Sunderland, Leeds and Burnley have made impressive starts to life back in the Premier League. Ryan Benson of Opta Analyst looks at how the promoted trio are defying recent trends to compete at the top level.
The Premier League had seemingly become a tough place for promoted teams.
After all, last season all three promoted clubs were relegated straight back to the Championship and it was the second successive top-flight campaign that rendered such a fate for the newcomers.
That treble had previously been something of a rarity.
For instance, before the 2023/24 campaign, there had been only one Premier League season – 1997/98 – in which all three promoted clubs suffered relegation at the first time of asking. So, not only was it unusual seeing it happen in 2023/24, but for it to occur in back-to-back seasons was unheard of in the Premier League era.
Still, expectations were perhaps low for Leeds United, Burnley and Sunderland. But fast-forward to the present day and, after nine Matchweeks of the season, the three promoted teams have confounded expectations.
In Matchweek 9, all three of them won. Leeds beat West Ham 2-1 on Friday; Sunderland stunned Chelsea with a 2-1 comeback victory at Stamford Bridge on Saturday; and on Sunday, Burnley rescued a dramatic 3-2 win at Wolves.
It was the first time since November 2020 that all three promoted teams had won in the same Premier League Matchweek. And if you want to disregard that season because stadiums were mostly empty due to the COVID-19 pandemic, you have to go back to 29 December 2018 for the last time all three promoted sides won in the same round of fixtures.
That in itself doesn’t necessarily mean the promoted trio have confounded expectations, but those victories took them to 38 points collectively (Sunderland – 17, Leeds – 11, Burnley – 10), and that’s significant.
Only twice before have the promoted teams amassed more than 38 points collectively through the first nine Matchweeks of a Premier League season.
In 2005/06, Wigan Athletic (19), West Ham United (15 points) and Sunderland (five) had accumulated 39 points altogether at this stage. Before that, after nine Matchweeks of the inaugural season of 1992/93, Blackburn Rovers (18), Middlesbrough (14) and Ipswich Town (12) had accumulated 44.
Promoted trios with the best PL starts after nine Matchweeks
| Season | Clubs | Combined points |
|---|---|---|
| 1992/93 | Blackburn, Ipswich, Middlesbrough | 44 |
| 2005/06 | West Ham, Wigan, Sunderland | 39 |
| 2025/26 | Leeds, Burnley, Sunderland | 38 |
| 2008/09 | Hull, West Brom, Stoke | 37 |
| 2017/18 | Newcastle, Huddersfield, Brighton | 37 |
Of course, Sunderland have been the surprise package of 2025/26. Saturday’s late win at Chelsea took them up to second in the Premier League table until victories for AFC Bournemouth and Tottenham Hotspur on Sunday pushed Regis Le Bris’ side down to fourth.
Nevertheless, they were still the first promoted side to end a day second in the Premier League after at least nine games played since Wigan on 25 November 2005.
Similarly, Sunderland’s total of 17 points has only been bettered by five promoted teams through nine Matchweeks, and they’re the first to win that many points since Hull City accumulated 20 by this stage in 2008/09.
Most PL points after Matchweek 9 for promoted teams
| Rank | Team (Season) | Points | Relegated? |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Nottingham Forest (1994/95) | 21 | No |
| 2 | Hull City (2008/09) | 20 | No |
| 3 | Wigan Athletic (2005/06) | 19 | No |
| =4 | Blackburn Rovers (1992/93) | 18 | No |
| =4 | Middlesbrough (1995/96) | 18 | No |
| =6 | Sunderland (1999/00) | 17 | No |
| =6 | Sunderland (2025/26) | 17 | TBC |
Sceptics will point to the fact that Leeds and Burnley aren’t exactly fighting for European places right now. But compared to what we’d come to expect over the past few years, seeing all three of the promoted teams at least five points above the bottom three is a breath of fresh air.
Is the Premier League's increasingly direct style a factor?
So, is there an explanation for the promoted teams’ improvement on those of the past two seasons?
One theory relates to the evolving playing styles of the Premier League.
It’s widely accepted that the Premier League has collectively embraced direct football more this season, with teams who are committed to relentless ball dominance being few and far between.
