After we lost at arsenal on 2nd may 87 - we still had a mathematical chance of staying up but on the last but one game against sheff wed. we had to make about 5 goals up on oxford and hope they lost along with man city, charlton and leicester who i think all had far better goal differences as well.
From european champions to relegation in just 5 years - i remember ron saunders saying on brmb afterwards "well someone's really done a good job."
Table on the morning of Monday May 4th (all with two games left, bottom three went down)...
18th Oxford Utd 42pts (-26 GD)
19th Leicester 40pts (-22 GD)
20th Charlton 38pts (-14 GD)
21st Man City 36pts (-20 GD)
22nd Villa 36pts (-31 GD)
3pm kick-offs
Villa 1-2 Sheff Wed
Man City 1-0 Forest
Newcastle 0-3 Charlton
7.45pm
Leicester 1-1 Coventry
Tuesday
Luton 2-3 Oxford
You could argue that if Charlton finished a minute before us we were relegated, but our defeat meant we'd have been down anyway even if Charlton lost at Newcastle.
We went down with Man City and Leicester and fourth bottom Charlton survived by beating Leeds in a play-off at Small Heath.
