Premier League table “footprints”, 2020-21

As is traditional, here’s a look at how each club moved around the league table over the course of the season. This graphic works as follows:

  • The clubs are listed down the side, in the order they finished in the final league table
  • Each row shows how many days that club spent in each league position, based on where they finished at the end of the day
  • The season is considered to run from the date of the first match to the date of the last, excluding the play-offs
  • To make it easier to read across a row, I’ve added dividing lines in both directions to indicate the title winners, rest of top four, the division between the top and bottom halves and the relegation zone
  • There are also fainter outlines around each club’s final league position

The idea of this is that you can see the “footprint” that each club left in the table this season. Some stayed at one end, others bounced around a lot more etc. This isn’t supposed to be anything particularly profound, but when I ran it I was surprised to see how much time certain clubs spent quite a long way from their final position and how far most travelled over the course of the season.

Southampton moved around a lot this season, finishing at least one day in 18 of the 20 possible league positions, while Man Utd also managed to occupy every spot in the top 16.

Liverpool, Leicester and Everton were the only teams who never found themselves in the bottom half this season, while none of the final bottom three ventured into the top half at any point.

Speaking of Leicester, the Foxes spent more time in the top four than anyone else (242 days out of a possible 254) but weren’t able to end the season there.