Eight teams are still battling to avoid relegation with five matches remaining in the 2024 Chinese Super League season.
In recent years, the drop to China League One has been a death sentence for many teams, with financial difficulties and disinterested ownerships opting to dissolve teams rather than continue taking on the burden of running a club outside of the spotlight.
For the 2024 season, the relegation battle has been closer fought than even the battle for the title, with enough matches remaining to potentially see a few more surprises before the end.
Nantong Zhiyun have been cemented at the bottom of the table for a few months now and their attempts to drag themselves off the bottom don’t look likely to succeed, with eight points separating them from second-bottom Meizhou Hakka at the time of writing.
Discounting Nantong, there are still seven teams in the league that look likely to continue the fight to avoid the drop and could still mathematically suffer relegation should results not go their way over the final five matchdays.
Four points is the difference between Meizhou in 15th and Cangzhou Mighty Lions, who occupy 9th place in the league courtesy of a superior aggregate score over Changchun Yatai, who are tied on points with them in 10th place.
Qingdao Hainiu, Qingdao West Coast and Wuhan Three Towns are sandwiched between 9th and 15th place and are three, two and one point above Meizhou respectively.
The fight is reminiscent of the 2018 Chinese Super League season, which went down to the final day to determine who would join Guizhou Hengfeng in the second tier.
Three teams finished on the same number of points (32) on the final day, with Changchun Yatai suffering the drop due to their head-to-head results against Tianjin TEDA and Chongqing Dangdai Lifan.
Two points separated those three teams from Henan in 12th place and three separated them from Guangzhou R&F and Tianjin Quanjian in 10th and 9th respectively.
Such a close-fought battle is too hard to predict at this stage, with some crucial fixtures coming up for all seven teams sitting above Nantong.
Five matches will make or break seasons over the coming weeks and the battle to avoid relegation will be one of the most exciting storylines remaining in the 2024 season, with the final standings potentially looking completely different to how they are today.