How the mighty have fallen as former Premier League sides face the abyss

There was once a time when Charl­ton, Nor­wich and Southamp­ton all graced the Pre­mier League and enjoyed some form of suc­cess. Whether that was a top half fin­ish or even chal­leng­ing for the Pre­mier League title in Norwich’s case back in 1992/93. Things have gone steadily down­hill though for all three teams from being estab­lished names in the top flight to pro­mo­tion con­tenders in the Cham­pi­onship and now all but rel­e­gated to the delights of League One foot­ball.

We already know that Charl­ton and Southamp­ton are down, with the Saints’ future look­ing increas­ingly uncer­tain on and off the field. The Canaries’ defeat at home to Read­ing on Mon­day night means they now need a mir­a­cle to keep their place in the sec­ond tier of Eng­lish foot­ball. The side that could replace Nor­wich in the drop zone is also another Pre­mier League side, albeit just for a sea­son: Barnsley.

It’s not the first time a for­mer Pre­mier League side has been rel­e­gated from the Cham­pi­onship with Brad­ford City, Swin­don, Leeds, Man­ches­ter City, Sheffield Wednes­day, Old­ham, Notts For­est, QPR and Leices­ter City all hav­ing to endure the indig­nity of being rel­e­gated. How­ever, out of all of those sides only one has man­aged to bounce back to the top flight and upset the foot­ball odds by becom­ing an estab­lished name in the Pre­mier League.

That will be a wor­ry­ing trend for three out of the four of these clubs who could be mak­ing those dark and lonely trips to Yeovil away on a cold Tues­day in Feb­ru­ary or watch­ing Stock­port come away with a point on their own patch (no offence to those sides). Nor­wich, Charl­ton and Southamp­ton all spent big try­ing to regain their place in the top flight and it failed, leav­ing them with empty pock­ets and a reliance on youth and expe­ri­ence which clearly hasn’t worked for those three.

They say that the Cham­pi­onship is the most unpre­dictable league in Eng­land and prob­a­bly rightly so as I don’t think many of us out there will have picked any of those four teams to face the drop, maybe with the excep­tion of Barns­ley. Being a sup­porter of a club still in the top flight I can remem­ber at least one occa­sion when my side was beaten by Charl­ton, Nor­wich and Southamp­ton and always thought they would one day return to the Pre­mier League.

Per­haps that is the prob­lem, maybe trad­ing on your name and his­tory in the Cham­pi­onship doesn’t work and instead of attract­ing the young, hun­gry types of player you want you get those who are just look­ing for a pay day. You have to ques­tion where all the money went that each club made from sell­ing their big stars when they went down, espe­cially Southamp­ton with their sales of Theo Wal­cott, Gareth Bale and Ken­wyne Jones.

It seems then that going on recent his­tory we will be unlikely to see any of the four poten­tial rel­e­ga­tion can­di­dates back in the top flight for some time and per­haps now it is the turn of a smaller club to enjoy its time in the lime­light and develop them­selves into an estab­lished top flight club.