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Which London clubs do PL fans want relegated?

3 min read
by Editor
There’s still much you can say about Tottenham’s season that is likely to happen, but one thing is assured – Spurs are not going to get relegated. The last time that happened was in 1976, so it’s safe to say most football followers regard Tottenham as permanent fixture in the top flight. There are, though, […]

There’s still much you can say about Tottenham’s season that is likely to happen, but one thing is assured – Spurs are not going to get relegated. The last time that happened was in 1976, so it’s safe to say most football followers regard Tottenham as permanent fixture in the top flight.

There are, though, plenty of supporters who wish to see other London-based clubs relegated, as a recent FootballTips survey uncovered. The site asked fans up and down the country about which teams they’d prefer to see at the tail end of the English Premier League at the end of term, then collated and published the results.

It’s perhaps not surprising to see that Crystal Palace came out not only as the least popular EPL side in London, but the least popular EPL side overall. Things were looking awful for Palace at the start of the season after four straight defeats and not a goal scored to be seen, but in a move unpopular with non-Palace fans the Eagles sacked hapless new coach Frank De Boer and replaced him with former England boss Roy Hodgson.

Sadly, Hodgson improved Palace’s fortunes and even oversaw an eight-game unbeaten run, but in recent weeks the Eagles have lost five games out of their last six games and so the side remains relegation-haunted. In the FootballTips survey Palace received twenty-three percent of the vote with voters perhaps wondering what, aside from Wilfried Zaha, the Eagles bring to the EPL.

The only other side in the survey to receive any votes were West Ham United. The Hammers were another team who started the season poorly (three straight defeats) and in November decided to hand their manager, Slaven Bilic, his P45. To the dismay of the majority of the London Stadium faithful, Davids Gold and Sullivan handed stewardship of the wobbly claret and blue ship to David Moyes, the guy who masterminded Sunderland’s triumphant exit out of the EPL last term.

To be fair, Moyes has been reasonably successful, giving £20 million striker Marko Arnautovic a much-needed kick up the arse and nearly pulling off the transfer coup of the century by off-loading career sick-note ‘striker’ Andy Carroll to Chelsea.

West Ham enjoyed an uneaten January but a series of stunning capitulations – 4-1 at Liverpool, 4-1 at Swansea City and 3-0 at home to Burnley – have dragged the bubble-blowers back down towards the wrong end of the table again. West Ham’s final game of the season is at home to Everton, and no doubt fans of the Toffeemen would love the opportunity of seeing their former boss suffer a second successive relegation.

In the survey the Hammers received a mere four percent of the vote, so it seems that most independent fans are in fact comfortable with the former Upton Park residents remaining in the top flight of English football.

Moving away from London-based teams, the side most football fans would love to see joining Palace in the Championship next term are West Bromwich Albion, which is great news as the Baggies have been blooming awful all season. With only three wins all term and now having to list Alan Pardew among their former managers, West Brom are as much a certainty to go down as Harry Kane is of being England’s top (or probably, only) scorer in the forthcoming World Cup Finals.  West Brom received nineteen percent of the vote.

The other side most people seem to want to wave goodbye to at the end of the 2017-18 EPL season is a bit of a surprise – Brighton and Hove Albion. The Seagulls were hot favourites to bounce back down to the second tier at the start of the season, but under Chris Hughton’s stewardship Brighton look destined to finish up in mid-table. Still, that didn’t stop them from receiving fourteen percent of the vote.

The other sides receiving votes in the survey were Big Sam’s Everton (10%), Swansea City (8%), Newcastle United (5%), Leicester City (5%), Watford (4%), Bournemouth (3%), Huddersfield Town (3%), Stoke City (3%) and Liverpool’s nursery club Southampton (>1%).

All views and opinions expressed in this article are the views and opinions of the writer and do not necessarily represent the views of The Fighting Cock. We offer a platform for fans to commit their views to text and voice their thoughts. Football is a passionate game and as long as the views stay within the parameters of what is acceptable, we encourage people to write, get involved and share their thoughts on the mighty Tottenham Hotspur.