"Same problems" - Alan Shearer offers grim Burnley, Leeds United & Sheffield United promotion prediction | OneFootball

The Premier League's all-time top scorer doesn't have much hope for the second tier's top three sides.

Burnley, Leeds United and Sheffield United will be beset by the same problems that the other teams who have been promoted from the Championship over the past two seasons have had, according to Alan Shearer.

Southampton's relegation back to the second division was confirmed on Sunday. Their 3-1 loss to Tottenham Hotspur cemented their legacy as the earliest side to be relegated in the competition's history, sitting on just 10 points from 31 games.

The chances are that Leicester City - last season's Championship champions - and Ipswich Town - the other automatically promoted side from the second tier's 2023/24 campaign - will soon follow them back down to where they came from a year ago. If that happens, it will be the second successive year in which all three promoted sides have gone straight back down again.

Alan Shearer gives grim Burnley, Leeds & Sheffield United promotion prediction

The current top three are fighting a tightly contested battle for the top two spots. Leeds missed out on promotion last season while Burnley and the Blades were in the Premier League. Their manager, Daniel Farke, has said that he is "convinced" that his side will right the wrongs of the previous campaign and go up this time around.

For however many of those three sides that go up, if not all of them, the sweet taste of promotion might not be long-lasting if things continue the way that they have been for newly promoted sides.

Why exactly teams are struggling to adjust to the Premier League is being questioned now more than ever, with even the top pundits unable to find a 100% definitive answer.

On 'The Rest is Football' podcast, Shearer and Gary Lineker raised this very question. The BBC host asked the former Southampton centre-forward: "Why do you think that is? Because it’s not only going down but this season by quite some considerable distance. Do you think the PSR (Profit and Sustainability) rules are playing a part?"

"I think it’s a combination of both," responded Shearer. "The gap between the Championship (and the Premier League) and, I guess, whoever comes up from the Championship this year, whether it’s going to be Burnley, whether it’s going to be Leeds, or whether it’s going to be Sheffield United.

"I guess whoever it is, the three who come up will have the same problems as what these three this year and the three last year had to put up with."

Promoted Championship sides must follow the tried and tested formula for survival

Not one team that has been promoted in the last four seasons has gone up and stayed up by playing the exact same way in the top flight as they had in the second tier. It's proven that it doesn't work - Burnley can provide a first-hand account of that.

The sides that have managed to establish themselves in the Premier League - Brentford, Bournemouth, Fulham, Nottingham Forest - have all had to be adaptable and industrious with their tactics. They didn't pretend to be the big fishes that they were in the Championship pond once they'd been thrown into the dangerous waters of the top table.

To go against these proven methods would be a metaphorically suicidal thing for any team who now wins promotion to the Premier League to do.