Albion’s Second Tier Season Comparison – 24 games | OneFootball

The opening day of 2026 saw Ryan Mason’s team fall to a ninth successive away league defeat, the worst run by any Albion side outside the top flight, and the club’s worst run since the 1972/73 campaign which ended in relegation for Don Howe’s team.

A similar away run for Albion in the 1937/38 season also ended in relegation, while we have to go back a further decade for a worse series of away league defeats. In 1926/27, the Baggies lost ten away league games in succession between the end of September and the beginning of February, a campaign that also ended in relegation. The club record for successive away league defeats was set in the 19th century but was spread across two campaigns – between November 1890 and November 1891, Louis Ford’s Albion team lost eleven successive away league games and only survived relegation in the summer of 1891 because there was no Division Two and the club was successfully re-elected to the Football League.

In the midst of the 1926/27 campaign, Albion also lost their only FA Cup tie that season away at Hull City making it a run of eleven successive away defeats in all competitions which has not been “bettered” by any Baggies team before or since.

The Baggies have not been as low as 18th at this stage of the season since the 1999/2000 campaign which saw Gary Megson replacing Brian Little in early March and guiding the club to a final day salvation. That is also the last time that the Baggies had fewer points at this stage of a second tier campaign.

The last time Albion lost ten of their first thirteen away games of a season was in Tony Mowbray’s Premier League campaign in 2008/09. For a second tier equivalent, we have to go back to Keith Burkinshaw’s 1994/95 season, another that ended in a final day escape from the drop.

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