The supercomputer, relegation six-pointers and the pressure of the battle: 'It's horrible'

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The aim is to give fans the most accurate idea possible of their team’s chances at European qualification, the title — or, at the other end of the spectrum, relegation. Currently, with Wolverhampton Wanderers and Burnley already confirmed as going down, the Supercomputer gives Tottenham Hotspur a 59.4 per cent chance of being the team to join them in the 2026-27 Championship, with West Ham United next (37.3 per cent) and Nottingham Forest and Leeds United given only slim odds (1.95 per cent and 1.22 per cent respectively) of tumbling out of the top flight. That is based on the most scientific method possible of predicting what will happen in a game of football — but the games that will determine the relegation fight over the next 23 days are not normal ones. Three of the four teams closest to that final spot in the end-of-season bottom three will have to face at least one of their fellow candidates for the drop over these final few matches, with Leeds visiting Tottenham next Sunday, May 11, then going to West Ham on the final day of the season, May 24. If we widen the lens slightly in what is a crowded table, Forest and West Ham also have the chance to drag Newcastle United — currently 14th and eight points clear of the drop but losers in nine of their past 12 games — into the struggle. Is it really possible to predict these so-called relegation six-pointers? “There’s just a different feeling around it,” says Danny Higginbotham, a former defender who suffered Premier League relegation twice in his playing career: with Derby County in 2002, and Southampton three years later. “It’s really weird, because when people say, ‘Oh, you’ve got three cup finals left or four cup finals left’ (such are the importance of matches like these), that’s bizarrely how it can feel.” The make-or-break nature of these fixtures means that teams do not necessarily follow their usual style of play in them — and it does not always make them raise their game, either. “It’s horrible,” says Robert Huth, another ex-defender who battled for top-tier survival successfully with Leicester City in 2015 having done so unsuccessfully with Middlesbrough six years earlier. He describes Leicester’s 1-0 win against fellow strugglers Burnley in the April of that 2014-15 season, which lifted them out of the relegation zone with five matches to go, as “probably the worst game of football I’ve ever played in”. “You just don’t play with any freedom whatsoever because you know what’s at stake,” Huth says. “If you lose and they (the opponents) go three or four points ahead of you, you know the games are running out. So most of (those) games I’ve played have been really, really cagey; edgy, poor standard.” That can mean that rather than form or strategy, these fixtures can end up being decided by just a moment. “You understand the magnitude of the game,” Higginbotham says, “and what can happen in those situations is that you can actually overthink things. And when you overthink things, a lot of the time, is when you tend to make mistakes.” It was a missed penalty that handed Leicester their lifeline that day in 2015 against Burnley. Matty Taylor’s spot kick just before the hour bounced off the outside of the post and away for a goal kick — from which the visitors launched it long and bundled a scrappy winner in via Jamie Vardy. “That’s how quickly these kinds of games can turn,” Huth says. “Had Burnley gone 1-0 up, we probably would have got relegated.” At the time he took that penalty, Taylor had converted nine of his 10 career spot kicks. His only unsuccessful one had been saved. What odds would a computer have put on him striking the post — and could it ever have accounted for the intense pressure of the situation? “It felt like a cup final,” Higginbotham says, recalling playing for Southampton in a six-pointer away to Crystal Palace in May 2005, the penultimate fixture of both teams’ season. “The fans were doing everything that they could do to sort of get you going for the game. Even the bus ride to the stadium, you get to the stadium, and you’ve got hundreds of your fans waiting at the bus as though you’re going into a cup final. “You feel that. There’s no question about that. But it’s like, do you feel that and let it transfer to negative energy or positive energy?” (That match ended as a 2-2 draw, and both teams were relegated.) For Shaun Derry, who captained Palace as they avoided the drop from the second-tier Championship on the last day of the 2009-10 campaign, it was the latter. The crowd is his standout memory of the day they secured survival. “I had never heard support like that as a Crystal Palace player,” Derry says. “I did make reference to it to the players, in the dressing rooms or on the pitch, where you get an opportunity to say your last piece. It felt like everybody was connected that day to the greater good, which was a 90-minute performance that needed a result at the end of it. That was the one thing that really stood out for me.” Palace had been put into administration and docked 10 points in the January, plummeting them into the relegation battle. They travelled to Sheffield Wednesday on the final day of the season knowing that avoiding defeat would keep them up and send the home side down instead while a loss would see Palace drop into League One, with Wednesday surviving. “If that result didn’t go the way that the club needed it to go, it could have folded,” Derry says. “It was more than a football match.” It finished 2-2, so Palace stayed in the Championship at Wednesday’s expense. Higginbotham knows teams can defy odds and expectations: after only one match in the 2008-09 season (a 3-1 defeat away to Bolton Wanderers), one bookmaker decided to pay out on bets that the Stoke side he was part of would be relegated, a fate they comfortably avoided. But he believes that in this season’s case, the Supercomputer is right about Tottenham, though not based on any metric a computer could measure. “I’ve seen good teams get relegated when there were worse teams than them that stayed up, and it comes down to the mentality,” he says. “It comes down to previous experience, it comes down to know-how.” Unlike the teams around them, with players and managers used to fighting for survival, Higginbotham believes Spurs lack that experience: “You’ve got a group of players that didn’t sign for the club to be trying to get out of the relegation situation that they’re in, and their mentality is going to be very different.” Derry puts much of Palace’s survival in 2010 down to their collective character and leadership. “Through the heart of our team, we had probably six or seven senior players that were all leaders of men,” he says. “I remember looking around thinking, well, if we are going to go and have a one-off game — and it was, it turned out to be one unbelievable game of football — it was great to share the pitch with that type of people.” That game at Hillsborough which ended with Palace staying up arguably swung on the kind of variable no computer could factor into its calculations, no matter how super it is. Alan Lee had given them the lead midway through the first half, but fellow striker Leon Clarke equalised two minutes before half-time. “That moment in the game where Clarke had scored, I felt at that time that we were on the back foot,” Derry says, “and I felt ultimately that that particular player was a real pivotal player for them.” But swept up in the moment, and with the majority of a 37,000-strong crowd going wild, Clarke kicked a pitchside advertising hoarding in celebration… and broke a toe. He had to go off almost immediately and, about an hour later, Wednesday were on their way to the third division. “I mean, that was unbelievable,” Derry says. “You talk about prediction — you couldn’t predict what happened that day.” Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms