North East | Can Sunderland defy the odds again?

Sunderland have come a long way since the dark days of their time in League One.

They were one of the great surprises of the 2025-26 Premier League season.

Author | Lewis Whatley

Promoted from the Championship via the play-offs in May 2025, the Black Cats marked their return to the top flight after an eight-year absence with an extraordinary campaign.

Widely tipped for relegation, Sunderland instead finished seventh and secured European football for the first time since 1973.

So why, outside the newly promoted Hull City, Coventry and Ipswich, are Sunderland once again among the bookmakers’ favourites to go down?

Their sceptics have three obvious arguments: their unimpressive underlying numbers last season, the so-called second-season syndrome that can affect promoted clubs, and the added demands of a European campaign.

Second-season syndrome

The idea that promoted sides who survive their first Premier League season are often relegated in their second has become football folklore, with the phrase ‘second-season syndrome’ regularly wheeled out. But how common is it really?

Last season, Sunderland and Leeds became the 53rd and 54th promoted teams to retain their Premier League status.

Of the previous 52, only 11 were relegated the following season, a rate of 21%. The overwhelming majority of promoted sides that survive their first campaign do not succumb to second-season syndrome.

There is, however, precedent for a promoted side that enjoyed a season as impressive as Sunderland’s being relegated the following year. Indeed, the best-performing promoted team of the Premier League’s 38-game era suffered precisely that fate.

George Burley’s Ipswich finished fifth in 2000-01 with 66 points, setting the record for the highest finish and points total achieved by a promoted side in a 38-game Premier League season.

European football followed, though, and Ipswich fell 13 places the next season, collecting 30 fewer points as they finished 18th and were relegated. Sunderland benefited from their collapse, finishing one place above them.

Overall, four of the previous 20 promoted sides to finish in the top half in their first season, 20%, were relegated in their second. The most recent example was Sheffield United five years ago.