It is one of this season\u2019s most compelling and unexpected Premier League plot lines: the shock unravelling of Tottenham Hotspur.<\/p>\n
The north Londoners are in the relegation places with eight games left and are still waiting for their first league win of the calendar year. The prospect of Tottenham dropping out of the top flight for the first time since the 1970s is beginning to feel real.<\/p>\n
Two-time champions of England, members of the domestic game\u2019s \u2018Big Six\u2019, reigning Europa League winners, with a \u00a31.2billion ($1.6bn at the current rate) stadium and having made it to this season\u2019s Champions League last 16 \u2014 Spurs going down to the Championship would be an almighty shock.<\/p>\n
But they would not be the first club to suffer a previously unthinkable relegation from across Europe and beyond. The Athletic<\/em> takes a look at five of the most shocking demotions in football history.<\/p>\n Few, if any, clubs are actually too big to go down. Atletico, one of Spain\u2019s biggest and most storied teams, realised that at the start of this century as they dropped out of La Liga.<\/p>\n Wracked by financial worries and a criminal investigation, Atletico tumbled out of the Spanish top flight after 65 years at the conclusion of the 1999-2000 season when they finished second-bottom of the 20-team table.<\/p>\n They started that season with ambition and a squad featuring international stars such as newly-signed Netherlands international striker Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink, prised away from Leeds United, Argentina\u2019s Santiago Solari, and Spain midfielders Ruben Baraja and Juan Carlos Valeron. However, in the December, Atletico\u2019s president Jesus Gil and his board were suspended pending an investigation into the misuse of club funds, and the team\u2019s form began to flounder.<\/p>\n Future Premier League-winning manager Claudio Ranieri was in charge, but by March, with Atletico in 17th place, he resigned. His replacement Radomir Antic was unable to steer them clear of the bottom three.<\/p>\n \n Claudio Ranieri resigned as Atletico Madrid slid toward relegation (Nuno Correia\/Allsport UK\/Getty)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cIt was an extremely bizarre year,\u201d says Atletico fan and DAZN commentator Fran Guillen. \u201cIt began as a very promising project and it fell apart little by little, in a very agonising way, buried by the many non-sporting problems.\u201d<\/p>\n Just four years previously, Atletico had won a La Liga and Copa del Rey double. Their success even attracted the great Italian coach Arrigo Sacchi to take his only job outside his homeland in summer 1998 (though he lasted less than a year and left with them in the bottom half of the league).<\/p>\n It made their sudden fall from grace even more bewildering.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a season so full of paradoxes,\u201d says Guillen. \u201cAtletico ended up being relegated despite having Hasselbaink in their squad, who finished the competition with 24 goals (only one player in La Liga scored more). Nobody could expect an outcome like that. But it is extremely unfair to analyse that season only through the football. It was a perfect storm caused by what happened with Gil, and it ended up pushing the project to the abyss.<\/p>\n \u201cSome of the players have since said that Atletico was a victim of what happened to Gil (who was also mayor of the Spanish resort city of Marbella at the time) and Kiko, who was one of the main leaders in the dressing room, said they didn\u2019t talk about football during the whole year. It is impossible to compete in an environment like that.\u201d<\/p>\n \n Atletico were relegated in 2000 despite Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink scoring 24 La Liga goals (Shaun Botterill\/Allsport\/Getty)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n For many supporters, the setback eventually brought them closer to their club. \u201cOnce the initial shock was overcome, the fans became even more loyal,\u201d says Guillen. \u201cThey sold a record number of season tickets for the first season in the second division. The worse the team was, the more the stands responded.\u201d<\/p>\n Although Guillen says it is hard to find many other positives from that period, Atletico only spent two seasons out of the top flight. Returning club icon Luis Aragones, who had won La Liga with Atletico both as a player and manager in the 1960s and 1970s, led them to promotion in 2002, while also unleashing a future hero in teenage striker Fernando Torres.<\/p>\n River Plate are, alongside fierce Buenos Aires rivals Boca Juniors, the most successful club in the history of Argentine domestic football. So when they went down in 2011, it made headlines around the world.