Premier League Ponderings: The cost of relegation

Header image for Interrobang article CREDIT: "NEWCASTLE UNITED VS MIDDLESBROUGH" BY MARI ON FLICKR(CC BY 2.0)
Newcastle United is one team who dropped down to the Championship, immediately recovered and re-established themselves in the top flight.

Relegation is a bit of a weird concept for sports fans to get their heads around, especially when their knowledge is primarily based in the North American sports league structure. In this structure, there is only a single level of professional play, supported by various farm teams and development leagues. Europe, however, handles things quite a bit differently.

For those who are unfamiliar with the concept, relegation is the practise of a set number of the lowest performing teams losing their standing at the current level, and beginning play in the tier below. Readers will be familiar with my references to the ‘English Football Pyramid’, the multi-levelled system of professional leagues of which the Premier League is the pinnacle.

At the conclusion of each season, the bottom three clubs drop down into the Championship, to be replaced by the three best performing teams in that league. This concept continues throughout the pyramid, and has an equivalent system in most European nations.

The effect of relegation can wildly vary from club to club, some seeing it as a temporary setback, while others have never quite recovered from dropping down a level.

Looking at the 1992 to 1993 season, the founding year of the Premier League, the 22 clubs that were at the pinnacle of the nation’s football are a different group than the top 20 today. Some founding members of the Premier League included clubs such as Blackburn Rovers, Oldham Athletic, Coventry City and Wimbledon.

Today these clubs’ fortunes are all over the place. Respectively their most recent finishes were ninth in the Championship, 15th in League One, and 17th in League One. As for Wimbledon, the club no longer exists, having folded in 2004. The team moved to a new town and renamed as Milton Keynes Dons, who last finished second in League One. These are just a few of the clubs for whom relegation from the Premier League served as a death knell to their fortunes.

However some clubs have proven that being relegated is something that can be recovered from. Premier League regulars Newcastle United and West Ham United are two clubs that have dropped down, only to immediately recover and re-establish themselves in the top flight.

Others have fallen under the blanket of the ‘yo-yo clubs’, those who perpetually bounce up and down between the leagues, lacking the strength to stay up, but often being too strong to stay down. Queens Park Rangers are a current example, having experienced multiple promotions and relegations in the last few years. For a brief period, West Bromwich Albion experienced four straight seasons of league changing, before establishing themselves in 2010.

Whether or not relegation is the first straw to send a club tumbling down the leagues into obscurity, or just a brief break from the top flight, it is impossible to deny the additional drama that it adds to the outcome of a season. It can give teams that are out of title contention something to play for at the end of the year or it can be just another blip in the history of a storied club. North American sports should look into it, simply for the drama.