A proud soccer city with two of the founding members of the Mexican league, Guadalajara´s soccer clubs are having a rough time so far this year.

Between them, they have netted a grand total of four goals in nine games and have won a total of two points out of a possible 27.

The stats don´t lie: these really are dire times for Mexico´s second city.

Estudiantes Tecos and Atlas are locked in a battle for relegation and one is almost certain to go down. Each has only one point from their first three games.

At the time of writing this article, EstudiantesTecos have no coach and a deal to bring in new investors had collapsed. A sign on the club shop simply reads: liquidación. It couldn´t be more apt.

Estudiantes Tecos, the soccer wing of the privately-run Universidad Autonoma de Guadalajara, was involved in an on-off saga over the last couple of months about the team being bought and moved to Acapulco, but that was shot-down and the season began under a cloud of uncertainty and a lack of direction.

The new investors were set to bring in Argentine coach Omar Asad, but the owners preferred Sergio Bueno, leading to a stalemate and the baton being passed from one in-house trainer to the next for first team training sessions at the start of the season.

The captain of the club, Juan Carlos Leaño, is also the son of the owner. El Patrón, as he is known, is believed to have significant sway and he came out this week and said he would prefer Bueno to take over. We shall see.

Whoever does take over will become the fifth person to coach the first team in the last six months. Even the players are coming out in the local press saying the situation is a mess.

Considering the disarray, Tecos would be a certainty for relegation, were it not for neighbors Atlas.

Los Zorros may have arguably the best youth setup in the country, but that doesn´t help the first team if the cream of the crop are sold off every year.

The best teams in Mexico almost always have a couple of Atlas´ youth system graduates: Cesar Ibañez/Oswaldo Sanchez/Juan Pablo Rodriguez (Santos), Hugo Ayala/Jorge Torres Nilo/Edgar Pacheco (Tigres), Darvin Chavez (Monterrey), Gerardo Flores/Jesus Corona (Cruz Azul), Juan Carlos Molina/ Juan Carlos Valenzuela (América).

Atlas certainly wouldn´t be fighting relegation if it was fielding that team every week, but the youth success and plush facilities at the team´s Colomos training ground belie the financial reality of the club.

Early last year, the players trained with their shirts inside out as a sign of protest at the backlog of wages that were owed to them. The situation is a running joke among Tapatios (people from Guadalajara).

In the offseason, the club sold part of the rights of a handful of the top young players to club directors – of which there are 122 – in return for a percentage of the fee when the players are sold. The idea was to raise money to strengthen the squad, but the investment has not turned into points, so far.

Coach Juan Carlos Chavez is now thought to have one game to save his job, but the damage had been done before he took over last season.

Atlas is a club with one of the most loyal fan bases in the country, with a stadium of 60,000, which has not won a title since 1951. Go figure where the problem lies; it is safe to say that sacking Chavez will do little to resolve underlying problems.

On the other side of town, Chivas have lived in almost a different world to their struggling neighbors in recent times, but they too have been sucked into the same dark vacuum this year.

Chivas, Mexico´s most popular team, is bottom of the league after three defeats at the start of the Clausura 2012. It has been the worst start in the club´s history.

Coach Fernando Quirarte resigned after the 2-0 home defeat against Club Tijuana. Club owner Jorge Vergara tore into him, saying that he had “given him (Quirarte) a Ferrari and got back a VW Beetle.”

Quick to criticize, Vergara has also been on the end of some heavy criticism himself.

At least two high profile people have come out in the last week saying that Vergara owes them money and Mexico´s biggest sports newspaper is involved in a running battle with the club´s owners.

Fans are not happy, either, as a quick scour of social networking sites will show you.

The general consensus is that Vergara should bring in a big-name manager and give him time.

Fans also clamor for a big-name signing to give everybody a lift and help out the youngsters, some of which are, it has been suggested, too young to shoulder the burden of the insatiable desire for titles.

Thursday´s appointment of Ignacio Ambriz as coach has left fans unhappy, especially after mentions of coaches potentially coming in from Europe. Ambriz has a record of 23 wins, 25 ties and 29 defeats as coach in Mexico´s top division: hardly something that it going to get the fans excited.

Attendances in the super-modern Estadio Omnilife are poor, reflecting both a disillusionment on the part of the fans and a perception that the club has distanced itself from the working class foundations it was built on.

If all that wasn´t bad enough, even the city´s second division team, Leones Negros, is in dire straits and is favorites to be relegated from its league come May.

Whichever club you turn to, it really is doom and gloom in the City of Roses.

By Tom Marshall (@MexicoWorldCup)