Burnley face threat of back-to-back relegations after 4-1 loss at Lincoln City

Burnley could become the third club in three years to drop from the Premier League to League One after a 4-1 defeat at Lincoln City last weekend, leaving them marooned in the Championship relegation zone and raising the prospect of successive relegations for the Clarets.

Back-to-back relegations from the top flight to the third tier were once extremely rare: in the first 20 seasons of the Premier League it happened only once, to Swindon Town amid the special circumstance of divisional rebalancing in 1994-95. The pattern has changed in recent years: Wolves’ relegation after 2011-12 is often cited as the first modern example, and since then the drop has occurred four times in 14 seasons, with Sunderland’s fall in 2016-18 contributing to a run of three instances in nine seasons and more recently Luton and Leicester suffering successive relegations.

Burnley’s immediate situation intensified at Sincil Bank, where 1,450 travelling Burnley supporters witnessed a 4-1 defeat and head coach Nicky Hayen’s exit became almost inevitable. The club has appointed Diego Lopez as chief football officer and installed Fabio Celestini as first-team boss in response to the downturn.

Historical cases show a variety of causes: Wolves burned through four managers and made a series of poor transfers during their decline and once suffered a treble drop to the bottom tier in the 1980s; Sunderland finished bottom of both divisions across that period, winning just 13 of 84 league matches and having spent 10 seasons in the top flight while reaching the 40-point barrier only three times; Leicester’s fall to League One followed boardroom problems and a six-point deduction for breaching profit and sustainability regulations, leaving the Foxes 23rd in the Championship and five points from safety.

Club governance and finances have been central to recent examples. Burnley, often described as a yo-yo club, were taken over in a leveraged buyout by Alan Pace’s ALK Capital in 2020 and the 2024-25 accounts show the Clarets carried £142m in loans, the highest debt level in the Championship in that season. Supporters have been protesting against the ownership of Alan Pace’s ALK Capital for much of the season.

The gap in resources can be stark: Burnley’s total revenue for 2024-25 was £71.7m compared with Lincoln’s £7.81m, while Burnley received £48m in parachute payments and Lincoln can expect about £5.5m in solidarity funding. Lincoln were in non-league football 10 years ago.

The Independent Football Regulator’s State of the Game report called for a new financial deal between the Premier League and the EFL to "reduce the distortive impact that parachute payments have on financial incentives within the Championship" and quoted IFR chair David Kogan: "The amount of money paid in parachute payments will reduce and the amount of money going into the Championship will vastly increase," adding, "The delta between parachute payment clubs and non-parachute payment clubs is going to significantly reduce, which makes the Championship a much more competitive league." The report notes parachute payments are paid at £48m in year one and £39m in year two, and found parachute payment clubs were more than four times more likely to be promoted; in 2024-25 four clubs were in receipt, they were almost 27 points better off, and they filled the top three places (with Luton relegated).

Former Watford and Reading midfielder Jobi McAnuff, now an EFL pundit, warned that recent double drops were driven by squad and management issues rather than an inevitable trend: "Despite the fact we've seen Luton and Leicester suffer back-to-back relegations in recent years, I don't see it as a trend that will continue," he told BBC Sport. "For both of those clubs, in my opinion, it was a case of mismanagement of the playing squad. From Luton's perspective, there were a few players there who maybe felt an entitlement to stay in the Premier League. They didn't readjust to being back at the Championship, where most of their players had actually been previously. And for Leicester City, they kept hold of too many that didn't really want to be there and then obviously weren't equipped to deal with a relegation battle." He added: "If you look at the numbers of teams that go back up or finish in the top places, there's a huge correlation between those clubs and the ones that are parachute payment clubs," and: "Even with a reduction in parachute payments, I still feel that advantage will prove to be massively significant for those teams.⁠​⁠‍⁠"

Luton’s off-field trajectory differs from other recent double-drop clubs: the Hatters were relegated from the Championship in 2024-25 on inferior goal difference to Hull City, with Hull then promoted to the Premier League the following season, yet Luton remain engaged in progressive stadium work at Power Court, a 25,000-capacity development due to be completed for the start of 2028-29.

Burnley host Portsmouth on Saturday; the result will be watched amid concerns that the Clarets could join recent examples of successive relegations from the Premier League down to League One.