Forest kept 4 of 11 starters; promoted English clubs kept 119 of 210

Nottingham Forest went up to the Premier League, the top division in England, in 2022. Of its 11 regular starters from promotion, 4 kept their starting place.

Regular starters are the players who started most often: at least 4 in every 10 league games. In England, 17 clubs went up from 2017/18 to 2022/23, with 210 of these starters, and 119 kept their place: 57%. In Brazil it was 1 in 4, and across six leagues, nearly half, 599 of 1,341.

This weekend the three promoted clubs play. Coventry visit Everton on Friday 6 November, Hull visit Arsenal on Saturday 7 November, and Ipswich host Bournemouth on Sunday 8 November. Coventry, Hull and Ipswich have no count here, so the fans' question is the general one: should a promoted team keep its promotion starters?

The count comes from the Soccer Addicted archive, the site's record of matches, with the line-up of every game in six leagues, the top divisions of six countries.

The count separated the clubs that most repeated their promotion starters in the top division from those that most changed them, always comparing clubs promoted in the same league. The two groups add up to the 107 clubs in the count.

Inside each league, 20 of the 55 clubs that most repeated their promotion starters went down in the first year, and 19 of the 52 that most changed them: the same proportion in both groups. Going down is dropping to the division below.

How many promotion starters are still starters in the top division?

In Brazil, 71 of 275 regular starters from promotion kept their starting place at the same club. That is 1 in 4.

Across the six leagues combined, it was 599 of 1,341, nearly half. Brazil keeps the fewest, and its margin of error does not touch that of any other league.

In Europe, Serie A is the lowest, 116 of 297, and its margin sits below those of the Premier League and LaLiga and overlaps Ligue 1's. Among the other four the margins overlap, and the count puts none ahead of another.

Each club has from 9 to 17 regular starters, not the 11 of one match. In 2022/23, Forest kept 4 of 11 and stayed in the top division.

Where do the starters who do not keep their place go?

Of those who did not keep their place in Brazil, the largest group went to another club: 97 of 275. Across the six leagues combined, the largest group kept it, 599 of 1,341.

Staying at the club means having appeared at least once, starting or on the bench. Another club means having played, in the same season, for a club in one of the 17 leagues in the archive. The count sees where a player played, not why: a sale, a contract termination, a loan that ended and an injury are mixed.

Of the 9 regular starters that Remo, a Brazilian club, carried over from the 2025 Brasileirão Série B, 2 keep their place: the goalkeeper Marcelo Rangel and the full-back Marcelinho, who plays down the side of the pitch. Of the other 7, three stayed at the club without being regular starters, three went to another club and one is in no archive line-up. Whether keeping starters helps a club stay in the top division is the next question.

Did clubs that kept more promotion starters go down less in the first year?

No: inside each league, they went down in the same proportion. Of the 52 clubs that kept fewer, 19 went down. Of the 55 that kept more, 20 did.

Each group, from 6 to 12 clubs per league, is small, and this describes what happened without proving that keeping or changing makes no difference.

And the clubs promoted this season, in Brazil and in Europe?

Among the clubs promoted this season, Málaga kept 10 of 12 and are last of the 20 clubs in LaLiga. Frosinone kept 9 of 11 and are 6th, and Remo, 2 of 9, are 19th. Of 15 clubs mid-season, there is a bit of everything, and they give no rule.

The table is valid up to 5 November and enters no total, because the outcome does not exist yet. Where the position says archive, it comes from the table built with the archive's results. Troyes's is left out, because it depends on the tiebreaker.

On 5 November, in the 2026 Brasileirão, Remo are 19th, with 29 points in 34 games. Chapecoense, who also went up, are last, with 21 in 33, and the CBF has already confirmed their relegation.

The 2026 Brasileirão has 38 rounds, and the bottom 4 go down to the Brasileirão Série B. In the 2026 Brasileirão Série B, the top 2 go up directly and 2 more through a playoff, a knockout between 3rd and 6th.

The three Premier League clubs promoted, Coventry, Hull and Ipswich, have no count, because the Championship in 2025/26 has no line-ups in the archive. The others play from 6 to 8 November: Málaga v Racing de Santander, Borussia Dortmund v Elversberg, Hoffenheim v Schalke, Cagliari v Frosinone, Monza v Atalanta, Paris Saint-Germain v Troyes and Le Mans v Monaco.

How was the count made?

The count compares, game by game, the line-ups of 107 clubs that went up in six leagues, up to 5 November 2026. It takes promotions from 2015/16 to 2022/23 in Europe and from 2018 to 2023 in Brazil; more recent ones, and Brazil's before 2018, have no line-ups in the archive and are left out.

Only clubs with all 11 starters of every game in the archive, in 90% or more of the games in the second division and 80% or more in the first, enter. In each league, "most repeated" means clubs above that league's median share of starting places kept by the promotion players. The count is made league by league, because the Brasileirão changes more starters than the others and merging would mix each league's way with each club's choice.

The margin of error is the range in which the number would move with other clubs: in Brazil, 21% to 31%. Shuffling the clubs between the two groups, inside the same league, 10,000 times showed that a difference as big as the real one appears almost always by luck alone. The count shows what happened, not what caused it, and does not know why each player left.

So does keeping the promotion starters hold a club in the top division?

From what happened across the six leagues, no: clubs that most repeated their promotion starters went down in the same proportion as those that most changed them. In my reading, the debate about the squad loses weight: Forest kept 4 of 11 and stayed up, and who goes down is decided by the points in the table.

The next question: after going up, how many clubs go straight back down in the first year? The answer is in how many of the clubs that go up fall straight back down.