The list encompasses the major honours won by Birmingham City, records set by the club, their managers and their players, and details of their performance in European competition. The player records section itemises the club's leading goalscorers and those who have made most appearances in first-team competitions. It also records notable achievements by Birmingham players on the international stage, and the highest transfer fees paid and received by the club. Attendance records at St Andrew's, the club's home ground since 1906, are also included.
All figures are correct as of 25 July 2020.
Honours
Birmingham's first ever silverware was the Walsall Cup which they won in 1883. Their first honour in national competitive football was the inaugural championship of the Football League Second Division in 1892–93. The majority of their success came in the period from the mid-1950s to the early 1960s. Promoted to the First Division in 1955, in the following season they achieved their highest league finish of sixth place and their second FA Cup final appearance.[6][7] They went on to reach two successive finals of the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup, and won their only major trophy, the League Cup, for the first time in 1963,[8] a success not repeated until 2011.[9] In the 1994–95 season they completed the "lower-division double", of the Division Two (level 3) title and the Football League Trophy, a cup competition open to teams from the third and fourth tiers of English football;[8] this was the first time the golden goal was used to decide the winner of a senior English cup final.[10]
Birmingham City's honours and achievements include the following:[6][8][9][11]
Joe Bradford is the all-time top goalscorer for Birmingham City. He was their leading goalscorer for twelve consecutive seasons, from 1921–22 to 1932–33, and won 12 caps for England.[19]
Competitive, professional matches only. Matches played (including as substitute) appear in brackets.[16][19][20]
Goals scored and appearances made, broken down by competition
Trevor Francis, who joined Birmingham as a 15-year-old, became the first British footballer to be transferred for a fee of at least £1 million when Brian Clough signed him for league champions Nottingham Forest in February 1979. The basic fee was below £1m – Clough claimed in his autobiography to have set the fee at £999,999 because he did not want the idea of being the first £1m player going to Francis's head[24] – but VAT and the transfer levy raised the total payable to £1.18m.[25] Within three months he scored the winning goal in the 1979 European Cup Final.[26] Some four years earlier, Birmingham had also been involved in a British record transfer when they sold Bob Latchford to Everton, in part exchange for Howard Kendall and Archie Styles, the deal valuing Latchford at £350,000.[27] The initial £25m reportedly received from Borussia Dortmund for Jude Bellingham in 2020 made him the most expensive 17-year-old in world football history.[28]
For consistency, fees in the record transfer tables below are all sourced from BBC Sport's contemporary reports of each transfer. Where the report mentions an initial fee potentially rising to a higher figure depending on contractual clauses being satisfied in the future, only the initial fee is listed in the tables.
Record transfer fees paid
Transfer fees paid, club involved, player name and nationality, and date of transfer
^The fee was undisclosed, but was understood by Sky Sports to be an initial £25 million – making him the most expensive 17-year-old in history – plus "several million more" dependent on performance-related criteria.[28] BBC Sport states only that the transfer "could eventually be worth over £30m."[34]
First full-time manager: Prior to 1911, the club was managed by committee or by a secretary-manager who combined club administration with responsibility for the team's affairs on the pitch. Bob McRoberts, the first manager whose role did not include secretarial duties, took charge of the team for four complete seasons, which included 163 matches, from June 1911 to May 1915.[39][40]
Longest-serving manager by time: George Liddell managed the club for six years and two months, which included 267 matches, from July 1933 to September 1939.[41][42]
Longest-serving manager by matches: Trevor Francis managed the club for 290 matches over a period of five years and five months, from May 1996 to October 2001.[42]
All three of the above had formerly played for the club.[43]
Record FA Cup defeat: Birmingham City 0–7 Liverpool, quarter final, 21 March 2006[52]
Record League Cup defeat: Manchester City 6–0 Birmingham City, third round, 10 October 2001
Record European defeat: RCD Espanyol 5–2 Birmingham City, Inter-Cities Fairs Cup, second round, 11 November 1961
Record consecutive results
This section applies to league matches only, and is sourced to Statto.com[52] except where stated:
Record consecutive wins: 13, from 17 December 1892 to 16 September 1893, Second Division
