It’s getting towards that time of year again: trophies are on the horizon and the biggest clubs around the continent will have their eyes on prizes, be they domestic or European, cup or league. There are few surprises these days in who the eventual winners are across the top five divisions in the game – but that doesn’t mean no surprises at all.
In fact, for a handful of clubs there are some extremely unexpected outlooks for the remainder of 2023/24 – but not because they are gearing up to challenge their rivals and get their hands on silverware.
Instead, here we’re looking at Europe’s biggest underperformers, the clubs who cannot wait for the campaign to end and are just, in some cases, merely hoping they see it out while holding on to their top flight status.
🏴 Chelsea, Premier League
We start off in England and, unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ll probably already know that Chelsea are under their second permanent manager since the Todd Boehly-led takeover 20 months ago and that they’ve spent over £1bn in the transfer market since then.
Top four and trophies, then? Not quite. Mauricio Pochettino has been unable to turn the Blues around, currently sat in the bottom half of the Premier League table with a negative goal difference and fewer points than the likes of Wolves, Brighton and an injury-hit Newcastle side.
The one potential bright spot is an upcoming League Cup Final against Liverpool – though they were beaten 4-1 by the same opponents only a week ago.
🇮🇹 Lazio, Serie A
At the back end of last season, everything looked positive for Lazio. They finished the campaign with three straight wins to beat Inter Milan into the runners-up spot, their first year in Serie A’s top two since their infamous league and cup double season of 1999-2000.
Onward and upward, then? Of course not.
A wildly inconsistent start to this year sees them languishing in mid-table, ninth after 22 games and with fewer wins than city rivals Roma – who recently dispensed with manager José Mourinho.
A fairly tight top half from fourth to tenth means that all isn’t yet lost for the campaign, while there’s also a Champions League last-16 encounter with Bayern Munich to look forward to.
But unless Maurizio Sarri can drastically improve matters, it looks like this version of Lazio will amount to a one-season wonder.
🇪🇸 Sevilla, LaLiga
If Chelsea, as former European champions, are suffering a bad couple of years then spare a thought for Sevilla. They might have won the Europa League again last season but the domestic drop-off was huge – and is even worse this time around.
Until a Monday night win at Rayo Vallecano, Sevilla were only outside the relegation zone on goal difference and had won just three LaLiga games all season.
They’ve given themselves breathing space to the bottom three now, but that’s as good as it gets for a dreadful campaign: lost the Super Cup, finished last in their Champions League group without a single victory, knocked out of the Copa del Rey and no league wins to celebrate at home since September.
🇩🇪 Union Berlin, Bundesliga
Perhaps it’s harsh to single out Union Berlin for falling short this year after such a wonderful 23/24 campaign, but the scale of it warrants inclusion.
Having upset the odds to finish fourth in last year’s Bundesliga, qualifying for the Champions League in the process, they then proceeded to start this term with three straight victories and all looked rosy once more.
Then it began. A 3-0 home reversal to RB Leipzig sparked a run of 12 straight matches suffering defeat, saw the manager sacked and the team’s position plummet. Union went a total of 16 games without a win from the end of August to mid-December, and while they have just about kept their heads above the relegation zone, it’s not by much.
Three points and one place currently separates them from the relegation play-off spot, with a 1-1 draw in the midweek clash away to Mainz – currently below them – something of a missed opportunity to give themselves some leeway in the battle to survive the drop.
🇫🇷 Lyon, Ligue 1
And finally to France, where Lyon perhaps claim top billing as a former giant suffering a dismal season – though, we should note, only thanks to Ajax finally turning around their own form in the Dutch Eredivisie.
Lyon, however, have done no such thing. They sit 15th in Ligue 1, similarly to Union only above the relegation play-off spot by a single position, winning only one of their first 14 games of 23/24 and looking in real peril.
Laurent Blanc was dismissed in September; his replacement Fabio Grosso lasted just over two months in the job. Since mid-December their third boss of the season, Pierre Sage, has managed to oversee an upturn in fortunes to give Les Gones some hope of a revival, but it’s a long way back to the days of seven straight titles from 2002 onwards, or even to a pair of top-three finishes as recently as 2018 and 2019.
(Image from IMAGO)
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