The north-east is going south. As two London clubs battle it out to be champions of England – and another four rub their hands in anticipation of next season's Premier League windfall – all three of the top flight's north-east clubs await or fear the drop. A historical hotbed of football, home to Clough, Paisley, Gascoigne and Shearer, the region has been left to wither, forgotten by a nation obsessed with its teeming, gleaming capital.No part of the country – as cliché would have it – has a greater passion for football than the north-east. And in no part of the country will fans be more aware of what 'passion' really means: that the word's Latin origins do not refer to enjoyment and romance, but suffering and pain.Most obvious, of course, is Sunderland, anchored forlornly to the foot of the table and waiting to be put out of their misery, half a decade of top-down neglect having finally come home to roost. 30 miles down the coast and one place up the league table are Middlesbrough, whose first top-flight campaign for eight years also looks set to end in relegation. And two places above that, on the fringes of the region, is Hull City, a yo-yo club of recent years who seemed set for the drop before Christmas, but whose inspired appointment of Marco Silva could yet keep them up. Should he fail, all three of this year's relegated clubs will come from the same small corner of the country.READ MORE: Has Football Developed an Unhealthy Obsession With Grief?Up in Newcastle, the region's biggest club is ostensibly on the rise, sitting pretty in the Championship promotion spots and reinvigorated by the presence of Rafa Benitez in the dugout. But zoom out and the trajectory is far less rosy: two relegations in a decade for a club that, 20 years ago, were fighting for the right to be called the best in the country.That was the same time that Juninho began his fling with Middlesbrough – one of English football's great recent tales – lighting up the Riverside along with Fabrizio Ravanelli and Emerson. Two years later, Kevin Phillips was firing Sunderland to the first of successive seventh-place finishes, his 31 league goals making him not just the top scorer in England – edging ahead of Newcastle's Alan Shearer – but the whole of Europe.Read more on VICE Sports.
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