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Promoted from the Championship through the play-offs in May 2025, the Black Cats marked their return to the top flight after an eight-year absence with a remarkable campaign.

Tipped for relegation by many, Sunderland ended the campaign in seventh to qualify for Europe for the first time since 1973.

So why - outside newly promoted teams Hull City, Coventry and Ipswich - are Sunderland once again among the bookmakers' favourites for the drop?

There are three main reasons their doubters can point to: their poor underlying numbers last season, the 'second-season syndrome' for promoted sides and a European campaign to contend with.

But are those reasons justified?

The underlying numbers

While results and where you finish in the table are ultimately all that matter, Sunderland's underlying statistics from last season suggest repeating their success might not be so simple.

Expected goals (xG) tells us how well teams do the basics of creating lots of good chances and limiting their opponents to few low-quality ones, based on how hundreds of teams before them have scored or conceded from those opportunities.

Only relegated Burnley and Wolves had a lower xG difference than Regis le Bris' side last season, while West Ham - with the fourth-worst overall xG - were also relegated.

While Aston Villa and Sunderland made a mockery of xG by finishing much higher in the table, the majority of sides finished mostly in line with their underlying numbers, showing those two overachievers were more the exception that proves the rule.

Indeed, the three sides with the best xG difference finished in the top three in the same order, while - excluding Sunderland - the five sides with the worst made up the bottom five.

Only Man City and Aston Villa overperformed their xG numbers by more than the Black Cats, who scored three more goals and conceded six fewer than expected given the number and quality of shots taken.

So taking the season as a whole, it seems that Sunderland's performances weren't as impressive as their results. But one event significantly affected part of the Black Cats' season: the Africa Cup of Nations.

They were without six players - twice as many as any other side - during the tournament in December and January. While the club's performances had already declined after a strong start, they suffered even more when their squad was stretched.

But once all those players returned, Sunderland's underlying numbers improved throughout the rest of the season and they ended the campaign playing like a mid-table side.

With no Afcon this season, the Black Cats may not suffer such a drop in performance. If they continue the 2026-27 season as they finished the last then relegation should be only a remote possibility.

Second-season syndrome

The belief that promoted sides that stayed up in their first season are often relegated in their second is a popular one, with the phrase 'second-season syndrome' regularly thrown about. But is it as common as people think?

Last season Sunderland and Leeds became the 53rd and 54th promoted sides to survive in the Premier League.

Of the previous 52, only 11 were relegated the following season (21%). The vast majority of promoted teams that stay up do not suffer from second-season syndrome.

However, there is precedent for a promoted side that had a first season as good as Sunderland's to be relegated in their second. In fact, the best promoted side in the 38-game era of the Premier League did just that.

George Burley's Ipswich ended the 2000-01 campaign fifth with 66 points - the highest finish and most points any promoted side has achieved in a 38-game season.

But with European football to contend with, they dropped 13 places and took 30 fewer points the next season as they were relegated in 18th place, with Sunderland the beneficiaries as they finished just one place above them.

Overall, four of the previous 20 promoted sides (20%) that finished in the top half in their first season suffered relegation in their second, with the most recent example being Sheffield United five years ago

The Black Cats were one of the sides that did not as they finished seventh under Peter Reid in 1999-2000 and followed up with another seventh-placed finish a year later (although that position did not bring European football back then).

The added workload of Europe

Sunderland will be playing in Europe this season for the first time in 53 years, with at least eight games in the Europa League on top of their usual domestic commitments.

They are the 10th promoted side in Premier League history to qualify for Europe and just the fifth to do so through their league position, with the others qualifying via cup competitions or fair play.

Despite their squads arguably being the least-prepared to handle the extra fixtures, five of the previous nine teams achieved another top-half finish and just two were relegated - Ipswich in the early 2000s and Hull in the mid-2010s.

Hull were an unusual case as they only finished 16th with 37 points in 2013-14 but qualified for Europe by reaching the FA Cup final.

Their European campaign lasted just four games as they were knocked out in the Europa League qualifying rounds in August and were relegated with 35 points the following May.

But then there is that Ipswich side again.

When Inter Milan knocked them out in the Uefa Cup third round on 6 December 2001, Burley's side had won just one of their first 15 games in the Premier League.

While they did find some form after that - they were 12th with 30 points after 25 games - just one win in their final 13 matches led to relegation.

Sunderland will be hoping to follow the example of the most recent promoted side to qualify for Europe - Wolves in 2019.

