In the last 5 years they've come 5th, 2nd, 5th, 7th and 4th in Spain's top division and have great players like Rossi and Senna. What an awful season it must have been, they've just been relegated. Also, fantastic for Real Madrid reaching 100 points in a 38 game season
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Which means they get to play their B team in the Segunda next season. That's interesting!
Was always coming despite their unbelievable recent success, they are a tiny club in a town with barely 50,000 inhabitants and struggle to fill their 25k stadium aside from the big games against Real, Barca, Valencia and the larger European clubs. Before the season, they lost Cazorla, Capdevilla, Senna is over the hill at 35, Rossi has had two very serious injuries and missed nearly the entire season, Nilmar has spent most of the season injured as well and when he has played hasn't ever quite been the Forlan replacement as intended. Despite their success, their relatively low profile in the context of a completely open race for tv money in Spain (no quotas like here) means that they've never managed to progress as much as they might have done over here for example.
Big shame in my opinion, one of the 'little guys' showing that they could do more than ruffle a few feathers and they played great football while they were there, with a decent crop of Spanish internationals as well such as Capdevilla, Marchena, Cazorla, Senna, Diego Lopez.
Pompey - from my understanding it was just a lot of things catching up with them, losing Pelligrini to Real in 09 started the decline (albeit at a delay), they then sold their best assets for inadequate replacements, the money certainly wasn't put back into the team probably due to the economic malaise in Spain and in the region in particular (I know they were backed by local business which was the ceramic tile trade) and the tiny slice of tv merchandise and gate receipt money meant that they were cast into the shade by the other 2nd tier clubs like Valencia, Bilbao, Atletico, Sevilla...
Sounds like they were punching above their weight for a long time.
Then their fans demanded that they pushed on to the next level.
We all know what happens next ....!!