<\/p>\n The game that sealed their fate, at River\u2019s Monumental stadium, had to be abandoned and players helped to get off the pitch as the crowd rioted with the home side 3-1 down on aggregate in a promotion\/relegation play-off with a minute of the 90 to go. Police then battled to disperse rampaging supporters after the first relegation in the club\u2019s then 110-year history. Dozens of people were reportedly injured.<\/p>\n \n Riot police confront fans angered by River Plate\u2019s relegation (Alejandro Pagni\/AFP via Getty Images)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cThere\u2019s a state of mourning,\u201d Marcelo Roffe, president of the Argentine Association of Sports Psychology, told La Nacion<\/a> that year. \u201cBecause River Plate is the most successful Argentine club, and their established tradition makes it difficult for them to process the idea of \u200b\u200bwhat\u2019s about to happen.\u201d<\/p>\n The newspaper even reported a spike in River Plate fans taking antidepressants and suffering relationship problems during that season. \u201cSome face the situation, but many choose to shut themselves away, miss work, or not interact with their office colleagues,\u201d Roffe also told La Nacion.<\/p>\n In an interview with The Athletic<\/em> in 2018<\/a>, the club\u2019s then teenage defender Leandro Gonzalez Pirez recalled being part of that doomed side. \u201cYou find yourself in a situation that you hadn\u2019t dreamed about,\u201d he said. \u201cI was forced to grow up quickly. There was a lot of pressure and tension.\u201d<\/p>\n River Plate returned to the top flight in 2012, finishing top of the second-division table, and were crowned champions of Argentina two years later.<\/p>\n In England, Aston Villa and Newcastle United were major stories when they were relegated from the Premier League (Villa in 2016, Newcastle in 2009 and also in 2016). Both have since returned to the top division and blossomed into clubs competing for major honours.<\/p>\n But one other current Premier League club fell harder and faster.<\/p>\n Leeds were a traditional powerhouse of the English game and in the early 2000s seemed to be on the up once again. They finished third in the 1999-00 Premier League and fourth in 2000-01, while also reaching the semi-finals of the Champions League in the latter season. The following year, they finished fifth in the top flight.<\/p>\n But then it all fell to pieces.<\/p>\n It started with relegation in 2004 for a squad that appeared to have far too much talent to go down, including Paul Robinson, Alan Smith, Mark Viduka, Jermaine Pennant, Ian Harte and a young James Milner. Manager Peter Reid left in the November, and replacement Eddie Gray could not keep them up.<\/p>\n \n Goalkeeper Paul Robinson is dejected in a defeat as Leeds are relegated (Michael Steele\/Getty Images)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Three years later, Leeds dropped into League One (the English third tier) after being docked 10 points for going into administration. That deduction meant the Yorkshire club finished bottom of the 24-team Championship. A legacy of spending beyond their means had bitten hard, and they spent three seasons in the third division before winning promotion in 2010. Leeds returned to the Premier League in 2020, got relegated again in 2023 but came back up for the current campaign.<\/p>\n \u2018They are a great club,\u201d wrote The Athletic<\/em>\u2019s Leeds correspondent Phil Hay in 2024,<\/a>\u00a0\u201ca famous club who didn\u2019t so much fall on hard times as get skewered by them.\u201d<\/p>\n If it is hard to imagine a side as big as Leeds sinking so low, then what of a clubwho have won eight Premier League titles since 2012?<\/p>\n Huge investment from Abu Dhabi and manager Pep Guardiola\u2019s brilliance have transformed Manchester City into one of Europe\u2019s major players, but in 1998 they suffered the ignominy of dropping to the domestic third tier almost a decade before it happened to Leeds.<\/p>\n Relegated from the Premier League in 1996, City spent two years in the second tier before going down again to what is now League One in 1998.<\/p>\n Then owned by a consortium of British businessmen, including their former player Francis Lee, City were far from the massively wealthy club they would become, but even so, they had expected to go back up that season as champions of the First Division \u2014 today\u2019s Championship.<\/p>\n \u201cI arrived in the belief we would win the First Division and go straight back to the Premier League,\u201c says Gerard Wiekens, a Dutch midfielder signed in summer 1997. \u201cIt didn\u2019t work out like that.<\/p>\n \u201cOf course, this was before the huge wealth came, but City were still a big club. We had a big fanbase and the expectation was we would not long be out of the top flight.\u201d<\/p>\n Wiekens recalls a squad that was ill-suited to the challenge of a second-tier relegation fight.<\/p>\n \u201cWe had Georgi Kinkladze (their Georgian playmaker), who was a wonderful, skilful player, and we had bought (striker) Lee Bradbury from Portsmouth for a club-record \u00a33million ($4m at the current rate). We all thought we would be fine at first, but we lost a lot of games and suddenly were in a relegation battle. Georgi had done really well in the Premier League but he didn\u2019t play as much (in the First Division) because we suddenly needed different qualities, like fight and graft over flair.