Carlisle United, going down in bottom place from League One, will hope to bounce back at the first attempt next season.
But how likely is this?
A look at the recent pattern of sides relegated at the foot of the third tier suggests…it’s possible, and has happened at times, but just as often - in fact, more often - it’s been a case of a team and club having to take some further medicine before better times return.
It highlights the challenge ahead to know that, of the last ten sides to finish bottom of League One in completed (ie non-Covid) seasons, two have made it straight back up.
Another has made the play-offs, and another has finished ninth. A further five have had to settle for bottom-half finishes in League Two. That includes one who’ve made it back-to-back relegations.
And then there’s the current scenario, which sees last season’s League One basement boys on the brink of a second successive drop too.
In other words, nothing is certain when you hit the skids, results-wise, like Carlisle have. Much depends on your circumstances – and, even then, there can be complications...
THE BIG PICTURE
The average position of a bottom-placed League One finisher in the following League Two campaign is, based on the last decade…13th.
Sides in the same relegation predicament as Carlisle have gone on to finish anything from second to 24th when back in the fourth tier.
Here is the range of positions of those teams, since 2013/14: 13th, 6th, 19th, 17th, 24th, 2nd, 9th, 3rd and 13th. And, on the current late-season standings, another 24th.
So it’s certainly not as easy as assuming Carlisle will go straight back up. Although…they could.
BOUNCING BACK
If United need someone to try and emulate when they get their heads around League Two life again, there’s a reassuringly recent case.
It's Bristol Rovers, under that nice, cuddly Joey Barton.
The Pirates plummeted from League One in the 2020/21 campaign, comfortably beneath everyone else: 38 points by the end, ten short of survival, five adrift of the next worst.
Barton had replaced Paul Tisdale in February but had not been able to avert the inevitable. Yet Rovers’ response was effective – even though it took time, and some high drama, to achieve an immediate place back in the third tier.
They did not dominate League Two, far from it, but built some potent form in the second half of the season. Come the last day they were still outsiders to make it up – but a remarkable 7-0 win over Scunthorpe United saw them pip Northampton Town on goal difference to finish third.
The old Carlisle habit for melodrama could come in handy, then, in 2024/25.
One side less favourable when it comes to examples to follow is the other club who’ve bounced straight back despite finishing bottom of League One in the last decade: Bury.
They went down in 24th in 2017/18, some 15 points adrift of the survival line on 36 points.
The following term, they were among League Two’s big hitters, and powered to promotion in second. Yet soon into their return to League One and their serious financial issues, which had grown even as they went up, put paid to the Shakers as an EFL club.
Not, at least, something United should have to worry about under the Piataks.
DEEPER AND DOWN
Pessimists may be tempered a little by the knowledge that, since 2013/14, only one side has suffered consecutive relegations all the way into the National League after finishing bottom of League One.
That tally looks likely to double, though, in the coming days.
Chesterfield have made the most ignominious stab at life back in League Two in the recent past. The Spireites were 13 points adrift in 24th place by the end of 2016/17 with a points haul of 37.
As they crashed back into the basement division, the problems continued. Big signings failed and managerial appointments also backfired and a side that, during the 2017/18 campaign, had benefited from the goals of a certain Kristian Dennis still went down once again, into non-league for the first time in 97 years.
A lesson enough, then, that things can always get worse if your negative momentum is set.
As appears to be the case at Forest Green Rovers, who look destined for a second straight relegation this season, currently five points adrift with two to play.
It is not long that the Nailsworth side were powering into League One as fourth-tier champions in 2021/22. Since then it’s been a haphazard story of failure, managerial churn and a loss of the halo around a club who always prided themselves on doing things differently.
Last season was a serious nosedive, FGR 19 points adrift of safety when finishing bottom on 27 points: a pitiful total that even Carlisle this year have beaten.
And that journey has continued n League Two, despite the late-season efforts of their latest boss, Steve Cotterill. If Colchester United beat Grimsby Town tonight, Forest Green are toast – again.
HOPEFULS
One thing Carlisle fans have seldom said over the years is how much they’d like to resemble Graham Westley’s Stevenage.
Yet if the Cumbrians wish to entertain a play-off push at least next season, the men from Hertfordshire are the recent example.
They came bottom of League One in 2013/14, finishing beneath, among others, Graham Kavanagh’s Carlisle.
Boro, though, made a stronger fist of responding to relegation than the Blues did in 2014/15. While the Cumbrians had to scramble to safety again under Keith Curle, Stevenage were moving back in the right direction.
They finished sixth in League Two, Westley leading them to the play-offs, where they were beaten over two semi-final legs by Southend United.
In 2019/20, Bradford City weren’t a million miles from a play-off place having finished bottom of League One the season before. But they were halted in ninth place when Covid stopped the season. Otherwise...
MIDDLE OF THE ROAD…OR WORSE
For the rest it’s been a case of adjusting to life back in League Two without a great deal of success.
For instance, 2021/22’s worst League One team, Crewe Alexandra, managed to finish no higher than 13th on their return to the basement the following campaign.
The Railwaymen also came last in the third tier in 2015/16…then finished 17th on their first season back in League Two.
Before that, Yeovil Town were bottom of League One in 2014/15, then 19th when back at the bottom level of the Football League, having played in the Championship in 2013/14.
HAVE THE BLUES DONE IT BEFORE?
Not in terms of finishing bottom and bouncing back…although the sample size is small.
In 1934/35, they were the wooden-spooners in Division Three North, surviving through the re-election process then improving to 13th the next campaign.
The next time they finished bottom of the league was in 1974/75, when the First Division dream ended and United struggled to 19th in the second tier in 1975/76.
After that, the 1991/92 campaign saw Carlisle bottom of Division Four and hence the entire league, but there was no relegation that season. The following term they rose to the heady heights of 18th.
Not much precedent, then, for knowing how a bottom-placed Blues side might recover.
At least we know that, generally, they’ve bounced straight back from relegations a number of times in their history when they haven't finished bottom.
There was 1963/64, when they stormed back up from Division Four following the drop.
1996/97 saw the same, Mervyn Day’s side yoyoing back to the third tier.
Under Paul Simpson, then they boomeranged back to the Football League in 2004/05 after previous relegation meant a season in the Conference.
Only once, by contrast, have United gone down and gone down again – 1985/86 and 1986/87’s double relegations taking them from second to fourth tiers.
(Although there was an almighty near miss in terms of another consecutive relegation in 1998/99, that fate spared by the right boot of a certain Jimmy Glass)
Let’s just hope, all in all, that if drama is required at the business end of 2024/25 in League Two, United can be more Barton or even Westley than Glass – if it’s possible to stomach that sort of sentence…
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