With the Guardian’s unstoppable rise to global dominance** we at Guardian US thought we’d run a series of articles for fans wishing to improve their knowledge of the sports history and storylines, hopefully in a way that doesn’t patronise you to within an inch of your life. A warning: If you’re the kind of person that finds The Blizzard too populist this may not be the series for you.
** Actual dominance may not be global. Or dominant
It’s entirely possible that a hapless triumvirate of giants, Aston Villa, Newcastle United and Sunderland, will manage to get themselves relegated from the Premier League this season. These three clubs have won 17 English titles between them, plus 15 FA Cups, five League Cups and a European Cup. Some pretty big vessels veering dangerously close to the rocks here.
The concept of relegation is, of course, largely alien to US sports. When the big boys hit a lean period they sit preserved in amber, unable to move forward, nowhere to fall backward. All the shame in their impotence and inertia, on display for the whole world to see.
English society however is obsessed with class, so humiliation is imposed by enforced reduction in status and banishment to the lower quarters. Off you pop! With your tail between your legs. A stain on the record for ever more.
Relegation has been a feature of English football since 1892 – as has, by definition, promotion, but today we accentuate the negative – so there’s been plenty of opportunity for big clubs to fall through the top-flight trap door over the years. Even so, the behemoths don’t take a tumble that often, which is why it’s still fairly noteworthy when one of them does.
We may as well start with Villa, seeing that as things stand, they’re the big club most likely to come a cropper this year. If they do go down, it won’t be the first time this grand old club has lost its way. Villa were unquestionably the first great Big Club in English football. Founder members of the Football League in 1888 – their board member William McGregor came up with the idea – they had five titles in the bag by 1899. The end of the 19th century marked the end of their imperial phase, though. Another league title came along in 1910, but it would be their last for 71 years. In between times, claret would be spilt.
Villa were relegated for the first time in 1936, abjectly so, conceding 110 goals along the way. Seven of those were scored by Ted Drake of Arsenal in a single match, still a top-flight record in England. Villa bounced straight back, though, as Second Division champions. They were managed by Jimmy Hogan, who had spent most of his career in Hungary, Switzerland and Austria, where he picked up the highfalutin concepts of technique, passing and possession. Sadly, all momentum was scuppered by the war.
A failure to maintain momentum would prove a recurring theme. Villa won the FA Cup in 1957, beating Manchester United’s ill-fated Busby Babes in the final, but within two years of this grand success, they were relegated again. Once more they came straight back up as Second Division champions, this time under Joe Mercer, who then led the club to the first-ever League Cup in 1961. But Mercer suffered a stroke while in office and upon recovery was ruthlessly sacked. Bad move. Villa were relegated in 1967, one year before a refreshed Mercer won the league with Manchester City. Then more misery for Villa: in 1970, this famous old club went down to the Third Division for the first time in their history.
A slightly strange period, this. Villa began that relegation season managed by Tommy Docherty, who was understandably sacked for setting them off down Nadir Avenue, though he too would later find success elsewhere, winning the 1977 FA Cup with one of Manchester United’s most aesthetically pleasing teams. Vic Crowe took over, and although he couldn’t avoid the inevitable drop, soon turned the club around. Crowe’s team reached the final of the 1971 League Cup, losing narrowly to Spurs, a fine effort from a side marooned in the third tier.
Villa went up as Third Division champions the year after, then again two years later as Second Division champs, this time under Ron Saunders. Another League Cup came along in 1977, before Saunders won Villa their seventh league title in 1981, using only 14 players all season, a record that’ll never be broken in a million years. (It won’t, will it?) Villa went on to win the European Cup the following season, under the yoke of Tony Barton, the no-nonsense Saunders having flounced three months before the final in the wake of a pay dispute. (And it was quite a flounce. Purely for spite, he joined local rivals Birmingham City, and didn’t give the keys back to his club Mercedes either.)
All’s well that ends well? Of course not. Once again momentum treated Villa mean. Barton, promoted above the level of his competence, failed to build on the stellar successes of the team built by Saunders, and within five years the club were once again in the Second Division. Billy McNeill, who lifted the European Cup as Celtic captain in 1967, was the man who took them down. McNeill had joined Villa early in the season from Manchester City, who also suffered relegation that season. Oh Billy! He’s two in the hole!
For the third time out of four, Villa bounced straight back as Second Division champions, future England manager Graham Taylor their saviour this time. Since then, they’ve been Premier League mainstays, coming close to the title in 1990 and 1993, and winning a couple of League Cups to boot. So if they go down this season, there may be light at the end of the tunnel if history is any guide: back up as Championship champions, followed soon enough by at least a League Cup and possibly even a league title challenge. Or there’ll be a world war. One or the other. Here’s hoping for the former. Even Blues fans will be hoping for the former.
Villa are not the only English side to suffer relegation soon after winning a European Cup. The modern behemoth Manchester United, the biggest club in England, lifted that trophy in 1968. A year later, their manager Matt Busby, having laid hands on the holy grail a decade after the Munich air tragedy, all spent of energy and emotion, understandably downed tools with a view to enjoying a retirement which had been harder earned than most.
United found it difficult to replace their legendary figurehead. Wilf McGuinness lasted just over a year. Frank O’Farrell, despite an unconvincing title bid, didn’t hold onto his job any longer. (This reminding you of anything?) Meanwhile, their star man George Best was in the process of giving up football for carousing, one of the greatest players of all time effectively a spent force at 26. Tommy Docherty – who you’ll recall set Villa on the rocky road to Division Three – replaced O’Farrell. He’d see a relegation job through this time, in charge when United went down in 1974, although little blame was attached to the Doc, on account of the holy mess he’d inherited in the first place.
