From Werewolves to "Where Are Wolves?" - The Unusual Relegation Trend That No One Has Spotted

To Howl or Not to Howl – That is the Question

If you’re an English football fan, you would have had to have lived under multiple rocks in order to avoid the well-publicised fact that Wolves have been relegated from the Premier League after an eight-year stay in the top flight.

It had been coming from matchday one, quite literally – after their 4-0 opening-day defeat to Manchester City, the men in orange never left the relegation zone.

However, there is a connection throughout some of Europe’s best-known leagues that I’m sure 90% of you won’t have noticed yet. In both the German and Austrian Bundesliga’s, fellow canine clubs are at risk, with Wolfsberg lying a point adrift of safety in Germany, while on the other side of the Alps, Wolfsberger AC sits rock bottom of the relegation group.

Wolf gang going down pic.twitter.com/XtrECf0qMR

— Troll Football (@TrollFootball) April 28, 2026

All Bark No Bite

All three sides are reputable sporting outfits with rich history. As little as six years ago, Wolves were battling it out with some of Europe’s best in the Europa League as they reached the quarter final under Nuno Espirito Santo, while as recently as 2009, Wolfsburg lifted the double of the Bundesliga and DFB Pokal in an era before Bayern Munich’s repetitive dominance.

Even Wolfsberger was competing in the Conference League qualifying rounds despite the significantly punier reputation and, subsequently, funding of the Austrian top flight.

To put it bluntly, all three sides have been good enough to test the best of the very best in their very recent history, so how is it that now they are barely clinging onto their status as a top-flight team and, in Wolves' case, already given it up?

Well, the simple answer is really as straightforward as you get: time. It may be imperceptible to most, but as time passes, squads can gradually lose quality as club goals chop and change, while different managers and other influences can slowly but surely have a negative effect on the on-field results.

Wolves, fresh faces in the Premier League back in 2018, had nothing to fear and they played like it, with their heavily Portuguese contingent able to give the likes of Liverpool, Man City and Chelsea a run for their money. However, as players have phased in and out, and a number of new faces have come and gone in the dugout, the club lost some of that fearlessness, which instead was replaced with caution.

Caution in the transfer window, caution on the pitch, caution that had taken seed simply because the changes that took place throughout a team still relatively new to the Premier League sowed doubt in the minds of some of the club's key names.

🏆🗓 On this day in 2018, Wolves lifted the Championship trophy.

⚽️ 46 games
✅ 30 wins
🤝 9 draws
❌ 7 losses

🙌🏼 What a season!#WWFC | #Wolves pic.twitter.com/9kfwjGAIX9

— Talking Wolves (@TalkingWolves) April 28, 2026

Going from the likes of Raul Jimenez to Tolu Arokodare and the late Diogo Jota, rest in peace, to Jean-Ricner Bellegarde are quite clearly downgrades, but the changes happened over such a long period of time that they went virtually unnoticed until it was too late. As I say, imperceptible.

Wolfsberger’s current scenario is marginally more understandable – in a league where the winners earn less than €5 million for lifting the title, variation season upon season is inevitable, with the areas those funds are invested into typically making or breaking the following campaign.

Having never won the Austrian top flight, Wolfsberger have even less than that to play with and, subsequently, have rarely made a dent amongst Austria’s elite, with their best result a pair of third placed finishes in 2019 and 2020.

They are also a club that was only founded 13 years ago – very few sides find themselves competing at the top of their national game after such a short period of time, and even fewer can boast of being there ever since their inception, so in truth, Wolfsberger have been staving off the inevitable for virtually their entire history. Sitting bottom of the Austrian Bundesliga relegation group, they only have three games in which to change their fate.

Then we have Wolfburg, and honestly, their downfall is the most curious and mysterious of the lot. Die Wölfe have been in the Bundesliga for 29 consecutive seasons – only Borussia Dortmund, Bayer Leverkusen and Bayern Munich can boast longer stays in the top flight – so how have they fallen to within games of relegation?

Well, they simply haven’t been the same since suffering heartbreaking elimination from the Champions League quarter-finals against Real Madrid back in 2016. Leading 2-0 after the first leg, they succumbed to a 3-0 defeat at the Bernabeu in the return game, and with the likes of Kevin De Bruyne, Ivan Perisic, Julian Draxler, Andre Schurrle and Bas Dost in the space of just two transfer windows, they never truly recovered from such a loss of quality.

Ever since, they have been something of a no-man’s-land club, and with the exception of Olivier Glasner’s stint at the club between 2019 and 2021, when it seemed he had taken them back to the forefront of the European scene, Wolfsburg have been, dare I say it, less than average, with the threat of the club's first ever relegation becoming increasingly more inevitable.

De club die in 2009 nog kampioen van Duitsland werd, stevent af op de eerste degradatie in de clubhistorie 📉https://t.co/jOaCTEc8aR

— ESPN NL (@ESPNnl) April 25, 2026

That relegation battle has officially manifested itself this season, as with three games remaining, Wolfsburg sit a full six points off guaranteed safety and a point away from the play-off spot, which would give them a second chance to secure safety against a promotion hopeful from the second tier.

It seems that for a range of reasons, the wolves of Europe are in retrograde this season, and if the worst-case scenario does indeed unfold for all three sides, there is the distinct possibility of a season without any of the European continent's favourite canine clubs battling it out for supremacy on their respective top tiers.