The best three Premier League teams to ever be relegated

After a demoralising 3-0 defeat to rock-bottom Wolves, West Ham, who sit firmly rooted in the Premier League relegation zone, look unlikely to survive the drop come the end of the season.

With 17th placed Nottingham Forest now with seven-points more than the Hammers, even at this stage of the season it looks a stretch to survive. 

This is despite West Ham's recent success, which has included top-four charges and European silverware, winning the Conference League in 2023, plus a huge amount of spending in recent years.

This had us wondering, who are the best teams to ever be relegated from the Premier League?

Let's see...

The best teams to ever be relegated from the Premier League

Leicester City - 2022/23

DARREN STAPLES/AFP via Getty Images

Former Premier League champions Leicester City were relegated in the 22/23 season.

They were unfortunate to go down with now Tottenham player, James Maddison, having the chance to keep the Foxes up if he converted a penalty against Everton, who just managed avoid the drop on the final day ahead of the Foxes. The match between the two ending 2-2, near the back-end of the season.

Littered with internationals and proven quality like Vardy, Tielemans, Perez, Faes and Barnes, they were still considered a good team and not expected to struggle, despite it being years since their fairytale title win in 2016. 

Leicester had even continued to impress, as they were briefly in a title race with Liverpool in the 19/20 season and even beat Chelsea to win the FA Cup only two years before their relegation.

A slow start to the season, the interruption of the Winter World Cup break, and internal discourse caused their poor campaign. The latter was cemented when Maddison turned on his team-mates questioning their ''hunger'' after a 5-3 crushing loss to Fulham. 

Crystal Palace - 1994/95

Crystal Palace's relegation in the 1994/95 season caused outcry as they finished one place above the relegation zone, in any usual season. 

Unfortunately for the Eagles, this was not any usual season. The Premier League was shrinking from 22 teams to 20 which meant restructuring. Their plan meant to relegate four teams and only promote two from the Championship. 

Proving further that this team was too good to go down, they reached the semi-finals in each of the domestic cups in this season. 

West Ham - 2002/03

Gary M Prior/Allsport

Since the Premier League shifted to a 38-game season, 40-points has become an agreed benchmark for safety in the league, with only one team ever being relegated with more points. That was West Ham in 2002/03, going down even after accumulating 42-points across the season. 

Their unfortunate campaign looks more dramatic when remembering that the Iron's boasted a squad with some of the most talented players in the Premier League, including the skilful Joe Cole, the future Manchester United player Michael Carrick, plus quality strikers Jermaine Defoe and the legendary Paolo Di Canio.

At the time squad member Frederic Kanoute, said: ''It was almost impossible for that West Ham team to get relegated.''

The reason this star studded team got relegated calls back to internal discourse. Some of the players did not have a positive relationship with their boss, the late Glenn Roeder.

Di Canio made that clear when he said: ''Glenn is a young manager and makes mistakes.'' This quote looking all the more unreasonable when given the context that they had just beaten West Brom 2-1.

Roeder, potentially naively, dropped the Italian as a result despite the player being integral to West Ham's cause. 

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