Sunderland have been relegated for the second successive season following defeat to Burton Albion at the Stadium of Light on Saturday.
Paddy McNair had given the Black Cats an early lead, only for ex-Sunderland striker, Darren Bent, and then Liam Boyce late on, to secure a win for the visitors.
That result ultimately sealed Sunderland’s fate, with the Tyne and Wear side dropping down to League One.
After a decade in the top-flight, the Black Cats were relegated to the Championship last year, and after another disappointing campaign, they find themselves in League One ahead of next season.
Indeed, they are just the third side to suffer consecutive relegations from the top-flight to League One in the Premier League era, following Swindon and, most recently, Wolves in 2012/13.
Boss Chris Coleman, who took over in November, but failed to halt the club’s decline, said:
We didn’t play great, it was the first game in the last six weeks where we weren’t very good when we were previously very good.
Against Norwich, Leeds, Reading and now Burton, we’ve been leading deep into the game and we don’t deal with it the way we should. We should be eight points better off.
We haven’t been good enough, I won’t go into the situation with the ruled out goal, it was a mess, bit like ourselves across the season.
Quite a sorry state of affairs for such big club with such a big fan base and quite a descent for ex-Wales boss Coleman, from the semi-finals of Euro 2016 to the third-tier of English football.
The climb back to the Premier League may well be a very long one for a club plagued by mismanagement for far too long.