Birmingham

In August 1979 Trevor Francis left St Andrew's for Nottingham Forest. He had scored 133 goals in 329 appearances since 1970, but the transfer is what stuck.

The Small Heath tag was literal. A group of cricketers from the parish church founded the club in September 1875 in that district of Birmingham, and it played under the name Small Heath Alliance before shortening to Small Heath F.C. in 1888. A year later it became the first football club to register as a limited company. Birmingham F.C. followed in 1905, and the current name, Birmingham City, was adopted in 1943.

St Andrew's has been home since 1906, rebuilt end to end between 1993 and 1999 to comply with the Taylor Report, and stripped of asbestos on the Kop and Tilton Road stands as recently as 2020–2023. Between the two, the club spent part of the Second World War playing at Villa Park.

Silverware has come mostly from the League Cup: beaten Aston Villa 3–1 on aggregate in the 1963 final, then Arsenal 2–1 in 2011. Ownership has been less settled. Carson Yeung took control in 2009 and was jailed in Hong Kong in 2014 for money laundering; Knighthead Capital, through Shelby Companies Ltd, completed a takeover led by Tom Wagner in October 2023. Relegation has punctuated the recent decades too — out of the Premier League in 2011 and 2016, down to League One in 2017 and again in 2024.