There is precedent for survival when all appears lost with Sunderland’s relegation escape under Gus Poyet in 2014 a beacon for fans of the Premier League clubs facing the drop
Like the hapless Brian Stimpson, so splendidly portrayed by John Cleese in the 1980s farce Clockwise, most football fans can take the despair; it’s the hope they cannot stand. With only three or four fixtures left to play in this season’s Premier League, fans of West Bromwich Albion, Stoke City and Southampton can almost certainly feel the headmaster’s anguish. Most are perfectly well equipped to deal with the trauma of relegation to the Championship but it is the possibility of avoiding it that drives them to the brink of madness.
For West Brom fans, the agony is almost over. Almost but not quite. It is still mathematically possible for them to stay in the top flight but their mini-rage against the dying of the light almost certainly constitutes too little too late. Nothing less than successive wins in their final three matches will suffice and even that will be good enough only in the unlikely event Swansea fail to take more than one point from 12 available.
Related: Dark clouds over the Black Country as West Brom await their relegation fate | Stuart James
Premier League
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