A Relegation Battler. Examples: Fulham, West Brom, Sheffield Utd
Would Eddie Howe take a job at a club that was going to be facing relegation every season, or who were actually on the brink of going down or confirmed to go down?
The answer appears to be no, because, really, which ambitious manager with Celtic on offer would?
The thing with actually naming example teams is that in some cases you have to go with how the league table looks right now, but we know that Palace and other sides have flirted with the drop in recent years, and that newly promoted teams are especially vulnerable to it.
So whilst those are the clubs in the EPL drop zone right now you could include others in this number, and that will include whomever is promoted from the Championship.
Right now, Norwich, Watford, Brentford, Swansea, Barnsley and Bournemouth are all either looking good to go up or are in the play-off contention. Howe has been at one of those clubs already; are any of them a more attractive prospect than we are?
As I said here, we need to be thinking of a scenario where we hire Howe and EPL interest comes up … we suppose that he won’t just want to go anywhere.
I would stipulate that none of these clubs would hold his interest, no club in the relegation zone or likely to find themselves there.
The named clubs could easily be joined in that spot by three or four others, and I think we can rule them out just now and in the future.