The Premier League’s worst ever starts to title defences – fighting the drop, coming back to win it again
Manchester City will kick off their Premier League defence away to Chelsea on Sunday afternoon – and when they’ve been in that position so far, they’ve steered clear of getting off to a calamitous start.
Other sides have not been so lucky. We’ve seen some genuinely horrendous efforts at defending league titles in the Premier League years, including a few clubs who skirted close to the drop zone…and others who were able to turn it around and come back to win the title. Is this City’s year to join the list, or will they simply be very good again?
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1992/93 – Leeds United
First the worst, seco… no, wait. Just first the worst.
Leeds can’t call themselves Premier League title winners, but were the first club to defend the title in the Premier League era having won the First Division title in 1991/92, just two years on from being promoted from the second tier.
Their defence wound up being a disaster yet to be equalled. A 2-1 win over Wimbledon on the opening day gave way to Leeds taking just one more win in their next eight games (alongside two defeats and six draws), with Eric Cantona scoring the Premier League’s first hat-trick in a 5-0 win over Tottenham. Leeds fell into the relegation zone after a 4-2 defeat at Ipswich Town, and remained there for over two months.
Things barely improved from there, with Leeds spending almost the entirety of the season with their heads only just above water. They finished 17th in what was then a 22-team league, just two points outside the relegation zone.
1995/96 – Blackburn Rovers
Kenny Dalglish had moved upstairs to a director of football role after leading Blackburn to the title in 1995, with his assistant Ray Harford promoted to the big chair in his place.
Things started decently enough with a 1-0 win over QPR, who had finished eighth the previous term, but had they known QPR would end up relegated, that 1-0 win thanks to an Alan Shearer penalty might have been more alarming.
They didn’t have to wait long to get that point hammered home: Blackburn took just one more point from their next five games, with a 5-1 win over Coventry then offering only false hope. By the time Coventry returned the favour by spanking Blackburn 5-0 in the reverse fixture on December 9, Blackburn had lost more games than they had in the whole of the previous season.
A much-improved run of form followed over Christmas and into the new year, with a good final run-in providing a 7th-place finish. Remarkably, Shearer scored 31 league goals that season, including four hat-tricks; he left for Newcastle United that summer, of course.
1998/99 – Arsenal
There’s a theme emerging here: win the first game, then let the collapse begin.
Arsene Wenger’s Double winners kicked off the campaign with a 2-1 win over newly-promoted Nottingham Forest, but scored just one goal in their next four games as they stank the place out in three consecutive goalless draws (against Liverpool, Charlton and Chelsea) before being held 1-1 at Leicester City.
Arsenal finally came to life with a 3-0 win over then-arch-rivals Manchester United, but promptly lost 1-0 to Sheffield Wednesday the following week. A good October was followed by another wobble in November and December, when Arsenal went five games without a win.
The Gunners finally got their act together after that, losing just one of their last 21 games and going top of the league with just two games to spare. Unfortunately, that one loss – to Leeds United courtesy of Jimmy-Floyd Hasselbaink’s 86th-minute winner on the penultimate day – proved crucial in the title race: United recovered from an awful pre-season to beat Arsenal to the trophy by just a single point.
2001/02 – Manchester United
Guess what? Yes, Manchester United won their opening game – though they made hard work of getting a victory at home to Fulham, who were playing in their first-ever Premier League game, with United twice having to come from behind to win 3-2.
United were unconvincing against newly-promoted opposition again in the next game, once more having to come from 2-1 behind – this time against ten men – to rescue a 2-2 draw at Blackburn; Sir Alex Ferguson’s side then needed a 90th-minute own goal to salvage a point at Aston Villa.
United looked more themselves for a few weeks, scoring at least three goals in each of their next five games, but then had one of their worst spells under Ferguson, taking just four points from their next seven – including losing at home to Bolton, Chelsea and West Ham and getting spanked 3-1 away to both Liverpool and Arsenal – to leave them ninth in table on December 8.
Incredibly, just five weeks later, United were top of the table, with an eight-game winning streak ended by Liverpool but then turning into another six wins from seven. A late March defeat to Middlesbrough opened the door just enough for the even more impressive Arsenal to overtake United, however, with a 1-0 defeat at home to the Gunners on the penultimate day confirming Arsenal as champions.
2007/08 and 2008/09 – Manchester United
Very minor compared with the others, but worth a quick mention: United started by drawing with Reading and Portsmouth before losing to a still-very-mid-table Manchester City in 2007/08, scoring just once across those three games. But then they won all of their next eight, setting them on course to win the title alongside the Champions League.
The following year’s retention was similarly slow-starting as United won just one of their first four, starting with a draw against eventually-relegated Newcastle – though there is some mitigation in that Ferguson’s side also lost to a very good Liverpool side and drew with previous year’s league and European runners-up Chelsea. Manchester United ultimately held off a credible Liverpool challenge to win the title by four points.
2013/14 – Manchester United
David Moyes, obviously. The new appointment got off to a good start with Swansea beaten 4-1 on the opening day, but took just four points from next five games, including losing at home to West Bromwich Albion and defeats to rivals Liverpool (still a bit rubbish at the time) and a 4-1 drubbing away to Manchester City.
Moyes was never really able to get United going, of course: they finished 7th, with Ferguson’s successor sacked a few weeks before the end of the season.
2015/16 – Chelsea
Jose Mourinho had made a glorious return to Chelsea in 2013/14, immediately taking them to a legitimate title challenge that fell just short in the final weeks of the season, then actually seeing it through the following year with Chelsea top of the table for all but seven days.
Things fell apart virtually immediately after that, with Mourinho souring everything in a 2-2 opening-day draw against Swansea by publicly criticising physio Eva Carneiro for daring to come onto the pitch to treat an injured Eden Hazard.
At least someone was doing their job, Jose. Fifteen games later, champions Chelsea had four wins, three draws and nine defeats, and sat 16th in the table. Mourinho was dismissed, and Guus Hiddink again came in to steady the ship, going 15 games without defeat as interim boss, before winning just one of the last seven. They finished 10th.
2016/17 – Leicester City
Poor Leicester City. Poor Claudio Ranieri.
The were never going to be able to live up to that unbelievable title win of 2015/16, and fans went into the season confused as to what, exactly, their expectations should be. Challenge again? Push for Europe? Back to mid-table?
It almost became a serious relegation battle in the end. Leicester lost to newly-promoted Hull City in their opening game, and were trounced by Liverpool, Manchester United and Chelsea within the first eight games, with Leicester taking just two wins.
By game 25, in mid-February, Leicester had won just three more – one of which, strangely, was a 4-2 battering of Manchester City. That put them in 17th, just one place away from the bottom three; Ranieri was reluctantly dismissed, and promoted assistant boss Craig Shakespeare got five wins in a row to pull them back to safety. Leicester finished 12th, but did also reach the quarter-finals of the Champions League, which was nice.
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