5 clubs who are adept at battling relegation
Some clubs are accustomed to being in the limelight, fighting to be at the perch in their domestic leagues, all is not merry for the clubs used to seeing the abyss at the bottom.
While some do have the misfortune of falling into oblivion, there are others who have perfected the skill of survival and always seem to emerge out victorious having stared down the gun barrel of relegation.
While the incredible success stories of Leicester City winning the Premier League and Atletico Madrid reaching the Champions League seem to take up all the news headlines, not all heroics lie in clubs bagging trophies and glories but also in pulling themselves out of the danger of relegation.
So here we take a look at 5 clubs who have become the masters of ‘The Great Escape’ and constantly flirt with danger but always avoid the ultimate drop.
1) Sunderland
Talk about relegation battles and the first team that comes to mind is Sunderland.
The club from Tyne and Wear can no doubt be called the “Houdini of Escapes”. After spending 237 days in the bottom three (That’s 84% of the season!), somehow Sunderland managed to escape relegation at the very death, pulling off wins at Chelsea and Everton and drawing to Arsenal and Stoke City in their last 5 fixtures.
They won 12 points of a possible 18 from their last six games, finishing 2 points above third from bottom arch-rivals Newcastle, making the escapade even sweeter.
Sunderland have been surviving narrowly since the past few years, their best finish being just 5 points above the relegation zone in the last four seasons. It has been the same story in and out for the club’s fans, the shadow of the drop looming large for most of the season and finally crawling out through the pitch black tunnel into broad daylight in a ‘Shawshank Redemption’-esque style.
This year was a repeat of the circumstances faced last time around when they bounced back with a five-game unbeaten run to guarantee Premier League stay with one game in hand.