It's the year of high profile clubs fighting relegation

West Ham United

The Premier League relegation battle is now a straight shoot-out between Tottenham Hotspur and West Ham United. While we have written a fair bit about the current Europa League holders, it is also worth remembering that the Hammers won a European title as recently as 2023.

Since then, a combination of internal squabbling, overpriced questionable transfers, and a lack of cohesive direction in the management of the club have contributed to a slide down the table for a side that last played in the Championship almost 15 years ago. Former technical director Tim Steidten is one of the individuals being given the brunt of the blame, but things didn’t get much better following his departure last February. In fact, West Ham were at their worst at the start of this season, when Graham Potter’s attempts to implement something of a possession-based style of play with a squad that absolutely was not suited for it went about as well as one would expect.

Given just how badly they started the season, West Ham have made an impressive recovery after the turn of the year. As we discussed on the podcast recently, they have upped their underlying numbers to a perfectly mid-table level by reinvigorating the attack and looking just a bit more competent in defence.

The trouble is that most of the teams above the Hammers have also been fairly competent, so they remain in the relegation zone with two games to go. In fact, there is a very real possibility that this will be the first season since 2002/03 when 40 points are not enough for Premier League survival. The team relegated on 42 points that term? West Ham.

Sevilla

Speaking of relatively recent European champions that have been on a downward trajectory due to sustained mismanagement, Sevilla are arguably an even worse case in Spain. The Andalusian club qualified for the Champions League in three consecutive seasons from 2019/20 to 2021/22, and hadn’t finished outside the European spots since 2012/13. Even so, they quickly descended down the table in recent years, only surviving by a point last term and spending much of this campaign in the drop zone before back-to-back wins helped them build a three-point buffer.

If there was one image to sum up Sevilla’s decline, it would be this:

No, your screen isn’t glitching — the last head coach to see out a full season at Sevilla was indeed Julen Lopetegui in 2021/22, after whom eight different tacticians have tried their hand at steering the club back up. They did win a Europa League title in 2022/23 — their seventh in just the last two decades — but have failed to recover in the league.

Sevilla have made their fair share of bad transfers like West Ham, but certainly haven’t burnt the same amount of cash. However, La Liga’s significantly stricter Squad Cost Limit (SCL) rules nevertheless punished them heavily for their missteps, bringing them down to just €22 million at the start of this season. For contrast, newly promoted Levante had the second-lowest limit at €35m, while no one else was under €40m.

Sevilla’s existing payroll was higher than their new limit, so as a result, they could only sign free agents and loan deals this season. That did not stop them from making more questionable decisions such as bringing in 36-year-old César Azpilicueta and making him the highest-paid player at the club, so they are likely to remain in a similar position even if they stay up this term.

Girona

Girona finished level on points with Sevilla last season, and presently find themselves in a very similar position as they are 17th with a two-point gap to the relegation zone. They were playing Champions League football last season after sealing their tournament debut by breaking into La Liga’s top three in 2023/24, but it is safe to say that they have not been able to replicate those highs.

Head coach Míchel has stayed at the club since 2021, so it has been player departures that have really hurt the Catalan club. The three standout stars of the 2023/24 campaign — namely Savinho, Artem Dovbyk and Aleix García — all left the following summer, while Miguel Gutiérrez, Yangel Herrera and Ladislav Krejčí also headed for the exit ahead of this season.

Girona haven’t quite had a midfielder of García’s quality over the last two seasons, but Dovbyk and his 24-goal season have perhaps been the hardest to replace. 38-year-old Christian Stuani was their top scorer last season with 11 league goals, with no one else even managing five. New Ukrainian striker Vladyslav Vanat has nine this term, but he has been out of action since April.

Míchel has continued to try to implement a similar ground-passing-based style of play over the last three seasons, but the exodus of attacking talent has rendered it far less effective. On the whole, the team generally isn’t nearly as good as it once was in terms of controlling matches with the ball, so they seem in need of a big rejig this summer no matter how the season ends.

OGC Nice

Over in France, another team in a multi-club ownership group with a Manchester club is perilously close to the second tier, as Nice are sitting in 16th place with one game to go. They have done enough to avoid direct relegation and should back themselves to get out of the play-off spot since they’ll be playing bottom-club Metz.

Nevertheless, this has been a pretty dismal campaign for a side that hasn't finished outside the top half in a decade. The funny thing is that Nice had a good season last term (finishing fourth) when owners INEOS had to take their hands off and place the club in a blind trust due to both their and Manchester United’s participation in the Europa League. Upon returning to control this season, they promptly sold off top two scorers Evann Guessand and Gaëtan Laborde along with young winger Badredine Bouanani, defender Jean-Clair Todibo and goalkeeper Marcin Bułka to raise nine figures through transfer fees, but failed to reinstate a similar level of quality in the squad.

Unsurprisingly, Nice have been a lot worse this season. They lost the Champions League qualification play-off tie to Benfica and utterly bombed in the Europa League, losing all but one of their eight matches. Their league form bottomed in an eight-match losing streak between November and December, culminating in a group of fans violently confronting the team outside their training ground. Forwards Terem Moffi and Jérémie Boga were both targeted and subsequently left the club in the winter window. Head coach Franck Haise also packed his bags and was replaced by Claude Puel, whose average of 0.8 points per game is even worse than his predecessor’s 1.1.

While Nice’s attacking numbers have naturally dropped off given all of these departures, their defence has been particularly disastrous as they have the second-highest xG conceded tally in Ligue this season at 58.5.

Despite all of this, Les Aiglons could yet end the campaign on a big high as they have made it to the cup final, meaning they are one game away from lifting their first major trophy in close to three decades.

Wolfsburg

The most dramatic relegation battle of the lot has to be in Germany, where the bottom three are level on points going into the final matchday! Heidenheim have staged a dramatic comeback after looking dead and buried for the majority of the season, and they have a decent shot of climbing to the play-off spot. That is because the two teams around them — St. Pauli and Wolfsburg — are facing off in Hamburg.

Both the others have played in the 2. Bundesliga recently, but Wolfsburg were last down there nearly three decades ago. Since winning promotion in 1996/97, they have won a Bundesliga title (in 2008/09), qualified for Europe on eight separate occasions and made it as far as the Champions League quarter-finals (in 2015/16). The Wolves have had their ups and downs in intervening years, playing back-to-back relegation play-offs in 2017 and 2018, but a relegation would be quite difficult to recover from given the fiercely competitive nature of the German second-tier (where, as it happens, second to fourth are all currently level on points going into the final matchday).

Ex-Go Ahead Eagles tactician Paul Simonis, former academy coach Daniel Bauer and 61-year-old Dieter Hecking have all tried their hand at saving Wolfsburg this season without much success. A dismal defence has also been the main factor behind their downfall, as they haven’t been able to make up for the summer sales of Maxence Lacroix and Ridle Baku (and, indeed, last season’s main departee Micky van de Ven). They have been particularly terrible against set-pieces, giving up a league-high of 160 shots from such situations.

Ex-Spurs midfielder Christian Eriksen has been the team’s best player alongside Mohamed Amoura, as both have 11 goal contributions each. The Wolves will need a few more moments of brilliance from both if they are to stay up by the skin of their teeth.

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