

They all have mitigation for relegation itself; none has total exemption from criticism for not even making it interesting.

And all doom-and-gloom discussion of this topic has to acknowledge that the three teams before the forlorn six to get promoted were Nottingham Forest, Fulham and Bournemouth, all of whom are doing very nicely now, thank you very much.

But right now the most sensible prediction for next season’s Premier League table would have Leeds in 18th, Burnley 19th and whoever wins the play-offs propping up the rest. And then Palace in 12th because Palace are always 12th.

Even this time last year, promoted teams might at least have looked at Forest and maybe even Everton and seen scope for locating the vital ‘if we can just finish above…’ team. Where is that team now?

Man United and Spurs aren’t going to be flirting with the 40-point mark again next season because United will buy themselves an Amorim-appropriate squad while Spurs will appoint an actual football manager, and it surely won’t really be Scott Parker. Everton are buoyant, Wolves have got a proper manager in to actually get some sensible results out of a very decent squad, and Forest are off to the Champions League.

There are some very predictable bumps in the road that might happen for various clubs among the Premier League’s burgeoning ‘middle class’ this summer. Bournemouth are almost certainly going to be picked off to the tune of two or three players and possibly even the manager. Brentford will surely lose Bryan Mbeumo with only a year left on his contract. Wolves will definitely lose Matheus Cunha.

Yet the overwhelming likelihood in all these cases is that each of those clubs will adapt and cope as they have before, their Premier League status and wealth further entrenched by another year’s service and all those setbacks also serving to further swell the coffers.

They will still all be better placed than promoted clubs boasting inadequate squads for the new challenges, and already two managers who have conspicuously failed at that higher level. Leeds are already thinking of getting rid.

It leaves really only West Ham who appear remotely vulnerable next season. That’s a fairly shocking indictment of a club with their resources, but you’d still say on balance of probability, it’s far more likely they improve rather than regress on the back of a Graham Potter pre-season and inevitable further investment in the squad.

Things can and will change. Things can and will surprise us. But right now there is no member of the Existing Seventeen who look likely to fall significantly short of 40 points, and little grounds for great optimism that any of the promoted clubs could make it matter if they do.

We find ourselves wondering whether it isn’t time to do something drastic like relaxing the FFP rules for promoted sides.

Far be it from us to suggest Leeds’ best route to immediate success is to simply spend beyond their means, but a quick look at where Forest are now compared to the six teams to have been promoted since does kind of hint that simply breaking those rules is already beyond merely an amusing idea to mischievously put forward on a formerly good football website.