Table Tuesday: The Harder They Fall

As anyone with even a passing interest in English football knows, Newcastle United and its formidable Toon Army of fans will be headed down to the Championship in 2009-10, after the club’s first relegation season in 20 years. For today’s Table Tuesday column, I wanted to take a look at the biggest clubs to have been relegated in recent times in the big European leagues. One disclaimer – this table will not include any teams relegated because of large points deductions or disqualifications. It just gets messy and confusing, and so I’ve chosen to remove them completely from the study. Plus I’d like to have something other than Italian clubs represented. I kid. Sort of.

To define a club as “big” or “small” is always controversial. For the purposes of this table, we are talking historically big clubs. I am ranking the size of relegated clubs by the contents of their trophy cases, with one point for each domestic cup, three for each league, five for a UEFA Cup and ten for a European Cup. Here are the 15 highest-scoring clubs by this metric to have been relegated in the past decade from England, Spain, Italy, Germany and France.

So, all you depressed Geordies out there, take some solace in the fact that you’re not alone. Bad management has sunk Atletico Madrid and their 9 La Liga trophies, and Nuremberg, Koln and Monchengladbach (who have a combined 17 German titles between them) have gone down a total of nine times in the last decade. And for those of you resting on the laurels of the massive club you support, remember that it can also happen to you.

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Category: Table Tuesday

Tags: Clubs, England, France, Germany, Italy, Relegation, Spain, Table Tuesday

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