What can Crystal Palace learn from previously relegated WSL teams?
A look back at the history books to see what sort of targets a WSL team needs to hit in order to survive.
It has been a tricky launch for Crystal Palace, the South London club embarking on their first-ever season in the WSL.
Last weekend, a 4-0 away defeat to Tottenham Hotspur on opening day was compounded by a 7-0 drubbing at home to reigning champions Chelsea on Friday night. Oof.
“These nights are tough. We’ve had back-to-back world class opposition. That’s as tough as it gets for a club that has just come up,” said manager Laura Kaminski to media in her post-match press conference after the Chelsea loss.
“We just need to keep focus with the small steps, marginal gains, all the steps we took to win a league [last season]. It is my job, as a manager and leader of the squad, to ensure that targets are set. And, we work as hard as we can to achieve them…These are the harsh learnings we’re going to need to go through.”
So, are Palace already doomed to be relegated?
Of course not. With so much football left to play, it is foolish to suggest these two results will define Palace’s season.
However, Kaminski’s words focusing on “small steps” and “marginal gains” did leave me wondering what the club’s overall numerical “targets” for starving off relegation are?
By looking at the history books1, maybe we can have a better idea of what a relegated club looks like in the WSL, and perhaps what Palace’s future might hold.
The most interesting trend when looking at the total points data (above) is that the gap between the bottom/relegated clubs and the second-bottom clubs is widening.
Between 2019 and 2022 the gap was just one or two points. But in 2022-23 it swelled to six points — eclipsing the five-point gap in 2018-19 — and then in 2023-24 it almost doubled and went to nine points. Relegation battles have been hard to come by.
This is reflective, in some ways, of the gap between the WSL and the Championship widening. As well as the difference in budgets of clubs where the men’s teams play in the Premier League when compared to the men’s Championship or League One.
For the first time, the 2024-25 WSL season features no clubs with a men’s side outside the Premier League.
Is there a magic safety number?
In the Premier League, the ‘magic number’ of 40 points is often touted around as being the target of newly promoted sides — even though West Ham men famously were relegated with 42 points in 2002-2003.
But in the WSL there hasn’t quite been a ‘magic number’ total set just yet. If you were to do the maths: 40 points divided by 38 games, and then X that number by 22 (the number of matches in the WSL) it would equal 23 points for WSL safety.
That feels a little high for what we’ve traditionally been seeing in the WSL. Although no team has ever got relegated from the league with 13 points, I would set the ‘magic number’ target a little bit above that too. Perhaps somewhere between 15 and 20, or roughly an average of one win every four or fives matches.
Once you move away from points totals, the data on relegated and safe teams gets a little bit more curious.
There have been three times where the team that was relegated actually had a better defensive record, and goal difference, than the team directly above them: 2019-20, 2021-22, and 2022-23.
This goes to show that the odd thrashing shouldn’t hamper the club’s overall ambition to stay in the division. The WSL is top heavy after all. Being outclassed, or on the wrong side of a freak result, happens.
In 2022-23, Brighton lost 8-0 to Spurs. That defeat saw manager Hope Powell resign in the aftermath. Not long after, under caretaker Amy Merricks, the Seagulls beat West Ham in a six-pointer. A massive result in their bid for safety.
Palace’s 7-0, at the hands of Chelsea, may be reminiscent of Bristol City’s 8-0 defeat to the Blues last season, but in reality survival will be defined by how a club performs against those around the middle and lower-end of the table. Not in battles against title contenders.
The average goals conceded per season for teams that finish 11th is 52 (2.3 p90). It’s not the most scientific answer, but I would suggest that (depending on your tactics and style of play) clubs will be in serious jeopardy if their defence concedes more than that.
Right now, Palace have work to do. The club is averaging 5.5 GA p90, albeit that is from an xGA of 3.45 p90. Which suggests the number could slow down a bit.
This graph, showing the attacking side of relegated and relegation-threatened WSL teams, is a nice compliment to the one before.
It helps to illuminate how a side like Birmingham was able to make the most of a rigid defence to starve off relegation for a few seasons despite struggling to score goals.
Similarly, last season Rehanne Skinner’s West Ham had the joint-fewest amount of goals scored but were able to secure many more points than Bristol did.
Reading and Bristol were both relegated despite the clubs scoring over 20 goals and each and not being the worst scorers in the league. For safety to feel assured, Palace will likely need at least 20 goals (0.9 p90), more likely it’ll need to be 25. Unless their defence is ready to step in a big way.
So, what are we looking for again?
By no means is this all that scientific — and it will more than likely depending on how other relegation-threatened teams perform — but the basic outline of how Palace can secure the survival is as follows:
Points: 16-23 — roughly one win every four matches
Goals for: 21-25+ — just over one goal scored p90
Goals against: 50-52 or fewer — about two or three goals max conceded p90
Stranger things have happened, and will happen. Nothing always goes to plan. But this is a nice outline to follow.
For this examination I only looked at the past six WSL seasons. Starting with 2018-19 and ending with 2023-24. This is because these are the seasons when the league was professional.
It should be noted that the 2018-19 season only featured 11 teams, and bottom club Yeovil Town received a points deduction after going into administration. For the purpose of this exercise I removed the deduction, so the data didn’t look so stark, and more accurately reflected pitch performance.
Similarly contentious is the 2019-20 season that was curtailed after the outbreak of COVID-19. Points per game and goals per game have been used to fill out the data.