Oldham stand on the brink of one of the biggest falls of all

Thirty years after being a founder member of the Premier League, Oldham Athletic are set to be the first of them to be relegated from the EFL.

It is a striking reminder of football’s inequalities that as the Premier League prepares to celebrate its 30th anniversary, for the first time a former members is set to be relegated into non-league. It’s a desperate situation at the bottom of League Two for Oldham Athletic. With Scunthorpe United already relegated, they have three games left to play and are four points adrift of third-bottom Stevenage.

Even if Oldham do survive this one weekend, they’ll still need to win their remaining two games and hope that Stevenage fail to win all of theirs. Stevenage still have a game in hand on Oldham, too, as well as a superior goal difference. Coming as this does at the end of a season of boycott and rancour, the situation could barely be bleaker for a club that has slipped through the divisions over the last three decades with barely anyone noticing.

Yet go far enough back into the past, and things could all have been very different. Going into their last two matches of the 1914/15 season, Oldham Athletic stood on the point of making history. One win from their last two matches of the season against Burnley and Liverpool would have made them the champions of England for the first time. But Oldham were beaten twice, 2-1 and 2-0, and Everton sneaked up to snatch the title by a point.

Oldham Athletic 1914/15 – Highest placed team in the clubs history. #oafc pic.twitter.com/GlO5z2XC69

— OAFC Memories #AbdallahOut #SaveOAFC (@oafcmemories) February 21, 2021

That season had been contentious enough just by existing. The reputation of the game had been dragged through the mud by the decision to