EPL Players and Coaches Who Should Be Relegated Instead of Their Teams

Sometimes players can give everything they have and their team still fails to the results needed to save them from the drop. Football is quintessentially a team sport, and the slightest failure by one player can condemn their side to defeat.

However, there are also players who coast on the backs of inflated wages and give nothing to their teams in the way of contribution or effort. They make bad decisions at bad times, then blame everyone but themselves. This applies to the managers, too.

Below are three men on losing sides, but their performances have meant that all three totally deserve to be.

Ryan Shotton, Stoke City

In many ways, it’s not Shotton’s fault. A local player breaking into the first team is something to celebrate, but manager Tony Pulis has decided that Shotton’s correct position is anywhere but the one he is most familiar with. This has boiled over and the fans are now intensely dissatisfied with Pulis, to the extent that The Sun are reporting that this weekend's game with Norwich could be his final 90 minutes as Potters boss.

However, even taking all this into account, on the rare occasion that Shotton plays at centre-half, he doesn’t show enough to justify his place on the team at all. In the home defeat to Aston Villa on April 6, Shotton gave the ball away so much that a viewer would be excused for thinking he was taking bribes to fix the match.

Stoke’s position in the league is almost secure, but the presence of players like Shotton, Ian Harte and Dean Whitehead in the first team betray the fact that the club just doesn't have the quality to make any waves in the Premier League.

Adel Taarabt, QPR

Taarabt has a lot of talent, but it’s displayed so infrequently that you almost forget he’s there. Like many players on the QPR team, he doesn’t seem to care enough about the club to give his all in an attempt to avoid relegation—especially as their fate now seems sealed.

He comes across as a player who thinks the ball should be at his feet at all times, and if it isn’t then he’s not going to give anything to the team. Taarabt's ducking of the free-kick that gifted Wigan a 1-1 draw might have been instinctual, but his previous indiscretions ensured it was looked upon as another example of his lack of commitment.

Phil Neville summed it up nicely, via Twitter:

"

Stand up straight-when the taker plants his standing leg jump 6 inches facing the ball thats why its called a wall!

— phil neville18 (@fizzer18) April 7, 2013"

"

If ur in the wall im afraid you arent allowed to duck/turn ur back u just got to take one for the team! !

— phil neville18 (@fizzer18) April 7, 2013"

QPR took on a lot of players, paying them large sums of money in the process. They absolutely had to stay up to justify this expense. Unfortunately, it hasn’t paid off. None of the players brought in—with the possible exception of Loic Remy—have impacted the team enough to turn their fortunes around, or looked at the club like anything more than a payday.

Harry Redknapp

The original intention wasn’t to include Harry Redknapp on this list, as he was faced with a mammoth task upon taking the manager’s job at QPR. However, he has failed to accumulate a win percentage of more than 19 percent, which is barely an improvement over the records of Mark Hughes or Neil Warnock.

Add to this the madness of Redknapp’s January transfer window when he decided to pay Christopher Samba £100,000 a week—as part of a £12.5 million deal—and it’s easy to see why Redknapp makes the list.

The Daily Express reported that Samba is now ready to make a move back to Anzhi, the club he left just three months ago. This is the problem that QPR now have; many players are on large contracts and aren’t really worth the money they’re getting. They won’t want to play championship football next year, but QPR will likely find it difficult to offload them.

Redknapp himself summed up both his players’ and his own failure when he lost his calm in the post-match interview, following defeat against Everton, via ESPN:

"

You say [they are] talented players but are they that talented?' I don't know really. You have some experienced players but what you need is a good group of characters, a good group of people together and you have not got any problems when you have that.

They won't go. How are you going to get rid of them? That's your biggest problem. They all have contracts. I wish you were right, and you could say [the players would leave] but it ain't going to happen here.

How are they going to go? Who is going to pay them what they are earning here? It is going to be very hard to shift them. It is not a case of players wanting to leave suddenly. I hear that all the time that if they get relegated they want to go because they don't want to play in the Championship, but if they f*****g played better, then they would not be in the Championship so that's a load of cobblers.

"

Considering he’s talking about many of his own signings here, it’s definitely time to question his management.