Despite playing 17 games as they reached the Europa League quarter-finals in 2019-20, they still had enough in the tank to finish seventh in the league again.

There are definitely the ingredients for Sunderland to have a difficult second season, but given how well-run they have been in their recent rise from League One to Europe, many fans will have faith they will continue to thrive.

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South Korea's Kospi has staged a reversal from its latest rout, returning to bull-market territory as investors pile back into the country's semiconductor giants that dominate the index.

The benchmark has climbed more than 20% from its July low, the commonly used threshold for a bull market, after a rout driven partly by leveraged positions and forced selling pushed it into bear-market territory last month.

The speed of the turnaround underscores the massive volatility in tech stocks and raises a bigger question: How much longer will the South Korean rally last?

For bulls, the answer rests largely on whether the fundamentals behind Korea's semiconductor giants can keep pace with increasingly optimistic expectations. Strong U.S. technology earnings and continued commitments to AI infrastructure spending have helped revive confidence that demand for memory chips will remain robust. 

"The AI rally and continued strong earnings have been a constant during the sell-off, so it is fundamentals returning the market back to normalcy rather than the other way around," said Peter Kim, head of global investment strategy at KB Securities.

Kim said valuations and earnings were never seriously in doubt during the semiconductor rout, which was instead driven by technical factors and fund flows. The unwinding of leveraged positions has also eased after regulators tightened rules and brokerages normalized margin and risk requirements. That could leave the market on firmer footing than during the run-up preceding the crash.

Concentration risks — or rewards?

The Kospi's dependence on just a handful of semiconductor companies makes its bull run overly exposed to shifts in sentiment toward AI.

"Korea's equity market is basically synonymous with the AI hardware trade at this point," said Phillip Wool, head of research at Rayliant Global Advisors. 

The rebound has been partly technical, Wool said, as forced selling subsided, dip buyers returned and fear of missing out took hold. But stronger-than-expected Big Tech earnings have also reinforced expectations for AI infrastructure spending and helped underpin upward revisions to growth forecasts for Korean hardware companies. 

"Anything that calls this narrative into question, whether it's soft guidance on capex from hyperscalers, sagging token pricing, Fed tightening fears, we can expect to see a pullback," Wool said. "Expect continued volatility as long as there's uncertainty about how AI hardware spending will play out."

Supporting the bull case, Billy Leung, investment strategist at Global X ETFs pointed to Korea's corporate-governance reforms and "Value-Up" program, which have helped reduce the "Korea discount."

The "Korea discount" refers to the longstanding tendency of South Korean companies to trade at lower valuations than comparable global peers. 

"The KOSPI is in a bull market, but the more important question is whether the rally is being driven by speculation or by a genuine improvement in fundamentals," Leung said.

He sees Korea as closer to a fundamentally supported bull market than a speculative bubble, with semiconductor earnings' expectations continuing to rise. But elevated retail participation, heavy index concentration and ambitious market targets are also beginning to resemble late-cycle behavior.

Others warned about reading too much into the 20% milestone.

"I would be cautious about describing this as a completely new bull market," said Jung In Yun of Fibonacci Asset Management Global. The rebound represents both a technical recovery from forced selling and "a genuine return of stability," he said.

His base case is for the broader bull trend to continue, backed by semiconductor earnings and improved risk appetite, but at a slower and bumpier pace. "After such a steep rebound, some consolidation would be healthy, and investors should not expect the market to rise at the same pace from here."  %!s()

Key Facts

The six winning numbers drawn on Wednesday night were 4, 26, 66, 67, 69 and Red Powerball 9.

After the winner comes forward, they will have to choose between receiving the $1.04 billion payout spread across 30 annual installments or a one-time cash prize of $450.5 million—the preferred pick for most winners.

If they choose the lump-sum payment, the winnings will first drop to around $342.4 million after a mandatory 24% federal withholding.

The winner is then likely to face a federal marginal rate as high as 37%, depending on their overall taxable income, further cutting their winnings to $283.8 million.

If they pick the installment route, the winner’s annual payments of around $34.7 million would drop to $21.8 million after the 37% federal marginal tax rate is applied.

Illinois is among the states that tax lottery winnings and the winner will have to pay a flat 4.95% rate on the total winnings—which for the lumpsum pay out would be $22.3 million—which will be automatically withheld once they collect their prize.

Key Background

This is the biggest lottery prize of the year so far, pipping an $800 million Mega Millions jackpot that was won by a Florida ticket buyer last Tuesday. Among Powerball jackpots 2026’s biggest one prior to this was a $250.8 million prize won by a lottery player from Arkansas.

