Birmingham City Football Club are playing another season in the Championship having finished 4 the last season but didn't make it through the playoffs. St Andrew's has been their home ground since 1906. The Club's nickname is Blues due to the colour of their kit, and their fans are known as Bluenoses. Between 1994 and 1997 the club mascot took the form of a blue nose, though it is now a dog called Beau Brummie.
The Sports Argus newspaper ran a competition in 1972 to design a new badge for the club. The winning entry, a line-drawn globe and ball, with ribbon carrying the club name and date of foundation, in plain blue and white, was adopted by the club but not worn on playing shirts until 1976.
The club was formed in 1875 as Small Heath Alliance, they became Small Heath in 1888, then Birmingham in 1905, finally becoming Birmingham City in 1943 (during the war years when football was generally quiet?). As Small Heath, they became founder members and first ever champions of the Football League Second Division – I guess that is CCC division J. The most successful period in their history was in the 1950s and early 1960s. They achieved their highest finishing position of sixth in the First Division in the 1955-56 season, reached the 1956 FA Cup Final, losing 3–1 in the game where Manchester City's goalkeeper Bert Trautmann played the last 20 minutes with a broken bone in his neck. To reach this final they had played every cup game away – unique at that time. The Blues won their first major trophy, the League Cup in 1963 and again in 2011.
The Club progressed to the final of the Inter-Cities Fairs Cup in 1960 and 1961, but had made history as the first English club side to take part in European competition when they played their first group game in the inaugural Inter-Cities Fairs Cup competition on 15May 1956. They were also the first English club side to reach a European final, losing 4–1on aggregate to Barcelona in the 1960 Fairs Cup final and 4–2 to AS Roma the following year. In the 1961 semifinal they beat Internazionale home and away; no other English club won a competitive game in the San Siro until Arsenal managed it more than 40 years later.
Their longest period spent outside the top division, between 1986 and 2002, included two brief spells in the third tier of the English League, during which time they twice won the Football League Trophy – known as the JPT to you and me.
In 1978 Jim Smith was manager (also managed Pompey) but with relegation a certainty, the club sold Trevor Francis to Notts Forest; the first player transferred for a fee of £1 million. Francis had scored a total of 133 goals in 329 appearances over his nine years at Birmingham and later he returned to manage the club in the 1990s. 
In April 1989 the Kumar brothers, owners of a clothing chain, bought the club. However, the collapse of the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI) put the Kumars' businesses into receivership and in November 1992 BCCI's liquidator put up for sale their 84% holding in the football club. The club was in administration for four months until publisher David Sullivan bought it for £700,000 and installed the then 23-year-old Karren Brady as managing director (now at West Ham of course).
Jan's always been rubbish. But it's a shock to me! (guess who?)
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