Right, settle down. We've spent a fortnight on this server toasting the trophy-lifters — the promotions, the title-winners, the lad who renamed his club a day spa. But every champagne cork that pops somewhere has a manager somewhere else staring at a relegation table with his head in his hands. And as Season 3's domestic leagues locked in over the final round on June 24, the Soccerverse Discord didn't need party poppers. It needed a crash cart.

If you love football, Serie A is the place to tune in today for the relegation battle, if you are a manager in that race get your defibrillator ready

He wasn't wrong.

The trapdoor swings open

Serie A delivered the white-knuckle finish, and the bottom three went down in a heap: La Spezia rock bottom on 27 points, with Empoli and Parma both stranded on 39. Empoli's run-in was the stuff of nightmares — six straight defeats, an LLLLLL form line, to slide clean through the floor. Which handed artanis4218 the gag of the week:

Empoli goes down Pisa goes up in serie A. Next season Pisa goes down and Empoli goes up 🤣🤣🤣

Over in the English top flight, London Red had strolled to the title so early — 76 points, seven clear, just 13 conceded all season — that cosmicfrozenorbit summed up the mood of everyone else:

Even the Premier League has only one thing to look forward to - the relegation battle!

And what a grim scrap at the bottom it was: Luton propped up the division on 14 points from three wins and thirty defeats, shipping 72 goals, with Burnley and Derby tumbling through the trapdoor beside them. leedsarewe had spent the week baffled that "Leeds club rating is 68, Burnley's club rating is 68" — well, Burnley duly went down anyway.

Spain and France were no kinder to the strugglers. Las Palmas finished dead last in La Liga with a barely-believable 17 points and 88 goals conceded; Granada and Valladolid went with them. In France, Grenoble shipped a horrifying 90 goals on the way to 21 points and last place.

The last-day dagger

If relegation is a slow death, missing the title on the final day is a knife between the ribs. Nobody felt it harder than the French chasers. Paris (Janca) lifted the crown on 76 points — but Marseille and Nice both finished on 74, and Nice had led the league for most of the season before a single final-day defeat, their only blip in a five-win run, dropped them to third. Gevenito had called the chaos days earlier:

Crazy day for PSG, Marseille and Nice today. French Ligue title open for any of the 3 teams that makes no tactical mistake

The kicker? Gevenito had already wrapped up La Liga in a canter with Madrid White — 85 points, just three defeats all year. And still it wasn't enough to scratch the itch:

Losing French league on the last day will be more disappointing for me than la liga.....I want to taste that French title 😋

He wasn't the only one in Spain nursing a sore one. TeteBarriero's Madrid Red led the La Liga chase before fading with back-to-back losses to finish runners-up behind Gevenito, and the gallows humour wrote itself:

It seems in Atletico we are specialists to lost Cups in finales and Leagues in last matches

Already dreading Season 4

Some weren't even waiting for the new campaign to start panicking. Herzog took one look at next season's projected ratings and despaired:

Next season, Rijeka – or rather, the team – has a rating that suggests they will be relegated. It is paradox.

…before summing up the manager's eternal lot in four words and an emoji: "CL and Relegation Fight 🙃".

Survival tastes sweet

For every heartbreak there was a reprieve, and they were savoured. xlonefoxx kept newly-promoted Sassuolo (and Cancún) up for another year in the top flight — even if the season taught him a hard lesson:

Life after promotion is hard lol

Down in the Portuguese chat, mabronca was still catching his breath after escaping the drop on the very final round. And even at the foot of the entire pyramid the drama went the distance: nickmartin0235's Kings Lynn pipped Cipi to the Division 6 title on the last day — and earned the classiest runner-up message you'll read all year:

Nice season mate and at the end, in this case, the important thing is that we both are promoting. You deserve it to win, you leaded the group almost all the season, I just had a moment of glory, to take a picture leading 😄

That's the spirit that holds this place together. As for your correspondent's beloved Reds? Liverpool could only manage fourth in the English top flight — so I'll be doing my mourning quietly, thanks. There's always next season, which is exactly what username_hamburgler raised a glass to as the dust settled:

Congrats to the winners, the losers, the ones who got promoted and the ones who fought all season. Without each and every one of you. This all wouldn't be possible. 🥂 to season 3 and 🚀 to season 4!!

Defibrillators away, lads. We go again on July 4th.