As Bad As Things Got
No football clubs have had histories of completely unbroken success, and in this series we take a look back into the archives to the point at which the fortunes of some of our most-beloved clubs have found themselves at their lowest ebb.
As Bad As Things Got: Newcastle United, 20th April 1992
With a decade of stultification now under their belts, it would be easy to get sucked into the idea that Newcastle United are in an unprecedented slump. This, however, isn't quite true. As English football basked in a warming post-Italia 90 glow of positivity, cold...
As Bad As Things Got: Brighton & Hove Albion, 3rd May 1997
It was a story that summed up the very best and the very worst of English football at the same time. A football club that had played top flight football and got to an FA Cup final just over a decade earlier was systematically asset-stripped, and those who run the game...
As Bad As Things Got: West Ham United, 29th February, 2020
On the 29th February 2020, 2,500 West Ham United supporters marched along Newham Greenway to the London Stadium in protest at the ownership of their football club. The GSB Out complaints haven't completely stopped over the course of the lockdown, but they have been...
As Bad As Things Got: Port Vale, 20th February 1968
When former England international (and arguably British football's first true celebrity) Stanley Matthews finally ended his playing career with Stoke City in 1965, there was much conjecture as to what his post-football career might look like. Matthews insitally...
As Bad as Things Got: Chelsea, 23rd April 1983
On Saturday 23rd April 1983, Chelsea made the long trip north-west to Lancashire to play Burnley in the Second Division. It had been a dismal season at Stamford Bridge, and they needed a result from this game. They'd won just two of their previous thirteen league...
As Bad As Things Got: Millwall, 13th March 1985
The passing of three and a half decades has left the past looking very much like a foreign country. They do things differently, there. Everybody now knows just how bad football's crises of the 1980s were, and where they ended up. It was a slow build-up from the late...
As Bad as Things Got: Bristol Rovers – 16th August 1980
There were flowerbeds behind the goal there, once. It is fairly commonly assented in England that supporters prefer to be closer to the action. There are no pitches in the Premier League surrounded by athletics tracks at present, and even in the world of the Premier...
As Bad As Things Got: Leicester City, 21st October 2002
The transformation of Leicester City over the second half of the last decade passes relatively unremarked upon. The Premier League title of 2016, of course, sent tremors around the world, but what has happened since then has, in comparison, passed relatively under the...
As Bad As Things Got: Burnley, 9th May 1987
By the middle of the 1980s, Burnley had entered a seemingly perpetual period of deep decline. As recently as 1976, they'd been a First Division club, but considerable debt had forced the sale of such players as Leighton James and Martin Dobson. When The Bob Lord stand...
As Bad As Things Got: Wolverhampton Wanderers, 24th November 1986
The club may now be safely ensconced in the Premier League, but the recent draw for the Fourth Round of this season's FA Cup will have brought back some painful memories for Wolverhampton Wanderers supporters of a certain age because, even taking into account the...
As Bad As Things Got: Middlesbrough, 22nd August 1986
With the benefit of a quarter of a century's remove, the opening of the Riverside Stadium in August 1995 feels like one of the truly symbolic moments of the game's post-Taylor Report boom. With a capacity of 30,000 seats, this was the largest new stadium that had...
As Bad As Things Got: Manchester United, 5th May 1934
At a time when there is a concerted effort going on to preserve the currently biggest clubs at the top of the Premier League, it's probably worth taking a moment to remember that, even for the most successful of all, life hasn't always been days of wine and roses....
As Bad As Things Got: Leeds United, 30th November 2008
In selecting particular events for this series, some clubs are easier than others. The lifespan of a football club contains inevitable highs and lows, and there are simply some clubs for whom the majority of their past has been about either chasing or winning...
As Bad As Things Got: Queens Park Rangers, 22nd May 1963
Queens Park Rangers may well be truly embedded as the football club of Shepherds Bush, but over the years its owners have had something of a tendency to tinker with the club's home. Queens Park Rangers have always had itchy feet. They've played at more different home...
As Bad As Things Got: Bristol City, 1st February 1982
The early 1980s were a desolate time for English football. Crowds had slumped and revenues had plummeted, though transfer fees continued to shoot up, leaving a large number of clubs living on the breadline. And one club came to symbolise the agony of the era more than...
As Bad As Things Got: Oxford United & The Maxwells, 5th November 1991
The past can interact with the present in many different ways. The revolting story of Jeffrey Epstein seems a million miles removed from the history of a League One football club, but recent news headlines have called to mind one of the most turbulent and eventful...
As Bad As Things Got: Norwich City, 8th August 2009
Norwich City have never been much a club for extremes. This is a club of relatively modest ambition which spent the last half century bobbing between the top two divisions, never quite able to entrench themselves as a top flight club, but at the same time feeling a...
As Bad As Things Got: Everton, 7th May 1994
If you ever wanted proof of the emotional pull of football, it can be seen most vividly at Goodison Park on the 7th of May 1994. On that day, Everton played Wimbledon needing a win to avoid relegation from the Premier League. The club were, after Arsenal, the second...
As Bad As Things Got: Arsenal, 14th May 1980
It's different with Arsenal, of course. Which year to choose for a club with more than 100 years unbroken in the top flight? How bad can things get? Do you go all the way back to the 1912/13 season, their penultimate under the 'Woolwich' name, when they were relegated...
As Bad As Things Got: Manchester City, 3rd May 1998
Current legal issues with UEFA notwithstanding, the ongoing efforts of the Abu Dhabi United sovereign wealth fund to build an Empire of the Sun around Manchester City aren't going too badly, despite Liverpool's recent successes. They won't win the Premier League this...
As Bad As Things Got: Tottenham Hotspur, 7th May 1977
It could hardly be said that Tottenham Hotspur were in uncharted territory, as the 1976/77 season drew to a close. The club spent all bar two of the twenty years from 1930 to 1950 in the Second Division, and their first Football League Championship in 1951 came at the...
As Bad As Things Got: Liverpool, 15th January 1959
There wasn't supposed to be much on in Worcester, that afternoon. The 15th of January 1959 was a Thursday, the city's early closing day, and under normal circumstances the city centre would have been very quiet. The FA Cup, however, had something to say about that....
As Bad As Things Got: Derby County, 5th May 1984
It's time for a new series, here on 200%. As there's no football on at the moment, everybody's peering back into the past for stories from the days when it was safe to stand within six feet of another human being. Rather than eulogising, though, we're going to be...