\u201d<\/p>\n By the final day of that 1997-98 season, they had to beat Stoke City away and hope other results went in their favour. Wiekens and company won 5-2, but fellow relegation candidates Port Vale and Portsmouth also took three points on their travels, condemning City to an unprecedented low.<\/p>\n \n Manchester City fans dejected by relegation to the third tier (Alex Livesey\/Allsport\/Getty)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cI don\u2019t remember what I did that night, probably cried,\u201c says Wiekens, who experienced three promotions and two relegations during his five seasons at City.<\/p>\n \u201cMy advice to Tottenham fans would be to support the team. Try not to become too negative, because even though it is understandable, it makes things worse. The Tottenham players are probably good enough to stay there (in the Premier League) but when you are in that position, and it\u2019s unexpected, it is difficult.\u201d<\/p>\n Schalke have qualified for the Champions League eight times this century, and reached its semi-finals in 2011. They have 200,000 club members, the third-most in Germany<\/a> and the sixth-highest number in world football. But in the 2020-21 season, ravaged financially by the Covid-19 pandemic and a succession of managerial changes, they were relegated to the 2.Bundesliga.<\/p>\n \u201cWhen I speak to other fans about the relegation sometimes, we\u2019re still not quite sure how it happened,\u201d says Niklas Heising, a Schalke supporter who is a journalist for leading German newspaper Bild. \u201cIt caught us by surprise.\u201d<\/p>\n The Gelsenkirchen-based side burned through five managers in that 2020-21 campaign, before ultimately finishing bottom of the 18-team Bundesliga.<\/p>\n Their ill-fated campaign began with an 8-0 defeat at Bayern Munich and worries over ailing finances.<\/p>\n \u201cGelsenkirchen is one of the poorest regions in Germany, with areas of low employment. The club means so much to the area,\u201d says Heising. \u201cCovid was a tough time for everyone, all clubs and businesses, but it was particularly bad timing for Schalke.<\/p>\n \u201cI remember when relegation was confirmed by a 1-0 defeat at Arminia Bielefeld (in the April). I was at home, isolating alone and watching it on the TV. I didn\u2019t cry \u2014 I think I was in shock. It was miserable.\u201d<\/p>\n \n Devastated Schalke players after they were relegated from the 2020-21 Bundesliga (Ronny Hartmann\/AFP via Getty Images)<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n By the final game of the season, a 1-0 loss at Koln, the crisis had become almost existential. \u201cI texted a friend saying that may be the last game we ever watch,\u201d he says. \u201cIt really wasn\u2019t certain the club would survive the pandemic at that stage.\u201d<\/p>\n Following that Bielefeld defeat, the players had returned by coach to their Veltins-Arena stadium to meet with 500 fans. The event did not go well.<\/p>\n Angry supporters pelted them with eggs and chased them around the stadium before police arrived. German website Sport 1 quoted an unnamed Schalke player as saying<\/a>: \u201cThe fans attacked us. We just ran. It was fear, pure fear. I was just running. Some of us got kicked and punched.\u201d<\/p>\n Schalke bounced straight back as champions but were relegated again a year later. They are currently top of the 2.Bundesliga with eight games to go and hopeful of a return to the top flight.<\/p>\n It may have gotten tense, even toxic, at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium this season, but recent history from the River Plate to the Rhine suggests things can always get worse.<\/p>\n \u201cYou might think, or even know, it\u2019s going to happen,\u201d says Heising of relegation, \u201cbut nothing prepares you for the shock when it does.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\nAtletico Madrid, 1999-2000<\/strong><\/h2>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/athletic\/uploads\/wp\/2026\/03\/13161008\/GettyImages-1211285-scaled.jpg\")
<\/p>\nRiver Plate, 2010-11<\/strong><\/h2>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/athletic\/uploads\/wp\/2026\/03\/13154331\/GettyImages-2033881278-scaled.jpg\")
<\/p>\nLeeds United, 2003-04<\/strong><\/h2>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/athletic\/uploads\/wp\/2026\/03\/13153935\/GettyImages-50794133-scaled.jpg\")
<\/p>\nManchester City, 1995-96 and 1997-98<\/strong><\/h2>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/athletic\/uploads\/wp\/2026\/03\/13163214\/GettyImages-1290695-scaled.jpg\")
<\/p>\nSchalke, 2020-21<\/strong><\/h2>\n
![\"\"](\"https:\/\/static01.nyt.com\/athletic\/uploads\/wp\/2026\/03\/13171803\/GettyImages-1258236290-scaled.jpg\")
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