As reigning champions Manchester United continue to struggle in the Premier League, we select 10 clubs that have done a spectacularly bad job of defending their title.
10. Manchester United, 2013-14
This might be a little premature. Manchester United could still turn things around. The reasons for their struggles have been discussed at some length. Who could possibly follow arguably the greatest manager Britain has ever produced? Sir Alex Ferguson had seemingly been holding the club together with a combination of sticky tape and his astonishing force of will for a few years, and bequeathed his hand-picked successor an inadequate, ageing squad. However, the numbers remain: Manchester United won the Premier League by 11 points last season, and after adding over 60 million pounds' worth of Marouane Fellaini, Wilfried Zaha and Juan Mata, they are currently 18 points off the top and 12 away from fourth place. "It's been harder than I expected," David Moyes said recently. It shows.
9. KB, 1950-51
There are several examples of teams being relegated the year after winning the league through no fault of their own. Or, to be more precise, no footballing fault of their own. AC Milan in 1979 and Juventus in 2006 were demoted after winning Serie A due to assorted scandals, while Marseille suffered a similar fate in France, to name but three examples. A few teams, however, managed something more pure: lifting the league title by way of their own competence one year, then dropping to the second tier by way of their own shuddering incompetence the next. There will be several examples of those teams on this list, but perhaps the most topsy-turvy of all were KB, the Danish team sort of no longer in existence (they merged with B 1903 in 1991 to form what we now know as Copenhagen FC), who won the league title in 1948, 1949 and 1950, finished stone bottom and were relegated in 1951, were promoted in 1952 and won the league again in 1953. Quite the rollercoaster.
8. TPV and FC Haka, 1995 and 1996
The champions being relegated the season after winning their title seems to be a Nordic speciality. It has happened four times in Sweden and three times in Norway, Denmark and Finland, but there may well have been something in the Finnish water in the mid-90s, because it happened twice, to two different teams, two years in a row. First, TPV lifted the crown in 1994, only to drop out of the Veikkausliiga in 1995. Then, like a cartoon character trying to work out why a blunderbuss wasn't firing by looking straight down the barrel, FC Haka sauntered to the top in 1995 but were pushed through the big trapdoor in 1996 when the splendidly named FC Jazz Pori were champions. Haka actually had an eventful few years too -- they won both promotion and the Finnish Cup in 1997 before lifting three straight league crowns between 1998 and 2000. They do things differently in Finland.
7. ES Setif, 1988
The story of Setif, one of Algeria's biggest teams, is especially remarkable given what they did after their hapless title defence. Setif won the Algerian Ligue Professionnelle 1 in 1987 (the second of their six wins to date), but promptly dropped into the second tier after a calamitous following season. Of course, winning their domestic league meant Setif qualified for the African Cup of Champions Clubs, which they duly entered, and gosh darn if they didn't go and win the whole thing, beating Iwuanyanwu Nationale of Nigeria 4-1 over a two-legged final, which took place after they had begun life in the Algerian second tier.
6. Leeds United, 1992-93
Some of the title defences on this list are notable for the spectacular nature of the failure, but Leeds United's follow-up to their victory in 1992 was more of a nine-month shrug than a flamboyant failure. After pipping Manchester United to the post in the last season before the Premier League arrived, Leeds promptly sold Eric Cantona to their rivals and managed the almost impressive feat of failing to win a single game away from Elland Road, which included somehow contriving to be spanked 4-1 at Nottingham Forest, a shambles of a team managed by the ghost of Brian Clough who finished comfortably bottom of the league. Perhaps they were distracted by the Champions League, but they were eliminated by Rangers (ask your dad) in November, so that hardly seems like an excuse. Replacing Cantona with Frank Strandli, a Norwegian who would score just twice for the club, looks like a more convincing explanation. This season wasn't so much a balloon being burst, but one left in the corner of the room to very slowly and sadly deflate.
