Manchester City 1937/38
If you're the current title holders and end the season with more goals than anyone else, you'd imagine you've at least gone close again. Not so for Manchester City though. In the 37/38 season, City scored 80 goals in the league and finished second to bottom with 36 points (42 games league and two points for a win). The main reason for that, from a distance is the 77 goals they also managed to concede throughout the season. They finished only 5 points off tenth placed Chelsea and actually won the same amount of games as them.
20 defeats however condemned City to the rather embarrassing outcome of being the first and indeed the only reigning champions to have been relegated the season after.
Leeds United 1992/93
The Yorkshire club were the last winners of the old English Division One. They were also, and still remain the last club to have won the top divisions prize whilst being managed by an Englishman. The season before, Howard Wilkinson's team, consisting of the like of Gordon Strachan, David Batty and Gary McCallister, went unbeaten at home and won the league title by four points, overcoming arch rivals Manchester United to do so. The following season however didn't follow the same script and the Elland Road club could only manage a 17th placed finish, two points clear of the relegation zone.
In a strange quirk of the season, Leeds were the only club to have three players score a hat trick during the season, one of those from a certain Frenchman who went elsewhere to win the league. After a few more quiet years, things were looking brighter and Leeds became one of the top sides in the country again under the stewardship of David O'Leary and peaked when reaching the semi finals of the Champions League.
However the mismanagement of the club by the woefully inept Peter Risdale saw the team dismantled and within a few years the club were relegated to the Championship.
Blackburn Rovers 1995/96
1995 saw Jack Walkers huge investment in his home town club finally bear fruit. After breaking the then English transfer fee to bring in Chris Sutton for to partner Alan Shearer up front, Walker saw his club win the league title for the first time in 81 years.
The year after wasn't as enjoyable however. After going out in the Champions League group stage and losing eight games before Christmas the defending Premier League champions were not living up to expectations. The frustrations boiled over when, during a Champions League defeat in Russia Graham Le Saux for some reason saw it wise to throw a punch at David Batty. The second half of the season was better for the Lancashire club but they could only manage a 7th place finish and saw star striker Shearer leave for hometown club Newcastle United at the end of the season.
Manchester United 2013/14
Everybody knew that when Sir Alex Ferguson left Manchester United things would be different. Nobody quite expected them to be this different.
David Moyes took over United in the summer after the club celebrated their 20th league title, and set out to replicate what Ferguson had done for so long. What he actually did was lead United to finish outside the top four for the first time in the Premier League era, and their lowest league position since 1990. The cup runs weren't much better, and saw United beaten by Sunderland in the League Cup semi final and knocked out in the third round of the FA Cup by Swansea at Old Trafford. Just some of the low points of the season were the hammerings at home by both Manchester City and Liverpool and finishing 26 points behind City who won the league. After it became clear the fans were turning, as evidenced by a hired plane flying over Old Trafford with the message "Wrong One - Moyes Out" the club finally sacked Moyes after a defeat at his old club Everton meant United could no longer qualify for the Champions League.