Record consecutive defeats:
8, from 26 December 1922 to 17 February 1923, First Division
8, from 2 December 1978 to 24 February 1979, First Division
8, from 28 September 1985 to 23 November 1985, First Division
Record consecutive matches without a defeat: 20, from 3 September 1994 to 2 January 1995, Second Division (level 3)
Record consecutive top-division matches without a defeat: 12, from 24 October 2009 to 9 January 2010, Premier League[53]
Record consecutive home matches without a defeat: 36, from 20 October 1970 to 25 April 1972, Second Division
Record consecutive away matches without a defeat: 15, from 13 December 1947 to 4 September 1948, Second and First Divisions
Record consecutive matches without a win: 17, from 28 September 1985 to 18 January 1986, First Division
Record consecutive home matches without a win: 18, from 5 October 2013 to 29 April 2014, Championship
Record consecutive away matches without a win: 32, from 15 November 1980 to 28 April 1982, First Division
Attendances
Average and peak league attendances at St Andrew's
This section applies to attendances at St Andrew's, where Birmingham have played their home matches since 1906. Figures from the club's early days are approximate.[54]
Highest attendance: 66,844 against Everton, FA Cup fifth round, 11 February 1939
Highest league attendance: 60,250, against Aston Villa, First Division, 23 November 1935
Lowest attendance:
1,000, against Blackpool, Second Division, 27 November 1909
1,000, against Burnley, Second Division, 28 February 1910
Highest seasonal average league attendance: 38,821, First Division, 1948–49
Lowest seasonal average league attendance: 6,289, Second Division, 1988–89
Invitations to enter the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup, a football tournament set up to promote industrial trade fairs, were extended to the city hosting the trade fair rather than to clubs. Some cities entered a select team including players from more than one club, but Aston Villa, the other major club based in the city of Birmingham, rejected the opportunity to field a combined team.[5][55] Thus Birmingham City became the first English club side to play in European competition when they played their first match in the 1955–58 Inter-Cities Fairs Cup on 15 May 1956. They were also the first English club side to reach a European final, the 1960 Fairs Cup final, in which they met Barcelona. The home leg, a goalless draw, was played on 29 March 1960 and the away leg, which Barcelona won 4–1, some six weeks later.[E] In the semifinal of the 1961 Fairs Cup Birmingham beat Internazionale home and away; no other English club beat them in a competitive match in the San Siro until Arsenal did so in the Champions League more than 40 years later.[57]
^This competition, open to teams in the third and fourth tiers of English football, was renamed the EFL Trophy in 2016. It is more often referred to by its sponsored name, which in 1991 was the Leyland DAF Trophy and in 1995 was the Auto Windscreens Shield.
^The London XI, including players from several London clubs, were the first English team to play in European competition when they played their first match in the inaugural Fairs Cup in 1955, and the first English team to reach a final, in the same campaign.[56]
^Invitations to enter the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup, a football tournament set up to promote industrial trade fairs, were extended to the city hosting the trade fair rather than to clubs. Some cities entered a select team including players from more than one club; others, including Birmingham, chose a club side to represent them.[61]
^The away goals rule did not apply when aggregate scores were level, so a playoff was staged at St. Jakob-Park, Basel, which Barcelona won 2–1 to reach the final.
^ abcUntil the mid-1960s, entry to this competition remained by invitation, independent of domestic league position. Birmingham City's continued invitations resulted from their success in the previous edition of the competition. In 1961–62, there was an expanded entry of 28 teams, and Birmingham received a bye to the second round as losing finalist from the previous edition.[63]
References
General
Matthews, Tony (1995). Birmingham City: A Complete Record. Derby: Breedon Books. ISBN978-1-85983-010-9.
Matthews, Tony (2000). The Encyclopedia of Birmingham City Football Club 1875–2000. Cradley Heath: Britespot. ISBN978-0-9539288-0-4.
^Williams, John; Neatrour, Sam (March 2002). "Fact Sheet 10: The 'New' Football Economics"(PDF). Sir Norman Chester Centre for Football Research, University of Leicester. Retrieved 26 May 2018.
^Goodyear, David; Matthews, Tony (1988). Aston Villa A Complete Record 1875–1988. Derby: Breedon Books. ISBN0-907969-37-2. At this time there seemed a general lack of ambition at Villa Park. The club were slow to install floodlights, they turned down the chance of combining with Blues to field a 'Birmingham' team for the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup...