5. Universidad Catolica, 1955
The structure of many South American domestic leagues is often something of a mystery to Europeans, who largely favour a simple divisional structure with one winner and a few teams relegated. However, in countries like Brazil, Argentina and Chile it often isn't that simple, and the rules and structures are a little more "moveable." In many cases, the rules are tweaked to ensure that the biggest teams stay in the highest division -- something that occurred when 1954 Chilean champions Universidad Catolica were relegated in 1955. The structure of the league was thus changed so that relegation was calculated from performance over a number of seasons, rather than just one, making it less likely that teams like Catolica -- one of the traditional "Big Three" in Chile --would go down. The new rules paid off in 1960, when Catolica -- who had returned to the top flight at the first attempt -- finished bottom of the league but stayed up thanks to the new averaging out system. Isn't a hierarchy based on reputations grand?
4. FC Nuernberg, 1968-69
Some things can simply be explained by the law of averages. After all, when a team is the most-relegated from a particular division, in Nuernberg's case dropping out of the Bundesliga an impressive seven times since the league was formed in 1963 (and they're teetering on the edge this season as well), it stands to reason that at some point they probably went down a season after winning the whole thing. And they sure did, dropping into the second tier in 1969 a year after finishing top, the result of some rather overzealous team restructuring by manager Max Merkel, who believed the title-winning team was too old and shipped most of them out. This makes them the only German club to "achieve" this "feat" and, to add another flourish, they were also relegated in 2008, a season after winning the DFB-Pokal. Strong work all round.
3. Chelsea, 2013 Champions League
The mid-2000s saw a rash of Champions League winners crash out at the first knockout stage in the following year. Porto in 2005, Liverpool in 2006, Barcelona in 2007 and AC Milan in 2008 all bumbled through their groups but could get no further. Indeed, in the old straight knockout, no messing around with groups European Cup, a fair few sides fell at the first hurdle, notably Liverpool in 1978-79 and Real Madrid in 1960-61, but since the latter had won it five times in a row before that, we'll probably allow them one slack year. In any case, those were the days of one-off ties, and even in two-legged affairs anything can happen. Chelsea's defence of their 2012 Champions League win was different altogether, as they became the first and only post-1992 winners to go out at the first attempt the following year, through sustained under-performance rather than an off-day. Their group, including Juventus and Shakhtar Donetsk, was tricky without being prohibitively tough, and it was defeats to both that gave Roman Abramovich the excuse to get rid of Roberto Di Matteo, something the Italian had rather peskily avoided by winning the thing the previous year.
2. Blackburn Rovers, 1995-96
In the summer of 1995, it must have felt like anything was possible in Blackburn -- not an emotion one suspects is especially frequent in that corner of Lancashire. Kenny Dalglish had just led them to the Premier League title, they had Chris Sutton and Alan Shearer up front and a Champions League campaign to look forward to. However, Dalglish decided to move upstairs, handing the reins over to Ray Harford, and it all went a bit wrong from there. A calamitous start to the season (they won just four of their first 13 games) saw Rovers languishing troublingly close to the relegation zone, and along with a slapstick European campaign, the highlight of which was David Batty and Graeme Le Saux smacking each other around the head in Moscow, it all added up to a rather limp campaign. They eventually recovered some form of respectability and finished seventh, but Rovers' big chance of becoming a force in English football was gone.
1. Manchester City, 1937-38
Despite their current riches, if you talk to a Manchester City fan on the eve of a big game these days, many -- certainly those who have been around for a while -- will still admit to an impending sense of dread. And why? Well, because they're still City, and City have a long and not awfully proud history of comic failure. This perhaps all stems from their version of original sin, being the only club in the history of English football to be relegated the season after winning the league. City lifted the First Division in delicious style: They were unbeaten after Boxing Day, a 22-match unblemished run that saw them pip Charlton to the top by four points, and to add a pleasing cherry to this delightful cake, Manchester United were relegated. However, the tone was set for the following season after they lost their unbeaten streak in the first game, and then proceeded to achieve the almost impressive feat of going down as the top-scorers in the whole division, with a whopping 80 goals, three more than champions Arsenal. When City won that season, they really won -- Derby were beaten 6-1 and 7-1, Leicester 4-1, West Brom 7-1 and Leeds 6-2 -- but while the wins were emphatic, they were few and far between, and couldn't prevent them from slipping into Division Two. City, eh?