Manchester United’s continued disappointment over many years has some wondering when the big club appeal will finally wear off and they would not be the first English club to lose that title.

While the prospect of United becoming just another midtable club still seems a little unbelievable at this stage, many other clubs in English football history will have thought the same before that very thing happened to them.

Here’s four English clubs that went from the top of the game to somewhere far below it.

Everton

For Everton, the turning point in their history came as a result of actions from their neighbours rather than anything they had done themselves.

Everton were one of the best teams in Europe in the ‘80s, winning the league in 1985 and 1987, the FA Cup in 1984 and the European Cup Winners’ Cup in 1985 but they were denied the opportunity to build on that success following the Heysel Stadium disaster.

After 39 Juventus fans were killed by attacking Liverpool fans, English clubs were banned from European competition for the next five years, denying Everton the chance to follow up their domestic success with more trophies in Europe.

Howard Kendall left after 1987 and the team slowly fell apart, meaning that come the invention of the Premier League in 1992, Everton were a side looking down as much as up.

The club narrowly avoided relegation in the 1993/94 season and while the fortunes of the likes of Manchester United rose sharply, Everton declined to where staying in the league was seen as a success.

David Moyes came in in 2002 and steadied the ship but by that point, the best the Toffees could hope for was the occasional fourth place.

Having won five trophies in three years, Everton have gone 31 years without silverware.

Leeds United

Leeds won the final First Division under Howard Wilkinson and started the Premier League era with a team full of exciting young talents including the likes of Gordon Strachan, Gary Speed and Harry Kewell.

They reached the UEFA Cup semi-final in 2000 and the Champions League semi-final a year later and chairman Peter Ridsdale borrowed against Leeds’ future to try and pay for its present.

Ridsdale and the board borrowed £60m on future gate receipts on the gamble they would become a regular Champions League team. Instead they dropped to the UEFA Cup a year later and in 2003, they finished 15th.

The first sign of final distress came with the £30m sale of Rio Ferdinand to Manchester United after Ridsdale had said the club needed to raise £15m to balance the books. In the 2002/03 season, it was revealed that Leeds were £80m in the red.

A fire sale occurred with many of Leeds’ top stars going for a cut rate and the sale of Jonathan Woodgate, a homegrown fan favourite, was the most obvious sign that the club was in trouble.

Ridsdale admitted as much, saying Leeds were paying for having “lived the dream” but the times would only get worse. Relegation came in 2004, a devastating blow for not only the club’s reputation but its bank balance.

They fell down to League One in 2007, resulting in the club going into administration and Ridsdale had become public enemy number one in Leeds.

Leeds would spend 16 years out of the top flight, finally returning under Marcelo Bielsa, but even now, the club is nowhere near the stature it once had.

Nottingham Forest

Forest’s is an unusual case for they were a big club due to the efforts of two men, Brian Clough and Peter Taylor.

Pre-1975, two FA Cups and a second-place finish was the most Forest had to brag about. They were 13th in the Second Division when Clough arrived but he was not welcomed with open arms.

After his famous 44-day stint at Leeds, four members of the Forest board threatened to resign if Clough was even approached, let alone appointed. Vice-chairman Stuart Dryden persisted though and the club named him manager in January.

That first season, Forest finished 16th but a year later they had risen to eighth. In Clough’s second full season and with Taylor back at Clough’s side, they won promotion after finishing third.

A year later, they pulled off the remarkable feat of winning the First Division in their first season back, also securing the League Cup.

Clough guided Forest to the European Cup in both 1979 and 1980.

It was the greatest moment in the club’s history but time catches up with everyone and by the early ‘90s, Clough had lost some of his magic.

Taylor left in 1982 and Forest failed to reach the same heights. They won domestic cups but never came close to the league title or European success again.

By the start of the Premier League, Forest and Clough were struggling. He announced in April 1993 he would retire with the club facing the threat of relegation and had it been any other manager, Forest would probably have sacked him.

Instead, Clough took them down with a 2-1 loss away at Ipswich confirming their fate.

The post-Clough era was full of plenty of ups and downs. They returned to the Premier League in 1994 only to be relegated again in 1997.

They came back up for a single season before being confined to the Second Division for six seasons. When that run ended, it was because the club went down rather than up. They spent three seasons in League One before a 14-year stint in the Championship.

The club finally returned to the Premier League in 2022 but are a long way off their former European glory.

Aston Villa

Five years after they lifted the European Cup, Villa were playing Second Division football.

It is the speed of their decline that is so remarkable.

Tony Barton, who had guided them to European success in 1982, left in 1984 and the club faced financial questions following a £1.3m rebuild of the North Stand.

That led to the European Cup-winning team departing and not being properly replaced. The club went down in 1987, marking the definitive end of their time being one of England’s biggest clubs.

They did return in the following season under Graham Taylor and spent 25 years in the Premier League before relegation to the Championship in 2016.

The club is now trying to rebuild its status with Unai Emery winning European silverware once again but they are still some way off the prestige they held in the early ‘80s.