What is the Premier League lowest-ever points total record?

Last season, Sheffield United made a valiant effort to become the team with the lowest points total in Premier League history, denied only by two near-mythical outfits from the early stages of the 21st century.

Newly promoted teams Leicester, Ipswich and Southampton will be desperate to make a better fist of it this term with plenty of road left to run – but do they have the skill and stamina required to avoid to plunge?

RadioTimes.com has rounded up the lowest ever Premier League points totals.

Lowest points totals in Premier League history

=5. Portsmouth (09/10) – 19

It feels mildly unfair to kick-start this list with Portsmouth as they actually earned 28 points during their fateful 2009/10 campaign but were docked nine points for entering administration.

Frederic Piquionne was their top scorer with 10 goals that term under Avram Grant as they made it to the FA Cup final.

Pompey have failed to recover from that crushing blow around the turn of the decade and currently reside in League One.

=5. Sunderland (02/03) – 19

A couple of impressive seventh-place finishes, courtesy of one of the Premier League's all-time greatest striker partnerships, had Sunderland flying at the turn of the Millennium.

However, by 2002/03, age caught up with Niall Quinn, robbing Kevin Phillips – still the only English winner of the European Golden Boot with 30 goals in his stunning Premier League debut season – of service.

Quinn's mega-money (at the time) £7million replacement Tore Andre Flo failed to make an impact and the Black Cats faded into the abyss with a then-record low points total.

4. Aston Villa (15/16) – 17

Villa's Class of 2016 had a jolly good shot at being the most shambolic unit to ever grace a Premier League football pitch, but only rank fourth on the list.

Three managers tried and failed to stabilise the club across the season to no avail. Tim Sherwood kicked off the season of misery and doom, but it was former Lyon boss Remi Grade who appeared from obscurity in early November to try and steer the ship.

He won three of 23 games and interim Eric Black was left to lower the coffin into the Championship once Garde had been sent packing.

=3. Huddersfield (18/19) – 16

It's quite shocking when you realise just how close Huddersfield came to plumbing new depths during their debut Premier League campaign.

Jurgen Klopp disciple – and doppelgänger – David Wagner was a darling of the media who expected his team to play like an Aldi Liverpool, but his team simply couldn't handle the step up.

The Terriers sat in 20th place for every week of the season beyond the halfway mark, winning just three games. Remarkably, they managed to do the double over Europa League-bound Wolves.

=3. Sheffield United (23/24) – 16

While Sheffield United didn't objectively complete the season with the lowest points total in history, there's a strong case to suggest their season was actually the least enjoyable in history.

The Blades finished with a near-identical record to second-placed Sunderland (yes, they're back again) on this list, but for one extra draw, yet conceded a record-high 104 goals – a staggering 35 goals more than the Black Cats during their dire campaign.

For context, the record for most goals conceded in a 38-game season previously stood at 89. For a 42-game season, the bar was set at 100. Sheffield United careered off beyond double digits to 104. One hundred and four goals. Conceded. In one season. 38 games.

The Blades didn't just lose 28 games, they were utterly annihilated in many of them. Gone without a whimper.

2. Sunderland (05/06) – 15

Premier League football is all about consolidation. Taking a firm foundation and building on it. Sunderland noted their 19-point debacle just three seasons prior and knew they could dig deeper in their quest for total misery. And they nailed it.

Mick McCarthy guided his team back to the top flight after two seasons out, but instead of the iconic Quinn and Phillips duo, they returned with Jon Stead and Anthony Le Tallec leading the line in a display of truly impressive commitment to The Banter.

Sunderland spent 37 of 38 weeks with their heads submerged below the relegation water line as their seven recognised forwards scored just 12 goals in 150 combined appearances.

Sunderland almost became the only team in the Premier League era not to win a single home game in a season but were denied the honour by a freak incident.

The Black Cats were losing 1-0 to Fulham when the game was abandoned due to snowfall. Sunderland won the rescheduled encounter which started from 0-0, their final home game of the season.

1. Derby (07/08) – 11

Just when you didn't think Sunderland's unparalleled awfulness couldn't be topped, along came the Derby County Class of '08.

Billy Davies and Paul Jewell conspired to sink to new depths, to go where no team had ever gone before – single digits. And my word, they came close.

Their Premier League top scorer was Kenny Miller with four measly strikes, and if that doesn't make you want to leave home and hug the Derby fan in your life right now, nothing will.

Derby were a 66/1 shot for promotion in the year they achieved it, and were relegated from the Premier League less than a year later in March, the earliest a team has ever been sentenced to the drop.

Paddy Power paid out on a number of bets for Derby to relegated after just five games following a 4-0 defeat to Spurs and 6-0 thrashing by Liverpool.

Davies was out by the turn of the year, and Jewell came in. He once recalled that his friend David Moyes warned him off the job, saying: "Do yourself a favour and don’t take it. We beat them 2-0 and that’s the worst team I’ve ever seen." It's fair to say Jewell regrets making the decision.

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