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“With Sheffield Wednesday on the brink of relegation in February [update: they’re now down], what is the earliest a team has been demoted to another division?” asks Kevin Bartholomew.
The earliest confirmed relegation in a season we can find is Peterborough United, in 1967-68, who were relegated from the third tier with a whopping 27 games remaining. After the club were found guilty of breaking league rules relating to match-fee incentives and signing-on bonuses, a Football League management committee confirmed in mid-November of 1968 that Posh would be relegated, whatever their final league placing or points tally. Despite finishing ninth with 50 points, Peterborough were docked 19 of them, rendering them bottom. The club were relegated having scored 79 goals that season, which made them more prolific than all but one of the other teams in Division Three, including champions Oxford United.
There is no other example in English football that can beat Sheffield Wednesday’s February relegation with 13 matches to go, but if we remove points deductions and only include seasons where three teams are relegated, Cambridge United are the next best/worst example, relegated from the third tier in 1984-85 with eight games to spare. This was all the more remarkable given they had only just been relegated from the second tier the previous year (with six games to spare).
Doncaster Rovers match Cambridge, falling out of the Football League for the first time in their history after relegation from the old Third Division in 1997-98, also with eight games to spare. To say Doncaster were a bin fire of a club that season was an understatement, particularly because just a few weeks after their relegation was confirmed, chairman Ken Richardson was found guilty of hiring a former SAS trooper to burn down the main stand at the club’s Belle Vue Stadium in a property development scam. Richardson came unstuck after the man he hired, Alan Kristiansen, left petrol cans and a haversack at the scene as well as his mobile phone at the badly burned main stand along with a message on Richardson’s answering machine saying: “The job’s been done.” Kristiansen became the main prosecution witness against Richardson after pleading guilty to arson.
There are a number of other English clubs that have been relegated with seven games to go. This list includes Southampton (from the Premier League) last season and Watford (second tier, 1971-72) – despite the fact that only two clubs went down from each of the top two divisions until 1974, Watford were mathematically unable to catch even the third-bottom team with seven matches to spare. The list of clubs relegated with seven games to go also numbers Stoke City (top flight, 1984-85), Stockport County, (second tier, 2001-02), Wimbledon, (second tier, 2003-04), Rotherham United (second tier, 2016-17), and Oxford United (third tier, 2000-01), with the latter relegated in the final season at the Manor Ground before the move to the Kassam Stadium. Ouch.
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Can you do better than the above in leagues outside England? Emails to the usual place: [email protected].
Top and tail
“Assuming Arsenal win the league and Wolves remain bottom, are there any other instances of a league’s top and bottom teams also being first and last alphabetically?” asks Martin Villau.
Great question! We should caveat this by saying that some people count AFC Bournemouth as the first team listed alphabetically in the Premier League, but most don’t … so we’ll let it slide. Chris Roe writes in to answer this one.
“In English league history it is almost identically common for the first and last alphabetic team to finish in those positions (26 for the first v 25 times for the last),” he writes. “Of those, there are just two seasons in which the top and bottom teams have also been first and last alphabetically. In Arsenal’s unbeaten title run of 2003-04, the other end of the table was super close with Wolves ending up bottom on goals scored from Leeds United, when both ended on 33 points and a goal difference of -39.
“Then we go back to the second tier in 1892-93 and this one comes with an asterisk beside it, as the alphabetical requirement is only satisfied if we use the clubs’ current names, rather than those at the time. Walsall (then Walsall Town Swifts) were bottom which worked alphabetically, but it was champions Small Heath (now Birmingham City) who come first alphabetically on current names, but clearly not on the names at the time!”
A perfect circle
“In Napoli’s 2-2 draw with Roma earlier this month, there were only three corners in total. How many matches have had fewer? And has a match ever played out without any corners at all?” asks Mykyta Shchehlov.
Apparently during the match between Wigan and Chelsea in the Premier League on 21 August 2010, there were no corners at all. Chelsea won 6-0 with braces from Nicolas Anelka and Salomon Kalou and a hat-trick of assists from Didier Drogba. According to Opta, this was the first game without any corners since they started covering matches.
Knowledge archive
“Scott Dobbie of Queen of the South, age 36, had scored 37 goals by the end of January this season,” explained David Forbes in 2019. “Who is the oldest player to have outscored their age in a season?”
“At top level, the legendary Ferenc Puskás takes some beating,” reckoned David Warriston. “By the end of 1961-62, the Magyar maestro was 35 and had scored 40 goals for Real Madrid, including a first-half hat-trick in that year’s European Cup final. He was clearly on the slide however; the following season he failed to beat his age, netting a meagre 31 goals.”
Tim Dockery had more: “Even at 39, Patrizia Panico was inducing panic among her opponents. When the 2013-14 season ended in Women’s Serie A, she was the top scorer with 43 goals for Associazione Sportiva Dilettantistica Torres Calcio Femminile. During that time, she also scored four goals for Torres in cup competitions, bringing her total for the year to 47.”
Room for one more. “Lee Trundle scored 45 league goals in 23 appearances for Llanelli Town in 2016-17, when he turned 40,” noted Dave Johnston. “He scored 53 in all competitions that season, in only 31 appearances. Llanelli Town were promoted to the Welsh Football League Division One.”
Can you help?
“A few weeks ago, Sandra Jessen started for FC Köln against Essen,” notes James Vortkamp-Tong. “Is this the first time a player has contained the opposing side’s name in their own?”
“Trawling through various South and Central American leagues, one comes across the likes of Barcelona, Arsenal, Everton, Liverpool and others. Have any of these teams ever played against their European namesake?” queries Paul Huby.
“There seem to be very few players from outside the state system in top-tier British teams now,” emails Mark Burns. “Who was the last British international player that was privately educated?”
“With kits of purple, amber and claret, green, green hoops, and tangerine, top-flight Scottish clubs seem to have much more diverse kits than those in England,” writes James Bolle. “Is this true, or just my perception? If true, why? Is the English colour palette out of step with the rest of the world, or the Scottish one?”
“Like many I remember the Channel 4 Italian football days fondly,” recalls Daz Pearce. “One random stat I remembered was that Piacenza went two whole seasons between 1995 and 1997 without winning a single away match, yet managed to survive both on the strength of their home form. What’s the longest such run managed by a team in a major European league?”
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