Quinn: Who is going down?

Niall Quinn looks at the teams scrapping to stay in the Premier League this season and argues that’s where the real drama lies…

After the weekend’s drama, it says something about the career I have had when my eye gets drawn to the bottom of the Premier League table more than it does to the top.

The basement is the accident and emergency department of football. Some surgeons work in high-end cosmetic surgery and others work in the emergency room. The ER guys probably know all the stats about surviving gunshot wounds but not much about Botox. 

First thing about the relegation zone: there is no rest. It’s all gunshot wounds and blood and stitches. If you put together a little run like Sunderland have over the last few weeks all you can do is keep working harder and hope that it will all pay off for you come judgement day.

There’s generally no talk (sorry to break this to you, Leicester City) about having a run without European games.

And then there is the passion. Corporates don’t generally risk heart disease by mixing a big meal, some drinks AND a relegation six-pointer. Some people might leave Old Trafford or The Emirates thinking that they’ve had a pleasant afternoon’s entertainment. You leave a relegation battle wondering what just happened and will your pulse-rate ever get back to normal and is it normal to see so many grown men cry at one time?

On the last day of the season, unless something incredible is happening at the top end of the table, the cameras will descend like vultures at the matches where teams stand a chance of falling through the trapdoor. At full-time, they will scan the crowd looking for faces broken by grief, fans huddling in tears, little kids looking for an explanation for the tragedy.  

If we didn’t have losing, then winning wouldn’t mean so much. I would love to be a Chelsea player scanning the fixtures for the next month or so and making a rough calculation of what is needed to stay top.

They know that on a weekend like this one getting three points at Man City seems to come with gift-wrapped bonuses when City get two players sent off for straight reds at the death and then Liverpool manage to lose by the odd goal in seven at Bournemouth.  

But my heart is with the lads turning up for training at the start of a week with the weight of the world on their shoulders. No matter how far away you are from relegation, judgement day every game just seems so important.

The stretch through December and into the transfer deadline period is critical in terms of survival and this past weekend seemed like an important one for those teams living in the basement. As of Monday morning, the basement houses everybody from Crystal Palace …

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