As Bad As Things Got: Norwich City, 8th August 2009

Relegation to the third tier for the first time in fifty years was bad enough, but the bottoming out of Norwich's brief decline came on the first day of the following season.

Norwich City have never been much a club for extremes. This is a club of relatively modest ambition which has spent the last sixty years bobbing between the top two divisions, never quite able to entrench themselves as a top flight club, but at the same time feeling a little too big for the second tier. As such, the highs have seldom been too high, and the lows have never been too low.

If there was a golden period, this came from the mid 1980s to the mid 1990s. Their second major trophy—following a League Cup win in 1962—came with the 1985 League Cup, but this was accompanied by relegation from the First Division. But they were promoted back the following season as champions and this time they stayed, right the way into the first season of the Premier League, when they finished in third place behind Manchester United and Aston Villa.

This qualified them for the 1993/94 UEFA Cup, where they beat Vitesse Arnhem over two legs and then, famously, Bayern Munich (including a win in the Olympic Stadium) before losing to Internazionale. It remains their only season of European football. Manager Mike Walker quit the club in January 1994 for Everton and Norwich were relegated from the Premier League the following year. They returned for a solitary season a decade later, but otherwise became a solid, mid-table second-tier club.