Ranked: The 10 worst Premier League teams, relative to spending

Last year seemed like the worst-case scenario.Pretty much everything went wrong for Tottenham Hotspur. Everyone got hurt. They were incredibly unlucky in close games — they scored 64 goals and conceded 65 — and they also eventually stopped caring about the Premier League, instead pushing all of their focus into winning the Europa League, which they did.And so Tottenham, the ninth-richest soccer club on Earth, according to Deloitte, finished last season in 17th place in their own domestic league. Even still, they were never in danger of relegation. They landed 12 points clear of 18th-place Leicester City, and their goal differential was a cool 46 goals better than the Foxes.It seemed to prove that the “Big Six” clubs in England really are too big to fail. This, after all, is why those teams are worth billions of dollars and everyone else could be bought for a couple hundred million dollars.Well, it turns out that things can, in fact, always get worse. With nine games remaining this season, Spurs are just one point clear of 18th place, the relegation zone. They still have to go to Anfield to face Liverpool and to Stamford Bridge to face Chelsea, and they host Nottingham Forest, who are tied for 18th on points, toward the end of this month.Prediction models, betting markets, and vibes all tell us the same thing: there is a very real chance that Tottenham will be relegated and find themselves playing in the Championship next season.That’s what we did here. First, I looked at the estimated market value from Transfermarkt for every Premier League roster since the 2010-11 season. These numbers tend to correlate very highly with the amount of money each team spends on its players. Then, I looked at each season individually and calculated an expected point total based on the relationship between points won and a team’s market value in each particular season.So, to come up with these rankings, I simply compared every team’s actual point total with their expected point total. The following teams are the 10 sides who finished the farthest below their expected projection.• Expected points per game: 1.57 • Actual points per game: 1.1