A promoted club’s first few weeks are watched closely: are they keeping up, or already cut adrift? Eight games is a small sample, but over the last ten seasons it has said a lot about how a promoted club’s season would end.

We took the first eight league matches of every promoted club in nine leagues: the Premier League, Championship, League One, League Two, La Liga, Serie A, Bundesliga, Ligue 1 and Scottish Premiership. That’s 24 clubs this season, with results up to 2 November 2026, against the 238 clubs promoted in the previous ten seasons (2016/17 to 2025/26) in the Predictology match database.

The headline numbers

• Right on the average. This season’s promoted clubs have taken 209 points from 192 matches, 1.09 a game, against 1.07 for the promoted clubs of the previous ten seasons. In those seasons the figure ranged from 1.01 (2020/21) to 1.19 (2025/26).
• More draws. 30.7% of their matches have been drawn, the highest share in any of the eleven seasons (the previous high was 29.7% in 2018/19). They’ve won 26.0% (ten seasons: 26.7%) and lost 43.2% (46.5%).
• More goals at both ends. They’ve scored 1.24 goals a game, more than the promoted clubs of any of the previous ten seasons (the highest was 1.23 in 2016/17; ten-season average 1.10), and conceded 1.68 (ten seasons: 1.57). Only 2023/24’s promoted clubs conceded more, 1.71 a game.
• Strong at home, weak away. 1.37 points a game at home and 0.81 away, against 1.26 and 0.88 over ten seasons.

What the first eight games have meant

Of the 238 clubs promoted in the previous ten seasons, 70 went straight back down at the end of that season. How many points they had after eight games was a strong pointer:

Of the 26 promoted clubs that hadn’t won any of their first eight matches, 18 were relegated. This season two clubs went without a win in their first eight: Málaga (four draws, four defeats), still winless after 11 games, and MK Dons (six draws, two defeats), who have since won four of their last five. A slow start isn’t a sentence, though. 22 of the 54 clubs with five points or fewer stayed up, among them Crotone in 2016/17, who had one point after eight games, and Cagliari in 2023/24, with two.

League by league

“Went straight back down” counts the clubs promoted into that league in the previous ten seasons that weren’t in it, or in a higher division, the following season.

What stands out

Premier League: a better start than usual

Hull City and Ipswich Town have ten points each from their first eight and Coventry City six: 26 points from 24 matches, 1.08 a game. The ten-season average for promoted Premier League clubs is 0.86, and only the promoted clubs of 2025/26 (29 points) and 2017/18 (28) had more after eight games. It’s still the step up with the highest relegation rate of the nine leagues: 16 of the previous 30 promoted clubs went straight back down.

Serie A and the Bundesliga: two strong starts

Frosinone have 14 points from their first eight matches (4 wins, 2 draws, 2 defeats), more than any promoted Serie A club after eight games in the previous ten seasons (the best was 13, by Cagliari in 2016/17 and Parma in 2018/19). Venezia, with one win and seven defeats, have three. In the Bundesliga, Elversberg’s 13 points have been bettered after eight games only by RB Leipzig’s 18 in 2016/17. Half of Serie A’s promoted clubs in the previous ten seasons went straight back down (15 of 30), against 6 of 21 in the Bundesliga.

La Liga and League One: harder going

Málaga’s four points are the fewest by a promoted La Liga club after eight games in the eleven seasons (five clubs had managed five, most recently Real Valladolid in 2024/25). League One’s four newcomers have averaged 1.06 points a game, the lowest for promoted League One clubs in any of the eleven seasons (previous low 1.13 in 2022/23; ten-season average 1.32).

League Two: the safest landing

York City have 14 points from their first eight (4 wins, 2 draws, 2 defeats), level with Frosinone for the best start of this season’s newcomers. None of League Two’s 20 promoted clubs in the previous ten seasons went straight back down, and 2 went up again.

Is it real, or just a small sample?

Eight matches is a small sample for one club, and a single result can move a team between the bands above. The overall picture rests on 24 clubs this season and 238 before it, and it’s clear enough: promoted clubs usually take a little over a point a game early on, and the ones that start badly are the ones most likely to go down. In the five biggest leagues together, this season’s 14 newcomers have 1.00 points a game, against 0.93 for the 136 before them.

If you look at match odds involving a promoted side, numbers like these are a starting point, not a forecast: turn the price into a probability (1 divided by the decimal odds) and ask whether the team’s start and the history behind it support it. Our earlier posts on how 2026/27 compares with the last ten seasons, how often half-time leads hold, home advantage this season and first-half v second-half goals look at other angles from the same data.

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Source: Predictology match database, full-time results, cross-checked against football-data.co.uk. A club counts as promoted when it played in the division below the season before; football-data.co.uk’s season files traced every new club in the nine leagues to the division below or above. Each club’s first eight league matches are counted by date. This season’s figures cover league matches played up to 2 November 2026, with every score cross-checked against football-data.co.uk. One 2016/17 Serie A match missing from our database (Sassuolo v Pescara, awarded 0-3 to Pescara) uses football-data.co.uk’s result. Past results don’t guarantee future results. 18+ only. Please gamble responsibly and only stake what you can afford to lose. Free, confidential help is available at www.begambleaware.org.