Kyle Walker has completed his move from Manchester City to Burnley. That transfer has got us thinking – how many Premier League champions have gone on to be relegated?
We’ve seen several relegated players go on to achieve immense success, with Xherdan Shaqiri, Georginio Wijnaldum and Andrew Robertson all part of Liverpool’s 2019-20 title-winning squad after suffering the drop with Stoke, Newcastle and Hull respectively.
But the other way around isn’t quite so common. We can’t help but respect Walker, who has won six Premier League titles with Manchester City, taking on the challenge of joining a newly promoted club who are among the heavy favourites to go straight back down.
We’ve identified eight notable examples of players who won a Premier League title before going on to suffer relegation. Reckon we’ve missed any particularly interesting examples? Let us know @planetfootball.
Jamie Vardy
The only player on the list who won the Premier League and suffered relegation with the same club.
This list is otherwise dominated by players who went from powerhouses of English football (Manchester United, Manchester City, Chelsea) to struggling clubs at the other end of the table (Sunderland, Stoke, QPR) but Leicester belonged in both those camps over the course of Vardy’s remarkable 13-year stint.
The striker unforgettably fired the Foxes to the title with 24 league goals in 2015-16. He’d later win a Premier League Golden Boot, become one of the most prolific over-30 goalscorers in history, feature in the Champions League and lift the FA Cup at Wembley.
And then it all came tumbling down. Relegation in 2023. And again in 2025.
“No words I have can ever express my feelings of anger and sadness with the way this season has gone. There are no excuses,” Vardy wrote on social media.
“Having been at this club for so long, we’ve experienced so many highs and successes – and this season has been nothing but miserable and for me personally, a total embarrassment. It hurts, and I know you’re feeling it too.
“To the fans: I’m sorry. Sorry we haven’t performed.”
There speaks a man with first-hand experience of how far they done fell.
Kalvin Phillips
This one’s a bit of a technicality.
It would be an understatement to say the midfielder wasn’t all that influential in Manchester City’s 2022-23 treble, his one and only full season at the Etihad.
Phillips made just two starts and played a total of 291 minutes in that title-winning campaign and was pushed further to the periphery, eventually loaned out to West Ham, when they retained it the following year.
It’s that fringe status that explains how he ended up out on loan at Ipswich Town last season. Kieran McKenna’s men gave it a good go but ultimately sank back down like a stone.
Rio Ferdinand
The move arguably most analogous to Walker’s move to Burnley, Ferdinand was also a six-time Premier League winner with a dominant Manchester force who, as a veteran, transferred to a club in a totally different orbit.
“I wish I finished my career at Manchester United, rather than moving to QPR,” Ferdinand told Stick To Football, recalling his underwhelming final year at Loftus Road.
“Because it was the first time I had been in a changing room where people were talking about money and wages.
“You’d hear murmurings of players talking about it and I found it mad.
“We had players not wanting to train because they were on a certain amount of money, the intensity wasn’t that high, and for whatever Harry Redknapp was trying to do, the players weren’t buying into it, and that team ended up getting relegated.”
Let’s see if Walker echoes those sentiments in a year or two’s time. But we’d be amazed if Burnley turn out to be anywhere near as much of a basket case as Redknapp’s QPR.
Glen Johnson
The rare relegated-title-relegated trifecta. Not many can boast a trajectory quite like it.
The full-back joined Chelsea following West Ham’s relegation in 2003. He went on to the Premier League following Jose Mourinho’s arrival, although a lack of gametime denied him a second winner’s medal in 2005-06.
Johnson went on to represent Portsmouth and Liverpool in his peak years before eventually winding down his career at Stoke City, whose decade-long stint in the Premier League came to an end in his final season at the Bet365 Stadium.
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John O’Shea
Sunderland being back in the big time has us all nostalgic for the days in which they’d routinely sign Manchester United’s cast-offs; players that’d long outgrown their usefulness to Sir Alex Ferguson.
On their return, signing a number of highly-rated youngsters from the continent, the landscape has changed quite dramatically. Both clubs are very different entities nowadays.
O’Shea might’ve been deemed surplus to requirements at Old Trafford but he remained a decent, experienced Premier League utility man. As cast-offs go, he was probably as good as it got.
The five-time Premier League winner made over 250 appearances for the Black Cats and was club captain by the time their top-flight status finally came to an end in miserable style, rock bottom under David Moyes, in 2017.
Carrington graduates Paddy McNair and Donald Love, as well as loanee Adnan Januzaj, were also part of that infamous Sunderland squad. Darron Gibson didn’t join until later, while Wes Brown left just before.
Park Ji-sung
Dudes can literally just sit around and name old sports players members of QPR’s 2012-13 squad and just have the best time.
Park didn’t actually overlap with the aforementioned Ferdinand at Loftus Road. A fan favourite and four-time Premier League winner at Old Trafford, Park joined QPR after they stayed up by the skin of their teeth in 2011-12.
His old team-mate followed two years later, after they’d come back up from the Championship.
The South Korea international shared a dressing room with the likes of Julio Cesar, Christopher Samba, Tal Ben Haim, Jose Bosingwa, Adel Taarabt, Andros Townsend and Loic Remy. Unsurprisingly, that Expendables-vibe mish-mash never really gelled and they finished bottom of the pile.
Rather than play in the Championship, Park saw out his career with an underwhelming loan away to PSV.
Fabio
The Brazilian full-back, twin of the considerably more successful Rafael, was also part of that ludicrous QPR hodgepodge squad in 2012-13.
Fabio never really nailed down a starting place under Ferguson and was loaned out that year.
He later moved to Cardiff City and Middlesbrough, whom he also suffered Premier League relegations with.
Joleon Lescott
After the high watermark of a starring role in Manchester City’s first Premier League title triumph in 2011-12, subsequent years wouldn’t be quite so joyous for the former England defender.
Lescott spent one respectable midtable season at West Brom before things went seriously wrong at Aston Villa. Unfairly or not, he’s remembered among Villa fans as one of the poster boys of their dreadful 2015-16 relegation campaign. Describing the drop as having “weight off the shoulders” lifted did not go down well, to put it mildly.
He was also part of the Sunderland squad that went down a couple of years later, but he only mustered a couple of matches under Moyes that season before hanging up his boots for good.
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