Premier League Relegation 2017: Hull, Middlesbrough, Sunderland to Championship

With the end of the 2016-17 Premier League season, Hull City, Middlesbrough and Sunderland have been relegated from the top flight and will drop down into the Championship. 

The relegated sides all lost on the final day, with Boro and Sunderland losing away at Liverpool and Chelsea, 3-0 and 5-1 respectively, while Tottenham Hotspur dismantled Hull 7-1 at the KCOM Stadium.

The trio had been mathematically doomed for some time, with bottom-of-the-table Sunderland the first team to go after losing 1-0 to Bournemouth in April.

A 3-0 defeat for Middlesbrough at Chelsea on May 8 sealed their place in the relegation zone, and Steve Agnew's side ended the season in 19th.

Hull held on the longest thanks to their revival under manager Marco Silva but were consigned to the second tier of English football in the penultimate weekend of the campaign as they went down 4-0 to Crystal Palace at Selhurst Park.

The end of Sunderland's decade-long stay in the Premier League was a long time coming, per FourFourTweet:

Indeed, the typical pattern for the Black Cats in recent years has been to struggle amid a poor start to the season before a late rally for survival, usually after changing their manager midway through the season.

Sunderland were desperately poor from start to finish this year under manager David Moyes, who failed to muster a serious fight from his players, and they ended the campaign with 26 losses to their name, scoring 29 goals and conceding 69.

The Daily Mirror's Simon Bird pulled no punches in his assessment of their situation after their relegation was assured:

However, there is some cause for encouragement for Sunderland fans, per Match of the Day:

Hull perhaps have the greatest source of optimism amid their relegation, provided they can keep hold of Silva.

The Portuguese boss took over from Mike Phelan in January with the team bottom of the table having accrued just 13 points from 20 matches.

While it wasn't enough to save them—and they finished the year with comfortably the worst defensive record having shipped 80 goals—the Tigers collected 21 points from their final 18 matches.

Per Sky Sports Statto, Hull are used to moving up and down between the Premier League and the Championship:

Silva, 39, looks to have a bright future ahead of him in management—Hull will do extremely well to keep hold of him, and their chances of bouncing straight back up will be far greater with him at the helm.

As for Boro, they boasted a far better defence than their relegation counterparts and indeed the remainder of the bottom half—only the top eight and 10th-placed West Bromwich Albion conceded fewer than their 53.

Their problem was scoring goals, and they mustered just 27 all season, the fewest of any side, while they failed to make any significant improvement after replacing Aitor Karanka with Agnew.

BT Sport's Max Bentley believed they deserved to go down:

It was Boro's first season back in the top flight since their relegation in 2009, so it will be desperately disappointing for the club to have gone straight back down, particularly in such uninspiring fashion.

Coming straight back up won't be easy, but if the club handle the situation well, it shouldn't take them another seven years to earn promotion again.