Premier League relegation: Leeds & Leicester go down; Everton survive
Leeds' three-year stay in the Premier League is over, while 2016 title winners Leicester were also relegated on the final day.
Sunday's relegation results
Everton 1-0 Bournemouth
Abdoulaye Doucoure scored the most important goal of his career and possibly Everton’s history to save the side from relegation with a 1-0 win over Bournemouth.
His powerful 20-yard strike, a bolt from the blue, was enough to extend the club’s top-flight stay to a 70th successive season but for long periods that proud record appeared in doubt.
But Doucoure’s 10th goal for the club capped a remarkable turnaround in four months for the Mali international who was training on his own in January after a fall-out with former manager Frank Lampard.
Five days after having his contract extended by 12 months – and with his side just over half-an-hour from heading into the Sky Bet Championship – he delivered when it mattered most and in a way the club can never adequately repay him for.
But it still required a clearance from Conor Coady under his own crossbar and a good save deep into 10 minutes of added time from Jordan Pickford to keep them safe after it initially looked like the Cherries’ second-choice goalkeeper Mark Travers would play a key role in sending the Toffees down.
The home side had started the most significant day in their 145-year history two points outside the drop zone but with Leicester winning at home to West Ham they were heading for only their third relegation and first since 1951.
Then, their top-flight exile lasted three years and the nightmare scenario was that there had been little to suggest over the last couple of seasons another absence would have been any shorter.
Everton had been in the last-day, last-chance saloon twice before in 1994 and 1998 but on both of those occasions their fate was not in their own hands.
Leicester 2-1 West Ham
Leicester became just the second former Premier League champions to be relegated despite a 2-1 home victory over West Ham on the final day of the season.
The Foxes, who won the title seven years ago, needed to win and hope that Everton did not get three points in their clash at home to Bournemouth.
And for a large part of the afternoon that looked like playing out as they went ahead through Harvey Barnes and Wes Faes before the crushing news of Abdoulaye Doucoure’s goal for Everton came through.
And with the Toffees hanging on at Goodison Park it condemned Leicester to the drop which represents a huge fall from grace, joining Blackburn as the only teams to lift the Premier League trophy and then be relegated.
That remarkable 5000-1 title came in 2016 but they have enjoyed much more recent success as they won the FA Cup in 2021 under Brendan Rodgers, who also delivered back-to-back fifth-placed finishes.
Rodgers was fired at the start of April in a bid to beat relegation, with former Aston Villa boss Dean Smith parachuted in on an eight-game SOS mission.
But they ultimately fell just short and Smith will surely now depart as the Foxes prepare for life back in the Championship for the first time since 2014.
Leeds 1-4 Tottenham
Leeds’ three-season stay in the Premier League is over after a 4-1 home defeat to Tottenham confirmed their relegation.
Harry Kane and Pedro Porro scored early in either half to put Spurs 2-0 up and, although Jack Harrison reduced the deficit, Kane struck a game-clinching second in what could be his last game for the London club.
Tottenham substitute Lucas Moura rubbed salt into Leeds’ wounds by waltzing through a porous defence in stoppage time to complete their misery.
Leeds went into the final day needing not only victory, but for relegation rivals Everton and Leicester to drop points and, since they both won, the Yorkshire club’s 21st league defeat of the season was immaterial.
The hosts have not kept a clean sheet since February and their hopes of doing so on Sunday went up in smoke in just the second minute.
The ease with which Porro and Son Heung-min combined to carve open the defence typified Leeds’ season, with Kane finding space among headless chickens to hit the first nail into the home side’s coffin.
Leeds fans responded to Kane’s 28th league goal of the season with raucous defiance, ‘We’re going down’ being one of their chants.