Ipswich and Wolves victories put Newcastle, Manchester City and Everton to shame

Ipswich Town and Wolverhampton Wanderers both breathed a sigh of relief over the weekend after picking up their first victories of the Premier League season, joining Southampton and Crystal Palace on one win from 11 games

The good news for the newly three-pointed pair is that this is far from too late to start getting into winning ways. Ten previous Premier League sides have gone even longer without claiming their first wins of a new campaign, and almost half of them have still managed to stay up.

Let’s have a look at the 10 worst starts to a Premier League season and see how they got on in the end, shall we?

READ: REVEALED: Why Liverpool will officially be massive bottlers if they don’t win Premier League title

11 games without a win: 1995/96 – Manchester City (relegated)
City’s record of just two points from their first 11 games of the 1995/96 season was a record low that stood for 25 years, and yet Alan Ball was still able to get his side within a whisker of survival before a monumental cock-up on the final day.

Yes, it’s that season we’re talking about: drawing 2-2 with Liverpool on the final day, City needed to find a winner to stay up. Only…Ball was led to believe holding onto a draw would do, and instructed his side to kill time and protect the point. Niall Quinn discovered the reality of the situation on a dressing-room TV after being subbed off, but his rush back to the bench was too late and City were relegated on goal difference.

11 games without a win: 1996/97 – Blackburn Rovers (survived)
Crowned Premier League winners just over a year before but now without star player Alan Shearer following his move to Newcastle, Blackburn were left to slowly realise there was a significant chance that relegation might be looming in a dismal first couple of months of the 1996/97 campaign that saw them take just four points.

Ray Harford was dismissed as manager, Tony Parkes took over as caretaker, and immediately results improved: Blackburn won 3-0 in his second game in charge, lost just two of the next 17, and ended up finishing a respectable 13th.

11 games without a win: 2019/20 – Watford (relegated)
…and then there are those managerial changes that don’t work. Three of them, in Watford’s case. Javi Gracia got just four winless games before Quique Sanchez Flores took over and proved barely any better, with just one win in ten. Nigel Pearson looked like he might be the one after taking over, with a little festive and New Year run delivering 14 points from six games.

But then it all went to pot again, with their 3-0 win over until-then-unbeaten Liverpool in late February looking just as bizarre in Watford’s season as it did in the Reds’. Watford won just twice more after the post-covid hiatus, Pearson was sacked despite Watford still having a chance of survival with two games to go, and they finished a point away from safety.

12 games without a win: 1994/95 – Everton (survived)
Back to those dugout changes that work out. Joe Royle came in from Oldham in November 1994, which the departing Mike Walker might consider slightly harsh in hindsight given he just finally led Everton their first win and kickstarted what would turn into an eight-game unbeaten run after Royle took over.

Everton never lost two in a row again that season and went on to win the FA Cup – as well as mathematically guaranteeing survival with a game to spare in a congested bottom half of the table courtesy of a victory away to Ipswich. They finished 15th.

13 games without a win: 2000/01 – Derby County (survived)
Derby opted to stick it out with long-serving manager Jim Smith despite a thorny start to the 2000/01 season that saw Derby score plenty of goals but concede even more: their first five scorelines read 2-2, 2-3, 2-2, 3-3 and 2-2.

A reconfiguration to something a bit more defensively solid and less attack-minded did the trick, with Derby starting to pick up 1-0 wins and goalless draws (in among a few batterings) as they slowly moved away from the foot of the table. Getting the most impressive of those 1-0 wins away to already-champions Manchester United on the penultimate day courtesy of Malcolm Christie secured survival, with Derby finishing in 17th, eight points clear of the drop zone.

13 games without a win: 2004/05 – Norwich City (relegated)
Nigel Worthington’s side bloody loved a draw in 2004/05, taking seven of them in their first 12 games before finally applying the finishing touch to come from behind and beat Southampton 2-1 in late November.

The good news is that the draws dried up after that; the bad news is that they were replaced almost entirely by defeats, with Norwich winning just twice more until hitting a purple patch of four in six to give themselves a chance on the final day. They duly cocked it right up with a 6-0 defeat at Fulham and went down in 19th, a point adrift of safety.

14 games without a win: 2021/22 – Newcastle United (survived)
Steve Bruce’s side bloody loved a draw in 2021/22, taking seven of them in their first 14 games before finally beating Burnley 1-0 in December. Only it wasn’t Bruce in charge by then. The Saudi takeover had done through in October, and the new owners unsurprisingly gave Bruce the heave-ho just a couple of weeks later to bring in Eddie Howe.

After a tricky start and some helpful January recruits, the new gaffer got Newcastle into top four-level form, which was only enough to get them to an impressive 11th given their awful start to the season – but they kept that up into the following season to achieve Champions League qualification.

15 games without a win: 1993/94 – Swindon Town (relegated)
Not much to say beyond this: Swindon were just rubbish. Like, proper rubbish. They finished bottom, conceding 11 goals and collecting just 30 points in a 42-game season.

16 games without a win: 2012/13 – QPR (relegated)
Despite or perhaps because of their ambitious transfer policy of going after big names for big money, QPR were terrible in 2012/13.

Replacing Mark Hughes with Harry Redknapp failed to get them going, with the new manager only able to string together a couple of runs of draws and the occasional win. They went down with three games still to play after a goalless draw against Reading, who were the only other side in the division who were even remotely as bad. Losing all three of those games ensured QPR finished bottom with just 25 points.

17 games without a win: 2020/21 – Sheffield United (relegated)
United had been the surprise package of the disrupted 2019/20 campaign, coming up from the Championship under Chris Wilder and spending almost the entire season in the top half before finishing 9th.

Different story altogether the following season. The Blades took just two points in their first 17 games, didn’t taste victory until January, and spent the entire season in the relegation zone. before being relegated with six games still to play under new gaffer Paul Heckingbottom. Only three entirely in-vain wins in those half-dozen games saved them from ending up as bad as last season’s edition of Sheffield United.