Thirteenth-placed Manchester United are just 10 points clear of the relegation zone; Tottenham are two points worse off down in 15th.
Thankfully for them, the current Premier League bottom four or five all look poor enough that sleepless nights are unlikely for United and Spurs fans – but they should not be so complacent as to think it’s entirely unthinkable. After all, there have been plenty of well-established sides who have gone down within a few short years of their peaks…
An extremely context-specific pick, given that Fulham have spent more time in the Championship than the Premier League in the 11 years since – but Fulham’s descent to such wretched form was a bit of a surprise at the time. Fulham had finished in the top half in three of the previous five seasons, never coming lower than 12th, as well as making a run all the way to the 2010 Europa League final.
Unfortunately, the Cottagers seemed fairly content to continue on with much the same squad without, you know, introducing any youth or energy or pace or anything, and their ageing squad degenerated into a hopeless state.
Martin Jol, Rene Meulensteen and the altogether strange Felix Magath all fielded multiple sides with an average age over 30, and none of the three managers could get a tune out of them, not helped by star January centre-forward signing Konstantinos Mitroglou missing most of the season injured. They shipped 85 goals and went down in 19th.
That Newcastle were in decline in the post Sir Bobby Robson era was beyond doubt: Newcastle went being consistent Champions League contenders to schlepping around mid-table virtually from the moment he was much-too-hastily sacked for making a poor start to the 2004/05 campaign amid rumours of disharmony both in the boardroom and the dressing room.
Still, few would have foreseen just how awful and messy things would get for Newcastle. Kevin Keegan eventually fired Newcastle away from a relegation battle in 2007/08 thanks to an excellent run of late-season form, but quit early in the following season after growing unhappy with the board’s transfer interference, including selling James Milner and signing Xisco. Keegan later won a £2m compensation pay-out for breach of contract.
In the meantime, Joe Kinnear’s bizarre and bad-tempered spell as interim manager failed to inspire, and they were just four points from the drop zone when Kinnear left to have heart surgery. Chris Hughton and Colin Calderwood went winless in his absence, prompting the Hail Mary appointment of Alan Shearer as manager. He won just one of his eight games in charge as Newcastle went down.
With a stunning academy production line that included Rio Ferdinand, Frank Lampard, Joe Cole, Michael Carrick, Jermain Defoe and Glenn Johnson, as well as boasting one of the Premier League’s most spectacular players in Paolo Di Canio, West Ham looked to be in good shape around the dawn of the new millennium.
Harry Redknapp had established the Hammers as a top-half side, peaking in fifth place in 1998/99, but was sacked after taking them to a disappointing 15th in 2000/01. Glenn Roeder restored business as usual by taking them to seventh the following season – but the gradual departure of half their best young prospects to be replaced by ageing and unproven players eventually caught up to them.
Roeder oversaw an awful first five months of the 2002/03 season as West Ham won just three of their first 24 games, but had just started to turn things around when he was suddenly forced to depart with a brain tumour. Club legend Trevor Brooking stepped in and led the Hammers to their strongest run of form of the season; unfortunately, the relegation battle was particularly fierce that year, and West Ham went down despite accumulating 42 points – a record for a relegated side in a 38-game Premier League season.
Leicester fans were decidedly unsure of what to expect from their club after their absolutely ridiculous title win in 2015/16. What they got was an immediate backslide into a relegation battle that necessitated the dismissal of the beloved Claudio Ranieri, which was vindicated as his successor Craig Shakespeare immediately got Leicester onto a winning run that pulled them well clear of the bottom three.
The worst seemed to be over from there, and Leicester quite happily pootled along as part of the upper mid-table pack for five years, enjoying some good runs in the cups along the way. They claimed back-to-back fifth-place finishes under Brendan Rodgers in 2019/20 and 2020/21, lifting the FA Cup in the latter.
So it was a precipitous drop-off for Leicester when they suddenly found themselves bottom of the table just four games into the 2022/23 campaign amid mounting costs and financial pressures. A revival in form in October-November gave way to another dismal run of form that lasted for pretty much the rest of the season, despite Dean Smith’s arrival as Rodgers’ replacement, and Leicester were relegated on the final day as Everton matched their victory over West Ham by beating Bournemouth.
The simplest story of the lot to tell, to the extent that ‘doing a Leeds’ remains the shorthand of choice for a side completely bottoming out from a lofty position.
UEFA Cup semi-finalists in 2000. Champions League semi-finalists in 2001. Missed out on the Champions League and spent an absolute boatload of money anyway, gambling that they would qualify again. Didn’t. Had to sell virtually everyone to stay solvent. Got relegated in 2004. Relegated again in 2007. Didn’t get back to the Premier League until 2020.
Leicester went from title winners to relegated in seven years. Leeds went from Champions League to relegated in three. So it’s only right that we put Blackburn top of the pile, given they beat Leicester by three years and matched Leeds.
They had even finished as high as sixth under Roy Hodgson in 1997/98, and looked to have finally adapted to the loss of the Premier League’s most prolific striker, Alan Shearer. Even with the price of Premier League success skyrocketing from where it had been when Jack Walker financed Blackburn’s 1995 title triumph, Blackburn were well-respected, still spending, and expected to do well.
Star striker Chris Sutton had hit 18 goals the previous season, but started the new campaign in awful form. Nobody else stepped in to pick up the slack as summer signings Matt Jansen and Nathan Blake failed to impress. By November it was clear they were in a serious relegation battle, and Roy Hodgson was sacked to be replaced by Brian Kidd. The new manager bounced lasted just six weeks, and toothless Blackburn went down with a game still to spare.