There’s an argument, then, that this has helped to create a more level playing field. Sure, it may be hard to stop a team like Pep Guardiola’s best Manchester City side from slicing through you, but it’s even harder to master such a brand of football.
Theoretically, it’s easier and less technically demanding to be effective playing direct, especially if you can build a team who are both physical and still competent on a technical level. Going long is also less risky if you aren't really cut out for tiki-taka football – just ask Southampton from last season.
Southampton were an extreme example of what had become a trend of teams earning promotion from the Championship while playing expressive football and attempting to replicate it in the Premier League. It’s rarely worked, and in their case it contributed to them being one of the worst sides in the competition’s history.
While all the promoted teams this season are a little more nuanced in their style than, say, your average route-one side from the 1990s, none of them see ball domination as central to their hopes of staying up.
That’s reflected by the playing styles graphic below, which also highlights how generally Premier League football is slightly more direct this season than either of the last two.
Leeds boss Daniel Farke is openly prioritising "rock-solid defending and being difficult to beat and difficult to create chances against"; Burnley’s promotion was built on the foundation of a historically shrewd defence in the Championship; and Sunderland have played the second-greatest proportion of passes forward (37.3 per cent) in the Premier League this season.
In fact, Sunderland didn’t even average 50 per cent possession (48.7 per cent) in the Championship last season. Leeds (61.5 per cent) and Burnley (56.9 per cent) did, but neither have particularly attempted to bring that up to the Premier League, averaging 47.6 per cent and 35.6 per cent respectively – the latter being the lowest in the division.
Clues could be seen in the teams’ recruitment. Leeds clearly looked to overhaul their squad with physical players, and that was an unmistakable element of some of Sunderland’s signings too, even if their focus on youth arguably attracted more attention.
Importance of set-pieces
This plays into another intriguing aspect of the broader Premier League this season: set-piece importance.
Burnley and Sunderland have seen the greatest proportion of shots come via dead-ball situations among all Premier League clubs in 2025/26, with 45.1 per cent and 42.1 per cent respectively.
When it comes to the proportion of expected goals (xG), Sunderland (43 per cent) are way out in front while Burnley rank as high as sixth (35.8 per cent).
Leeds are towards the other end of the scale for proportion of xG from set-pieces (21.9 per cent, sixth-lowest), and yet 44.4 per cent of their goals have come from set-pieces, with only Arsenal (56.3 per cent) and Chelsea (47.1 per cent) more reliant in that respect.
It should also be noted that physicality has been essential for Leeds in terms of winning the ball back high up the pitch, with no one bettering their 16 shot-ending high turnovers.
That equates to 27.6 per cent of their total high turnovers, which is an efficiency no other team get near.
Is this form sustainable?
Nevertheless, when looking at the promoted teams in general, it’s not outlandish to suggest there may have been a considerable degree of luck involved.
Our expected points model – which uses xG data to assess how each game "should" have finished based on the quality of chances each team created – suggests that, although Leeds should be higher in the table, Sunderland and Burnley deserve to be much further down than they are.
Now, it should be said that the model isn’t perfect as xG doesn’t take into consideration many factors such as game state and periods of threat that don’t yield a shot, but it still provides a decent barometer of how well teams have done in games.
With that in mind, the data doesn’t exactly suggest the form of Burnley or Sunderland is particularly sustainable, but momentum in football can be as valuable as it is fragile.
There’s also a long, long way to go. Sunderland’s start may have been brilliant, for example, but it only takes a couple of poor results to rock the boat.
The omens are at least pretty positive.
Only nine of the 46 promoted teams to have 10+ points through nine games have ended up being relegated, with Watford in 2021/22 beingf the most recent.
In fact, the last time all the promoted teams stayed up (2022/23), Nottingham Forest had managed just five points by this stage – Burnley have double that tally and reached 10 points almost two months earlier than in their last top-flight season.
So, while low expectations may have been shared across the board for the promoted teams before 2025/26, it’s the defiance of them that’s helped shape one of the most compelling narratives of the early months of the season.
Their modest hopes of safety now look almost realistic; whether this is fleeting or setting the tone for the rest of the campaign, it’s at least reassuring that 2025/26 hasn’t instantly followed the pattern of the two prior seasons.
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