Ranking Leicester, Southampton and Ipswich from most to least likely to survive

Having seen all three promoted sides return straight from the Premier League to the Championship last season, top-flight newcomers Leicester City, Ipswich Town and Southampton will be aware that the gap between the top two divisions is an absolute gulf at present.

Do they have a chance of staying up? We watched each of the newly promoted teams on TV and in person several times last season, and here’s how we rated their chances, from most likely to least likely of surviving the drop… but honestly, it would be refreshing to be wrong on all three.

City of Leicester: It’s a draw between them and Southampton, so Saints fans, stop insulting us.

The main factors behind our thinking are that 1) Leicester were simply better than Southampton throughout last season, so they were automatically promoted rather than needing the play-offs; and 2) although they lost manager Enzo Maresca to Chelsea, they have appointed a manager with equally expansive ideas in Russell Martin, but who also has experience of making the necessary concessions to keep a newly promoted team in the Premier League.

Yes, they need to replace some of the key players they lost after relegation, as well as influential midfielder Kiernan Dewsbury-Hall, who also left for Stamford Bridge; but they were also less reliant on loan players to secure promotion than Southampton.

We dare say Steve Cooper will have more say over what recruitment he wants at the King Power Stadium than he had to put up with at Nottingham Forest, and he should have the clearest idea of ​​the three managers about what mistakes the club need to avoid.

Crucially, Leicester had the best defensive record in the Championship last season, conceding fewer than two-thirds of the goals conceded by a slightly leakier Southampton side.

That doesn’t always translate to the Premier League, as we know from recent experience, but it is the most important evidence we have that Leicester could be the best placed of the three to stay in the league.

We’re not foolish enough to fall in love with Leicester like we did with Burnley, though..

Southampton: We really like Russell Martin and we really like his football but… they conceded a lot of goals last season and for long periods of the campaign they were reliant on late goals to get the job done.

That worries us about them in the Premier League, where the fitness level is much higher and the opportunities to grind down opponents in a Rocky Balboa style are more limited. We’re also unsure how far Martin is willing to compromise his style to meet the different demands of the Premier League.

And actually, as Marcelo Bielsa’s Leeds showed in their first season in the Premier League, that might not be a bad thing: despite putting them behind Leicester here, if we had to back any of the three to achieve a surprise top-half finish, it would be Southampton, not Leicester.

But it could all easily go the way of Vincent Kompany’s Burnley if Southampton aren’t careful. Falling out of the automatic promotion race should be a warning sign to them that their ‘you score two, we score three’ style, while great fun to watch in the Championship, could quickly turn into ‘we score one, you score four’ in the Premier League.

City of Ipswich: Once again, we are quick to express our admiration for Ipswich for the incredible and rare feat of achieving back-to-back promotions.

For those who haven’t been following the Championship closely, Ipswich’s promotion was no fluke. There’s always a team that starts off well and then falls off, or occasionally an average team on paper that rides a huge wave of momentum that carries them over the finish line.

That is not the case for Ipswich. Their underlying numbers were excellent from the start, up there in Leicester and Burnley territory, and they managed to stay there to help turn a three-horse race for second into a three-horse race for first after Leicester suffered a stumble in form in the spring.

Our main problem? Ipswich picked up so many, many points from losing positions last season – 32 of their 96 in total – which speaks volumes for the character of their team and manager Kieran McKenna’s ability to make decisive changes.

But that positive can quickly turn into a negative. Just as Southampton left things to the end – a habit Ipswich shared, but even more so – most Premier League teams are far less forgiving once they’ve taken the lead… or if their opponents aren’t prepared from the start, which Ipswich’s record suggests they may not have been.

They spent a good amount of money, of course..