Down and out.

This weekend will be one to forget for Saracens fans after it was announced yesterday evening that they will be relegated from the English Premiership at the end of the season for once again failing to stay under the salary cap.

The defending champions will be playing Championship rugby next season and it looks like they’re about to go crashing out of the Champions Cup with Racing 92 currently leading 24-17 at Allianz Park and the home side down to 14 men with Will Skelton just sent off.

To make matters even worse Billy Vunipola looks set to be sidelined for a number of weeks after he picked up a suspected broken arm.

The England number eight broke his arms on three different occasions back in 2018 – his left one once and his right one twice.

The club released a statement this morning accepting their relegation from the Premiership and apologising for their actions.

“The board of Saracens wished to unreservedly apologise for the mistakes made in relation to the salary cap regulations,” a statement read.

“Our goal is to rebuild confidence and trust. The first step was to appoint a new independent chairman to lead on governance reform ensuring errors of the past are not replicated in the future. Furthermore, following open and frank discussions with PRL, we have accepted the unprecedented measure of automatic relegation from the Premiership at the end of the 2019-2020 season.

“We understand this decision will be difficult for the Saracens family to accept. The Board must embody the values of the club, learn from its mistakes so the Club can come back stronger. It is in the wider interests of the Premiership and English rugby to take this decisive step, to ensure everybody is able once again to focus on the game of rugby, which we all love.

“We hope that we can now start to move forward, begin to restore confidence and over time, rebuild trust with PRL, its stakeholders and the wider rugby community.”