A football team’s fate is never sealed in January, yet for Aston Villa and Sunderland their position is so perilous at the foot of the Premier League that a defeat in their clash on Saturday would suggest they are already destined to be relegated.
If the Championship play-off final is the most valuable club match in world football, this relegation showdown is its mirror image, a desperate bottom-of-the-table skirmish in a costly battle to cling on to a place in the richest club competition on the planet. The stakes are ridiculously high, even if the end of the season remains five months away.
If Villa lose, the gap between themselves and safety could be stretched to 14 points. It looks like a game Rémi Garde’s side have to win if they are to mount a serious survival mission. The Frenchman, though, has not won a game since replacing Tim Sherwood two months ago.
Remi Garde has not won a game since replacing Tim Sherwood two months ago
“Of course, I thought we would have won earlier,” said Garde, who is convinced he will remain as manager even if Villa are relegated. “But, I knew when you come to club who have played 11 and lost nine, you don’t expect to find everything going well.
“We will go there [to Sunderland] to win and I want my team to have the best period they can have. I know that it’s getting difficult, but there are still 19 games to play and 57 points to win and there is still enough to reach the target.”
If Sunderland win, manager Sam Allardyce would feel a lot more confident about catching the sides above them but, after a pointless December, he also knows nobody is convinced his players are good enough to put together the run needed to climb out of the bottom three.
Sam Allardyce endured a pointless December Photo: GETTY IMAGES
“We must keep our nerve,” said Allardyce. “We’ve got to be ready physically and mentally to get out there and make sure we’re the team that comes away with three points. It’s the biggest game of the season, but the last time we faced our biggest game of the season we failed miserably – that was Watford.”
The reality is that both Villa and Sunderland could go down in May anyway. Their future after that would be unknown, but it is one fraught with risk.
Over the past decade, for every club who have made an instant return to the top flight, regrouping and rebuilding successfully in the Championship, more have ended up falling even further down the Football League ladder.
Of the 30 teams who have been relegated since 2004 (not including last year’s trio as they have not completed a full season) only seven have bounced straight back.
However, eight clubs have followed one relegation with another to League One within four years.
Eleven of the relegated clubs are still stuck in the second tier, trying to find a way out, while four clubs – Blackpool, Portsmouth, Sheffield United and Wigan Athletic – are now scratching around in League One or Two.
There are those who will argue that, given their size and stature, Aston Villa and Sunderland should be able to come straight back up next year. Not just that, but relegation might actually be good for them. It would cleanse the club, detoxifying the squad of years of bad signings.
Furthermore, there is a case for arguing that trying to get back into the Premier League can be far more enjoyable for supporters than a perpetual battle to stay there.
If the boards at Sunderland and Aston Villa have done their jobs properly, relegation clauses would automatically force players to take a 50 per cent wage cut, which prevents the sort of financial catastrophe seen at Leeds, Southampton and Portsmouth in the past.
Those clauses certainly exist at Sunderland, although Villa are not thought to have inserted them in all their contracts.
The loss of Premier League status would mean the loss of many of their best players, but it would also make it easier to offload the overpaid under-performers who litter both squads.
Relegation would, in theory, give them a chance to hack away the dead wood and replace it with younger, hungrier individuals who know what is needed to succeed in the Championship.
Sunderland have done this before in the Premier League era, although it would be a new experience for Villa.
In truth, though, while relegation is a negative that can be turned into a positive with the right manager and players, it is a gamble both clubs would prefer not to take.
To make matters worse, next season brings the start of a three-year television deal under which the 20 Premier League clubs will share £2.9 billion a season, a rise in income of roughly 58 per cent compared to this year.
According to the business advisory firm Deloitte, the Championship play-off final won by Norwich City at Wembley last May earned the Norfolk club approximately £130 million. It is mind-boggling prize money.
That is the minimum, according to Deloitte, that the three promoted teams can expect to earn from one season in the Premier League.
The new television deal means that figure is likely to rise to more than £190 million. The cost of relegation is obvious and that is why both Aston Villa and Sunderland will feel they have to win.
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