Big Number

1-in-292.2 million. Those are the abysmal odds the Illinois ticket buyer had to overcome to win the Powerball jackpot on Wednesday night. This is even worse than the Mega Millions lottery’s already poor odds of 1-in-290.4 million.

Tangent

Last month, the Powerball Jackpot was expanded to include players from the U.K. for the first time, which officials have said will lead to “faster-growing jackpots,” with the additional ticket sales adding to the prize pool. In the event a U.K. player had emerged as the winner of the jackpot, they would have only had the option of receiving the prize spread across 30 annual installments. The jackpot prize advertised by the U.K. National Lottery before Wednesday night’s draw was around £503 million ($679.5 million). While it appears lower than the $1 billion advertised U.S. prize, officials in the U.K. note this reflected the estimated amount a winner would receive over a 30-year period, “after exchange rates and UK tax requirements have been taken into account.”

further reading

Mega Millions Ticket Buyer From Florida Wins $800 Million—Here’s What They Could Take Home (Forbes) %!s()

A feud between the two men, their families and supporters has dominated Zambian politics, to the extent that the quarrel has continued even after Lungu died in South Africa in June 2025.

Zambia’s government went to court to try to stop the burial of Lungu by his family, who did not want Hichilema presiding over a state funeral. In June, South Africa’s supreme court of appeal ruled in favour of Lungu’s family, overturning a previous high court decision in favour of the government.

In this election, Hichilema is facing the Tonse Alliance of opposition parties led by Brian Mundubile, 55, who was a government chief whip under Lungu. Mundubile’s running mate Makebi Zulu acted as the Lungu family’s spokesperson during the burial row, and on the campaign trail the two men have promised to bring Lungu’s body back to Zambia for a dignified burial.

The way death is dealt with is very important in Zambia, said Christopher Vandome, a senior research fellow at the thinktank Chatham House. “Even Hichilema supporters want to see due respect given to those that have died,” he said. “When it appears things get messy, it just makes the incumbent look disrespectful.”

The shadow of Lungu has also hung over allegations by the Tonse Alliance that Hichilema has deployed authoritarian tactics during the election campaign, including raiding its offices and detaining 36 members of Mundubile’s team.

Hichilema’s team furiously denied the claims, invoking Lungu’s treatment of Hichilema during the last election. “Zambians know what repression looks like. In 2021, the opposition leader [Hichilema] had been arrested 15 times, Prime TV [a private station] and the Post [a newspaper] had been shut down, and on election day the internet was switched off,” said a spokesperson for the ruling United Party for National Development. “Today the opposition campaigns freely across all 10 provinces, no media house has been closed and the airwaves are open.”

Transparency International Zambia monitors have recorded incidents of police interrupting opposition rallies, said Tamika Halwiindi, a coordinator at the organisation. “Disruptions from the police citing issues to do with safety have been noted to be more biased against the opposition and independents, as opposed to … the ruling party,” she said.

During Hichilema’s term, activists have also reported having peaceful demonstrations shut down. Mputa Ngalande of the Fight Inequality Alliance said he was among a group detained for more than 12 hours in July 2024 when they were protesting against the state power company during a period of 22-hour-a-day blackouts.

Vandome said: “[Hichilema’s] prospects of winning are very high. But his … personal lived experience of how complicated Zambian elections can be has given him this insecurity which is actually counting against him … denting his image in a way he doesn’t have to.”

Zambia’s economy has stabilised since an economic crisis, which was triggered when it defaulted on its debts in 2020 under Lungu. Annual inflation is now 6.5%, compared with 24.6% in July 2021. The government made primary and secondary education free in 2022.

Meanwhile, Zambia has attracted more international investment in recent years due to its huge deposits of copper, a key material in green technologies.

At the start of the month, in a giveaway to young voters, Hichilema, also known by his initials HH and nickname Bally (a slang word for an elder), told a crowd of jubilant university students that he was increasing their accommodation allowance by 50% with immediate effect.

However, the cost of living could still count against Hichilema in the elections, in which almost 8.8 million registered voters will also choose MPs and local councillors. The average annual income rose from $1,127 to $1,318 between 2021 and 2025, according to World Bank data. But prices almost doubled over the same period.

“What people are asking is: ‘If we are doing well economically, why are we not feeling impact on the ground?’” said Ngalende. “Because you will find on the ground that it is very difficult to access three meals a day.” %!s()