West Ham might be absent from the Premier League for quite some time, Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur are in disarray, and both Arne Slot and Eddie Howe are already under scrutiny regarding their managerial futures.

The Premier League has crowned its champions for the 2025/26 season, but it’s equally important to look at those who have stumbled badly.

It’s fairly obvious who they are — yet that doesn’t make it any less entertaining to analyse their downfalls.

Wolverhampton Wanderers have managed the rare feat of beginning consecutive Premier League campaigns with ten-game winless streaks. Remarkably, during this stretch, they hired two managers on long-term contracts — Gary O’Neil and Vitor Pereira — both of whom still have more than two years left on their Molineux deals. If Rob Edwards manages to last that long, his already tarnished tenure might be seen as an achievement.

It’s been a textbook example of how to gradually surrender top-flight status. After finishing 7th, 7th, 13th, 10th, 13th, and 14th, Wolves’ reputation as an established Premier League side counted for little. In this league, status must be earned yearly — there’s no lifetime membership.

Complacency and arrogance crept in. Selling off players of value and replacing them with cheap, untested prospects was never going to be sustainable. It could only end one way. Former chairman Jeff Shi once said, “relegation or staying up is a kind of technical word,” shortly before stepping down — perhaps a fitting epitaph to this decline.

Scott Parker’s Premier League record now stands at 13 wins, 21 draws, and 52 defeats from 86 matches — with more than double the goals conceded than scored across four spells with three clubs. There’s no disgrace in being a promotion specialist who’s quickly dismissed after reaching the top division — it’s become his niche — but any club that entrusts him again in the Premier League is courting disaster.

That leads us to West Ham United. The candidates to replace Nuno Espirito Santo reportedly include Parker and Slaven Bilic — both men heavily tied to previous failed versions of the club. Frankly, that’s about what West Ham deserve. Long considered the archetypal “Too Good To Go Down” side, they appeared to believe they were too big to suffer that fate again — ignoring all evidence to the contrary.

Chairman David Sullivan once said in 2017, “I just think we feel like a big club. Not a tinpot club.” Yet his decisions since then have conveyed a very different message. Back then, he admitted relegation would be “very damaging,” but insisted, “If we go down, we’ll come straight back up. We always come straight back up.” That optimism feels wildly misplaced now.

West Ham recorded losses of £104.2 million last year, with reports of a looming “liquidity shortfall” this summer. Realistically, they’re far more likely to emulate Leicester City’s double relegation than to bounce back immediately. Sullivan’s leadership has been deeply flawed — the recent “declaration of war” over fan protests encapsulates a club fractured from top to bottom.

As the manager prepares to leave and players of any value prepare to be sold in a desperate fire sale, West Ham’s identity is being stripped away completely. Former vice-chair Karren Brady didn’t stay to witness the final collapse, but her promise of a “world-class team in a world-class stadium” now rings hollow, as fans lament having “sold the club’s soul” during their relegation.

It’s a damning reflection that sides like Brentford, Brighton, Sunderland, and Bournemouth continue to thrive — clubs West Ham once dwarfed in resources and stature. Next season, they could easily be glancing enviously at Lincoln City instead.

Turning to Chelsea, the absurdity of their situation speaks for itself. Becoming the first club in Premier League history to finish 17th in back-to-back seasons, while also winning a European trophy in between, and ending up with a better coach than when they started — it’s baffling yet very Chelsea.

Nothing highlights their immunity to failure more than their managerial appointments after their worst league finishes this century: Antonio Conte, Mauricio Pochettino, and now Xabi Alonso. Despite years of reckless decisions, the club continues to attract elite managers. It’s like rewarding a child’s bad behaviour with a new toy.

Under the BlueCo ownership, Chelsea’s supposed pivot towards signing “proven talent” offers little reassurance. While it may address some discipline issues, the club’s systemic problems remain unresolved. As long as they’re cushioned by financial loopholes and historical prestige, these changes rest on unstable foundations.

Newcastle United, meanwhile, have regressed from Champions League qualification to mid-table mediocrity. “One of our targets was to be the first Newcastle team to have back-to-back Champions League campaigns,” said Dan Burn recently — unaware that such ambition seems cursed. Under Eddie Howe, they’ve become an “elite Burnley” — oscillating between brilliance and blandness.

The double feat of winning silverware and qualifying for the Champions League was meant to mark a new era, but it might have been Howe’s peak. While a less congested fixture list and improved transfer window could aid recovery, this season has drained nearly all goodwill. Howe faces a defining summer — one that could determine his future at St James’ Park.

Arne Slot at Liverpool is another manager under pressure. Despite a world-record single-window spend last year, his first season defending the title was disastrous. He blamed injuries, saying, “If you asked me one word to describe this season, I would describe that with the word ‘injury’.” Yet the injury crisis wasn’t significantly worse than at other clubs, and it doesn’t excuse the steep decline.

The tragic absence of Diogo Jota undoubtedly hurt, and perhaps the £450 million worth of new signings will gel next season. Still, Slot has exhausted much of his goodwill and will not have the memory of a recent title to protect him if his side falters again in August.

Elsewhere, Angus Kinnear’s “happily dissatisfied” comment about Everton’s progress looks increasingly ironic. While he claimed the club had moved past relegation fears and was fighting for Europe, they managed only a one-place, one-point improvement, with a worse goal difference and no cup run to speak of. Everton needed eight points from their final seven games to secure European football — they scraped just three. If fans are expected to be “happily dissatisfied” watching Sunderland overtake them for a Europa League spot, the board is in for a rude awakening.

Nottingham Forest’s season was a rollercoaster — highlighted by a European semi-final appearance and big wins over Liverpool, Spurs, Chelsea, and Sunderland, but marred by managerial chaos and flirtation with relegation. Despite this being their second-best Premier League points tally since the 1990s, owner Evangelos Marinakis would be mistaken to see it as true progress.

Fulham, under Marco Silva, have become the benchmark for mid-table consistency, finishing between 10th and 13th for four straight seasons with 47–54 points each time. Only a handful of clubs — Spurs, Middlesbrough, Stoke, Newcastle, and Crystal Palace — have maintained similar streaks. Yet this season’s missed opportunity for European qualification stings deeply. Dropped points against Wolves, Forest, Brentford, and West Ham proved costly. If Silva departs, Fulham risk losing the stability he built — even though the relationship seems to have gone stale.

Finally, Pep Guardiola’s decision to step down from Manchester City reflects both his greatness and human limits. He leaves behind a trophy-winning squad at the beginning of a challenging transition. Yet City’s late-season collapse — believing the title was secured after beating Arsenal — exposed their complacency. In the end, they failed to stay humble, and it cost them dearly.