At least 8 teams are in a Premier League relegation battle just as entertaining as the title race

With roughly a third of the season gone and Chelsea set fair to canter to the title, it’s time to turn our attention to the less glamorous, murkier end of the Premier League. The early signs are that we could be in for a fairly spectacular relegation battle: At this early stage, by our careful calculations, there are eight teams either in or uncomfortably near the sticky stuff. Here they are, complete with explanations as to why they will and won’t be going down.

Why they will go down: On the face of it, Middlesbrough look the best equipped of all the newly promoted teams to stay up. They’re well organised, they’ve bought pretty well, and most importantly, there are some proper messes beneath them. Perhaps the biggest question is whether there are still any lingering traces of whatever argument it was that provoked Aitor Karanka to walk out on the club last March.

Why they will stay up: D-d-d-d-d-d-d-d-defence! Don’t be fooled by Aitor Karanka’s feathered hair and shining eyes: He was a central defender, and his teams start from the same place. Last season, as they came up, they had the best defensive record across all four professional divisions; this time around, though they’ve found clean sheets a little harder to come by, they’ve kept out relatively prolific teams like Arsenal, Bournemouth, and West Brom*, and only Chelsea, Arsenal, and Tottenham have conceded fewer.

* This is not a joke. West Brom have scored more goals than Manchester United.

Why they will go down: The stench of death hangs heavy over Alan Pardew. Palace have plummeted from fifth in the table last December to 14th this, and have kept just three clean sheets in their last 33 league games, a record that goes beyond bad into hilarious. And all the while, Pardew has assiduously moved any blame on from himself: onto player error, onto luck, onto the opposition being really good. Always right to a certain extent; always painting an incomplete picture from which he is mysteriously absent. Reports suggest that elements of Palace’s hierarchy are keen to see him replaced, though as with all such decisions, acting too hastily and waiting too long can both prove disastrous.

Why they will stay up: Frankly, of all the clubs struggling down at the bottom, it’s Palace that look best placed to profit from a quick managerial defenestration-coronation combo. The squad is pretty decent, after all: there’s pace on the wings, some proper footballers in the middle, and Christian Benteke and Steve Mandanda are very good at, respectively, scoring and stopping goals. Alternatively, perhaps the 3-0 win over Southampton is a sign that Handsome Pards can turn things around (that, of course, will be very much his doing). Either way, they should be fine.

Why they will go down: Extreme travel sickness! Burnley’s only point away from home so far this season has come at Old Trafford, where an inspired Tom Heaton kept a malfunctioning Manchester United attack at bay. And perhaps even more stark than that single point is the fact that they’ve only scored a single goal on the road, a consolation penalty against Southampton. Trying to stay up over 38 games is hard; trying to do it over effectively 19 might be impossible.

Why they will stay up: Well, the obvious counterpoint to the above is … Fortress Turf Moor! With 13 points from seven games, Burnley have a better home record than every team below them and plenty of those above, including Manchester City, Manchester United, and Everton. Though not invincible, they’ve already beaten both Liverpool clubs, Watford, and Crystal Palace. Precisely why this might be is a little mysterious — obviously it’s got something to do with the Premier League’s pampered elite being unable to cope with a proper football ground — but it does mean that if they can start to pick up a few points away from home, they’ll have a solid base to build on.

Why they will go down: As the old saying goes, what goes up must swing violently back down again. The fundamental balance of the universe requires that 2015-16 and 2016-17 average out into two perfectly ordinary seasons for Leicester City, and if Leicester will insist on winning the title in the first, they’ll just have to suffer the consequences in the second. More prosaically, the defensive axis of Wes Morgan and Robert Huth that underpinned last season’s title bid has regressed to the mean and then out the other side, the departure of N’Golo Kanté has totally unbalanced the midfield, and the remarkable overperformance of basically everybody else in the squad has — surprise! — turned out to be unsustainable.

