Down the Chute: When Each Premier League Club Last Fell Through the Trapdoor (2025/26)

Relegation doesn’t care for reputations. From the Victorian birth of league football to today’s glare of TV money, everyone gets a turn on the slide eventually. The Premier League’s riches have helped a handful cling on season after season, but history keeps proving that no team is truly safe. Even now, newly promoted sides are finding survival brutal – all three went down in 2023/24, and the same happened in 2024/25 with Southampton, Leicester and Ipswich tumbling back. As 2025/26 unfolds, Sunderland and Leeds are scrapping to buck the trend. If you fancy a flutter on who’s next to wobble, have a look at our best betting sites.

20. Burnley — Last relegated: 11 May 2024

After swaggering to the 2022/23 Championship title, Vincent Kompany’s open, front‑foot style met a harsh Premier League reality. The Clarets were punished for soft defending and profligate finishing, losing all 12 encounters with the division’s elite and finishing 19th with just five wins, 41 scored and 78 shipped. They went down at Spurs and learned a painful lesson in both boxes. Promoted again for 2025/26, they’re staring at another swift return unless the balance between bravery and pragmatism improves.

19. Leeds United — Last relegated: 28 May 2023

Leeds’ top-flight stint ended with a thud – a 4-1 home defeat to Spurs on the final day summed up a campaign that began poorly and never really corrected course. They conceded seconds into each half, which rather captured the mood: brittle at the back and tame in front of goal. A league‑high 78 conceded tells its own story, while Sam Allardyce bemoaned wastefulness up top. The brighter note? Back now and fighting for their lives in 2025/26, Elland Road’s roar could yet make the difference.

18. Fulham — Last relegated: 10 May 2021

By 2021, Fulham fans knew the feeling all too well — a third drop in seven years. Scott Parker kept standards tidy and the football neat, but the cutting edge simply wasn’t there. Bobby Decordova‑Reid led the scoring with five, a brutally low watermark for a club’s top scorer. In the end, 18th place with five wins, 27 goals for and 53 against reflected a side that played within itself and paid the price.

17. Bournemouth — Last relegated: 26 July 2020

Eddie Howe took Bournemouth from a points‑deducted mess in League Two to five straight seasons among the big boys — a fairytale with a sour final chapter. The Cherries actually won at Everton on the last day but still dropped, one point short. Defensive leakage (65 conceded) and injuries to the forward line finally caught up with them. At their best they were bold and buzzing; in 2019/20, they were just too open for too long.

16. Sunderland — Last relegated: 29 April 2017

A grim end to a decade in the top flight. Bournemouth rocked up to the Stadium of Light, nicked it 1-0 and sealed Sunderland’s fate with four matches to spare. It was defeat number 23 of a season that didn’t deliver a first league win until November. Only 29 scored, 69 conceded — the ruthlessness wasn’t there, plain and simple. Fast forward, and promoted via the play‑offs, the Black Cats are digging in admirably to make 2025/26 stick.

15. Newcastle United — Last relegated: 11 May 2016

Newcastle’s drop was confirmed not by their own result but by events down the road, as Sam Allardyce’s Sunderland battered Everton to survive. The Magpies promptly dismantled Spurs 5-1 on the final day — gallows humour at its finest — but the damage was already done. Eighteenth with nine wins, 44 scored and 65 conceded, they were talented but inconsistent, and paid the going rate for that chaos.

14. Aston Villa — Last relegated: 16 April 2016

A season so messy it outlasted multiple managers and still never found a pulse. Remi Garde arrived mid‑campaign and, by players’ own accounts, lost the dressing room quickly. A 6-0 home hammering by Liverpool sparked an 11‑match losing run. Villa finished 20th with just three wins, 27 goals for and a whopping 76 against — organisationally brittle and mentally shot. The reset that followed was as necessary as it was painful.

13. Wolverhampton Wanderers — Last relegated: 22 April 2012

A bright start faded into open revolt. Mick McCarthy was jettisoned in February, Terry Connor stepped up, and Wolves didn’t win again. Bottom with five wins and 82 conceded, they were too easy to play through and lacking direction. The slide didn’t stop there — they tumbled to League One the following season, a rough reminder of how quickly standards can erode when uncertainty reigns.

12. West Ham United — Last relegated: 15 May 2011

Drama and despair at the DW. Two up at Wigan, West Ham imploded to lose 3-2, with a stoppage‑time sting that sealed relegation and Avram Grant’s immediate exit. Even the class of FWA Player of the Year Scott Parker couldn’t paper over chronic frailties. Bottom with seven wins, 43 for and 70 against, the Hammers had moments but never the resilience to string results together.

11. Crystal Palace — Last relegated: 15 May 2005

Palace needed a final‑day win at Charlton and had the job in their hands at 2-1. Then came a late free‑kick into the mixer, a misjudgement under the high ball, and Jonathan Fortune’s leveller that broke Eagles hearts. Eighteenth with seven wins and 41 scored, it was a campaign of fine margins and a brutal finale. The lesson? Don’t leave your fate to the last 10 minutes of the last day.

Bottom line: the Premier League shows no mercy. Whether you’re newly promoted or an established name, if you can’t defend your box and take your chances, the drop will find you sooner rather than later.