1) Des Walker

Few players emerged from the wreckage of England's Euro 92 campaign with any credit, but Des Walker strode out of it with trademark elegance. While all around him were losing their heads and reputations, the Nottingham Forest centre-back remained unflappable and confirmed the impression that here was the most gifted English defender of his generation. He was only 26 and would surely be a linchpin for years to come. Then he went to Italy, where great defenders tended to get even better, and inexplicably lost it. At Sampdoria Sven Goran-Eriksson tended to play him at left-back but that cannot explain why his performances for his country dipped deeply, and so quickly.

His England downfall began in a World Cup qualifier at Wembley in April 1993, when Marc Overmars left him lumbering like a lead-footed oaf and all Walker could muster by way of response was a clumsy tackle that gave Holland a penalty. That was embarrassing for a player for whom pace had always been a key characteristic, but Overmars was exceptionally fast too so no one was writing Walker off just yet.

He looked alarmingly out of his depth in the next match against Poland, however, floundering in a comically confused way for Dariusz Adamczuk's goal. Similar ineptitude followed against Norway and though he did win a couple more caps in worthless matches, his international career was effectively over. Walker made his last appearance for England at the age of 27, when centre-backs are usually coming into their prime. Though he continued to play for Sheffield Wednesday, Terry Venables emphasised just how far Walker had fallen by ignoring him while deploying centre-backs such as Neil Ruddock, John Scales, Colin Cooper, David Unsworth. And Steve Howey. PD

Tom Finney deserved better luck. English football's most precocious talent in the immediate post-war period, he'd been offered a bank-busting five-figure deal to join Palermo in 1952, only for the miserable jealous members of the Preston board to flatly refuse the transfer. A gentleman to his socks, Finney didn't sulk over his lost fortune, instead continuing to give the club stellar service. But karma never paid him back.

In 1953, the day before Stanley Matthews finally got his hands on an FA Cup winner's medal, Arsenal scraped a 3-2 win against Burnley on the last day of the league season, pipping Preston to the title on goal average by 0.99 of a goal. The year after, the Lilywhites lost the lead in the FA Cup final, going down 3-2 to West Bromwich Albion. And a further four years on, Preston found themselves runners-up in the league again, this time behind Wolves. Finney was eventually forced to retire through injury at the end of the 1959-60 season, no medal to show for his efforts, no coffers filled with lire. He had made Preston one of the must-watch teams of the 1950s, though.

And they crumbled without him. Only four teams in the First Division conceded fewer goals in 1960-61 – their keeper Fred Else was unquestionably the player of the season – but without Finney the attack was blunt, and they could only manage to score 42 themselves. Newcastle, who went down with Preston in last place, scored nearly twice as many. The previous season had ended in celebratory fashion, with Finney being waved off into the sunset. Now a poor Manchester United side came to Deepdale and rattled in four goals, the defence finally buckling under a season's pressure, the defeat condemning Preston to the Second Division. They'd previously been relegated five times in their history, but each time managed to bounce back, usually pretty quickly. But not this time: this grand club, the first-ever champions of England, have never played top-flight football since. Karmic retribution for the hopes and dreams cruelly denied the legendary Finney? You decide. SM

3) Manchester City

Champions of the big leagues don't often get relegated simply through gross ineptitude. The 1978-79 scudetto winners Milan went down to Serie B in 1980, but only because they were sent there for their part in the totonero betting scandal. Juventus followed them in 2006, but again it had nothing to do with on-pitch woe; calciopoli cost them, and in any case they had their title revoked, so they weren't even champions any more. Marseille went one better in 1993-94 – the only domestic and European champions to lose their top-flight status the season after – but again that was down to financial shenanigans, and again Marseille had seen their 1993 domestic pot revoked. Bad Bernard Tapie, in your box Bernard Tapie.

Falls from grace all, for sure, but nobody was kicking the ball up into their own face in the name of sport, so we're not counting them. Only two of the big boys meet our on-pitch criteria. One is Nuremburg, Bundesliga champions of 1968 and at one time the most successful club in Germany, who went down the season after, infamously eccentric coach Max Merkel deciding his title-winning team was too old and getting shot of nearly all of them in favour of kids. The few remaining experienced players, meanwhile, couldn't be doing with Merkel's intensive training methods, so stopped bothering. The Club took the best part of a decade to bounce back, and even then it was only for a while before lower-division ignominy awaited.