Why they will stay up: Come on. It would be ridiculous. History tells us that the last time a title-holding team went down was Manchester City in 1938, and dispatches from the Champions League indicate that Leicester are top of Group G and undefeated after five games. Which sort of suggests that they’re not actually fundamentally rubbish. Though the thought occurs that the only way to top last season would be to get relegated and win the Champions League. Hmm. Might have a look at the odds …

Why they will go down: They have a very peculiar, hilariously unbalanced squad; they can’t defend; their manager doesn’t seem to have any solution to the problem of their defending; their owners’ solution to the problem of their defending is to lure Rio Ferdinand away from his television work; they’ve moved to a massive, atmosphere-free stadium that nobody likes; their top scorer is an adventurous right wingback; and nobody seems to have any idea what Simone Zaza is supposed to be doing, least of all Simone Zaza.

Why they will stay up: Big Andy Carroll is back, baby! Assuming they can keep him fit, then between his old-fashioned clanking, Dimitri Payet’s genius, and the admirable Michail Antonio, they should have enough to stay up. They’ve also been slightly stitched up by the early fixture list: Half of their 14 league games have come against the top eight, six of those were away, and they’ve taken just one point from those games. By contrast, they’ve only played three games against the other teams in this article, but have taken seven points off them. So things should, in theory, get a little easier.

Why they will go down: After 10 games of the season, Sunderland had made a historically appalling start to the season. They were rock bottom with a pathetic two points, and it was evident that the squad -- with the exception of defiant young goalkeeper Jordan Pickford -- was rotten from top to bottom. Worse, their manager, David Moyes, was clearly a broken man after his failures in Manchester and San Sebastián. He was incapable of inspiring or organising the players he inherited, and his recruitment was limited to an underwhelming clutch of players with whom he had previously worked, unwanted by anybody else.

Why they will stay up: After 14 games of the season, Sunderland have won three of the last four and are one of the form teams in the division. They’ve already overtaken Swansea and Hull and are now just one point behind West Ham. Moyes’ decision to bring in Victor Anichebe has proved inspired: The former Everton man has scored three in four and dovetailed neatly with Jermain Defoe up front. It’s clear that Moyes has refound his mojo, and Sunderland fans can settle in for a good few seasons of Everton-style competence.

Why they will go down: Well, they’re something of a mess. Against a background of unpopular owners and fan protests, Hull went into the season with an interim manager and couldn’t find a better alternative, did some frantic shopping in the last couple of days of the transfer window, and then promptly … huh. Won their first two games of the season. Weird. Anyway, they’ve proved the doom-laden predictions to be accurate since then, and have picked up five points from their last 12 games. Worse still, they’ve yet to go away to seven of the top eight. Fun times await in the new year.

Why they will stay up: While those two early wins look less impressive in hindsight — since Leicester and Swansea have also turned out to be hot, hot bobbins — they, along with the almost-successful exercise in bus parking against Manchester United, did at least demonstrate that there’s some kind of heart to the squad, and that Mike Phelan can get them organised. Which is good, right? Also they beat Southampton, and Southampton later went on to beat Arsenal in the League Cup, so Hull are basically better than Arsenal. That’s it. That’s all we’ve got.

Why they will go down: It’s always a little dangerous to draw big conclusions from individual games, particularly down at the bottom of the table, because sometimes odd things happen and sometimes weak teams get thumped. But Tottenham’s five-nil thrashing of Swansea wasn’t just a bad result. It was a bleak performance, a collective surrender in the face of adversity that spoke of a deep-rooted, fundamental fragility. And we can only imagine that whatever good feeling was knocking around the place after the 5-4 over Palace has been thoroughly rinsed away. Bottom of the table with nine points is bad. Bottom of the table, nine points, and miserable is much worse.

Why they will stay up: In theory, if Bob Bradley can sort the defence, then the combined talents of Gylfi Sigurdsson and Jefferson Montero might be enough to scrape another 30-ish points out of the games that they have left. And they’ve got home games against five of the six teams above them to come; a fistful of six-pointers. In theory. But five-nil, though. Five-nil, and heads down after the first. Brutal.