List of Birmingham City F.C. records and statistics

Birmingham City Football Club is a professional association football club based in the city of Birmingham, England. Founded in 1875 as Small Heath Alliance, the club turned professional in 1885 and three years later, under the name of Small Heath F.C. Ltd, was the first football club to become a limited company with a board of directors. They were later known as Birmingham before adopting their current name in 1943. Elected to the newly formed Second Division of the Football League in 1892, they have never dropped below the third tier of English football. They were also pioneers of European football competition, taking part in the inaugural season of the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup.
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. 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, a success not repeated until 2011. 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; this was the first time the golden goal was used to decide the winner of a senior English cup final.
Birmingham City's honours and achievements include the following:
European competition
The Football League
Domestic cup competition
Wartime competition
Player records.
Goalscorers.
Top goalscorers.
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.
International caps.
This section refers only to caps won while a Birmingham player.
Transfers.
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 £1mClough 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 headbut VAT and the transfer levy raised the total payable to £1.18m. Within three months he scored the winning goal in the 1979 European Cup Final. 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. 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.
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.
Managerial records.
All three of the above had formerly played for the club.
Club records.
Goals.
Sourced to the "Football Club History Database":
Points.
Sourced to the "Football Club History Database":
Matches.
Record wins.
Sourced to the "Birmingham City FC Archive":
Record defeats.
Sourced to the "Birmingham City FC Archive" except where stated:
Record consecutive results.
This section applies to league matches only, and is sourced to "Statto.com" except where stated:
Attendances.
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.
Birmingham City in Europe.
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. 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. 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.
Victory in the 2011 Football League Cup Final earned Birmingham qualification for the 2011–12 UEFA Europa League, which they entered at the play-off round. A 3–0 aggregate victory over C.D. Nacional of Portugal qualified Birmingham for the group stage, in which they were drawn alongside the previous season's finalists, S.C. Braga of Portugal, Slovenian champions NK Maribor, and fourth-placed Belgian team Club Brugge. They finished third in group H, one point behind Club Brugge and Braga, so failed to qualify for the knockout rounds.
Record by season.
Key
References.
General
Specific