But Nuremburg can't hold a candle to the one, the only, Manchester City. Or Typical Manchester City, to give them their full name. In 1936-37, the striker Peter Doherty scored 30 goals, Eric Brook 20, Alec Herd 17 and Fred Tilson 15 as City scored 107 times on the way to their first-ever title. Cue English football's one and only full and total Meltdown of the Champions: the next year, they scored more goals than anyone else in the division, 77, but still went down with a positive goal difference. They had only failed to score in four league games, but two of those matches came in their final three fixtures (which, it hardly needs to be said, came between a 6-2 win). "The use of the word 'staggering' may be justified from different angles," reported the Observer. That's our City! SM

Maybe all good things do have to come to an end. But that's no reason to press the self-destruct button. The fall of 'Le Grand Reims' was as stupid as it was swift. In nine seasons between 1953 and 1962 Reims won the French title five times and reached two European Cup finals, all while playing with a panache that spawned the now familiar term 'champagne football'.

Not only a masterful coach, Albert Batteux, who had become manager at just 30-years-old, proved a shrewd recruiter, most obviously when he signed Just Fontaine after Raymond Kopa was lured to Real Madrid (where he spent three triumphant years before rejoining Reims and contributing to yet more success).

During his dominant reign Batteux effectively built three teams, and on the side guided France to third-place at the 1958 World Cup with a squad featuring several of his Reims stars. But the manager's superiors weren't worthy of him, and financial foolishness meant their investment in players began to dry up and in 1963, amid mealy-mouthed excuses, they declined to renew Batteux's contract after Reims had finished runners-up in the league.

Compounding that folly was the French Football Federation's ridiculous decision to ban Kopa for six months over an argument with the national team manager, Georges Verriest, (which had started when Verriest questioned Kopa's commitment to the team after he pulled out of a match due to his son's illness). In 1964 Reims were relegated. They're now in the third tier of French football. Batteux went on to lead Saint-Etienne to four straight titles between 1967 and 70, plus two Cups. PD

Transition is always tricky. But for a euphoric, fleeting moment in 1994 the Tannadice faithful were convinced they had found an exciting new heir to Jim McLean. In almost 22 years at the helm McLean had steered the club to unprecedented glories and whoever came after him was always going to have to endure incessant talk of a poisoned chalice, especially as McLean had not really departed, merely moved upstairs to look ominously over the shoulder of the new man. But from the moment he arrived Ivan Golac exuded an insouciance that quickly proved infectious.

With flowing longish hair and the decidedly unMcLean-esque disposition of a genial hippy (except on one celebrated occasion), the Scottish league's first overseas manager charmed fans and won over the players with a novel training regime that included sporadic trips to a local cafe for motivational egg-rolls, and rambles in a nearby park "to look at the trees and smell the flowers". Results in the league were iffy but that was ignored amid a heroic march to the 1994 Scottish Cup final, where the opponents were all-conquering Rangers, in the middle of their nine-in-a-row run.

Craig Brewster's winning goal may have been more than slightly shambolic, but it enabled United to finally get their hands on the one trophy that McLean had never won. "There's no doubt at all that the manager can hopefully strengthen the team and we can definitely expect greater things from Dundee United," gushed McLean in a post-match interview. Less than a year later 'Ivan the Terriffic' was sacked and United were relegated. PD

Few people expected Alf Ramsey's championship side of 1961-62 to retain their title – they had, after all, been handed the prize on a plate by a more talented Burnley side who only won twice in their last 13 games – but nobody expected it to turn so sour, so quickly.

The hapless tone of Ipswich's 1962-63 campaign was set on a pre-season tour to Hamburg, when the team was accidentally booked not into a hotel but a brothel near the Reeperbahn. At one end of the sassy Strasse, the Beatles were performing to audiences of gangsters and prostitutes while whacked out on ridiculously strong speed; down the other, an incandescent Ramsey was adding to the seedy atmosphere by parping hot jets of sultry steam from his lugs.

Alf's mood would barely lift all season. The tactical masterplan which had landed Ipswich their title – withdrawing the wingers to create space for strikers behind confused advancing full backs – was quickly negated by opposing managers. Bill Nicholson of FA Cup winners Spurs showed the way in the Charity Shield, simply by putting his midfielders on the wingers; Spurs won 5-1. Ipswich were in the relegation places come November, having won two of 16 games, by which time Ramsey had accepted the England job. Ramsey stayed on in an advisory capacity for the rest of the season – which he whiled away by kicking his successor Jackie Milburn around the training ground like an old sock. (The two had come to blows in a Spurs-Newcastle match during the early 1950s).

The reigning champions ended the season safe in 17th, thanks to a late flourish of wins, but Milburn's authority had been undermined from the off, and he never really recovered, his abject team ending the following season in last spot. Ipswich certainly hadn't outstayed their welcome in the top flight: having won their title as a newly promoted side, it had taken them a mere two years to be dispatched back to the lower reaches. SM