What are the potential pitfalls of relying solely on sorting criteria to determine relegation candidates in a PHP script?

Relying solely on sorting criteria to determine relegation candidates in a PHP script can lead to overlooking important factors such as team performance, injuries, and other external variables that may impact a team's standing in the league. To avoid this pitfall, it is important to incorporate additional factors into the relegation determination process, such as recent form, head-to-head results, and overall team strength.

// Sample PHP code snippet incorporating additional factors for relegation determination

// Define an array of teams with their respective performance metrics
$teams = [
    ['name' => 'Team A', 'points' => 20, 'goal_difference' => -5, 'recent_form' => 'WLWLL'],
    ['name' => 'Team B', 'points' => 18, 'goal_difference' => -8, 'recent_form' => 'DLLWL'],
    ['name' => 'Team C', 'points' => 15, 'goal_difference' => -10, 'recent_form' => 'LLLDW'],
    // Add more teams as needed
];

// Sort teams based on multiple criteria (e.g. points, goal difference, recent form)
usort($teams, function($a, $b) {
    if ($a['points'] != $b['points']) {
        return $a['points'] - $b['points'];
    } elseif ($a['goal_difference'] != $b['goal_difference']) {
        return $a['goal_difference'] - $b['goal_difference'];
    } else {
        return strcmp($a['recent_form'], $b['recent_form']);
    }
});

// Determine relegation candidates based on the sorted list of teams
$relegation_candidates = array_slice($teams, 0, 2);

// Output relegation candidates
foreach ($relegation_candidates as $team) {
    echo $team['name'] . " is a relegation candidate.\n";
}