the 2011–12 season started much as the previous one had ended, with blackburn taking until 17 september to win a match, a 4–3 victory at home to arsenal. on 20 november, robinson won a penalty against wigan; the goalkeeper had gone up to the wigan box for a late corner, and was kicked in the face by wigan midfielder david jones. the penalty was scored by yakubu to level the score at 3–3. in a repeat of the previous season, robinson conceded seven goals as blackburn lost an away match 7–1, this time to arsenal, on 4 february 2012. a run of 30 matches without a clean sheet was finally ended in a 2–0 win against wolverhampton wanderers, a match which also took blackburn out of the relegation zone, whilst another 2–0 win, this time against sunderland, was the first time robinson had kept back-to-back clean sheets since august 2010. blackburn, however, would only score three points more all season and were relegated to the championship after finishing in 19th position. in contrast to the two previous seasons where robinson had averaged ten league clean sheets a season, he kept just three clean sheets in the league, having played 34 matches. all three clean sheets came from matches where blackburn won 2–0. following the departures of christopher samba and ryan nelsen from ewood park, robinson became the blackburn captain, initially on a temporary basis but later as the permanent captain.