United ran riot in the Second Division, both on the pitch, as the team won the title and instant promotion back to the big time, and off it, as their away fans gained a reputation for supporting their team in the forceful 1970s style. It was the first time United had been out of the top flight since their miserable 1930s, and yet Old Trafford still boasted the highest average attendance in the land. Even when they were down, they weren’t out.
The nearest they’ve come to trouble since? That’ll be 1989-90, when Alex Ferguson nearly lost his job as his team flirted briefly with the relegation places. They finished 13th that year, but were in serious trouble until finding some belated form in March.
Neighbours Manchester City have a more complex relationship with relegation. They’ve been in the top division in England for the vast majority of their existence, but have also been relegated from it 10 times. Three of those relegations stick out. In 1938 City fell through the trapdoor despite scoring 80 goals. This would have been a hell of an achievement by itself, a notable example of City’s charming and time-honoured ability to get themselves into needless scrapes. Thing is, they were England’s reigning champions at the time, too. City are still the only club to follow a league title with relegation the year after. Jose Mourinho, the floor is yours.
City were cashiered out of the Premier League tradesman’s entrance in some style in 1996, another story fitting snugly into the Typical City narrative. They drew 2-2 with Liverpool at their old Maine Road ground on the final day of the season, a result midfielder Steve Lomas thought would be enough, having been told so by manager Alan Ball. So Lomas – who had scored an own goal earlier in the game – held the ball up by the corner flag to let the clock run down to safety.
But there was a problem. Ball had been told Wimbledon had scored a late winner at Southampton, a result that would have sent Saints down instead of City. That information, however, was bogus. Striker Niall Quinn, substituted earlier and sitting in the stands in his civvies, sprinted to the touchline, screaming to Lomas to get a bloody wriggle on. Too late. “This is the greatest disappointment of my career,” said Ball, who had won the 1966 World Cup with England. And they kept on coming. He was sacked a few months later.
City then somehow managed to get themselves relegated to the third tier of English football for the first and only time in their history. That campaign is chiefly remembered now for perhaps the greatest – and certainly most Cityesque – own goal of all time.
The state of this. The glorious, wondrous, majestic state of this. If you’re going to go down, you may as well do it with a flourish, so full marks to Jamie Pollock for flamboyance. And to be fair to City, they made their way back up the divisions with similar panache, nearly losing the 1999 third-tier promotion play-off to unfancied Gillingham, before scoring twice in injury time to force extra time and a penalty shoot-out they’d win. A berserk conclusion that put the end of that year’s Champions League final, won four days earlier by neighbours United, very much in the shade. Sort of.
City are quite a different proposition these days. You’ll find some older fans who enjoyed the haplessness just as much.
That’s something that also applies to Chelsea fans of a certain generation, though their history hasn’t been quite as entertainingly unstable as City’s. Chelsea won their first championship, unexpectedly so, in 1955, but did little to build on that success, despite unearthing a young Jimmy Greaves. The Pensioners – a nickname still in vogue back then – whiled away a few years in mid table, before going down in 1962. The man at the helm? Tommy Docherty, who had one hell of a rollercoaster career, you have to give him that. Needless to say the Doc took Chelsea straight back up, turning them into one of the most entertaining teams of the Sixties.
Chelsea scrabbled around in the Second Division for much of the Seventies and Eighties, money worries the root of their malaise, the club nearly bankrupted by their skyscraping east stand. Times change. Their relegation in 1988 was notable for being the last time a team from the top division contested a relegation play-off. Middlesbrough of the Second Divison took their place after beating them 2-1 on aggregate over two legs.
As for Chelsea’s big London rivals? Tottenham Hotspur were up and down before the Second World War, but after winning promotion to the top flight in 1950, then winning the league a year after, have been pretty much a fixture since, one season in the Second Division in 1977-78 apart. Meanwhile Arsenal have famously – or infamously, depending on your point of view and allegiances – remained in the top flight of English football since Sir Henry Norris manipulated his club into the First Division back in 1919, despite having only finished fifth in the Second Division just before the Great War.
Arsenal therefore hold the record for the longest unbroken sequence in the top flight, but it’s Everton who have played most top-flight seasons overall. They’ve only spent four years out of the top division since 1888, when they were one of the founder members of the Football League. They first went down in 1930, two years after winning the league thanks to Dixie Dean and his record season’s haul of 60 goals. A proud record ended, then, but never mind: the next three seasons proved a hell of a blast: Everton won instant promotion, then another league title (Dean scoring 45 goals this time), and then the FA Cup. Interesting times.
Everton spent another three years in the Second Division in the early 1950s. When they finally came back up in 1954, city rivals Liverpool were heading the other way. The Anfield club had a hell of a time clambering back out of the Second Division: in an era when only the top two teams went up, they finished third four times, and fourth twice, before Bill Shankly finally broke the hex by winning the division in 1962. Neither club have been down again since, though Everton peered over the precipice on a couple of occasions during the 90s.
And as for Newcastle and Sunderland, the north-eastern giants in danger along with Villa this season? Newcastle are the biggest club to have suffered an ignominious relegation in recent years, going down in 2009 before rising back up effortlessly a season later. Sunderland, meanwhile, have been a bit more of a yo-yo club in the last few decades, though it wasn’t always thus: up until 1958, they had been the only team in the entire Football League never to have experienced relegation. How stunned was the football world by the abrupt and sorry end of their 68-year membership of the First Division? Just imagine Arsenal going down today.
