Hong Kong-owned Birmingham City battle League One drop 10 years on from Wembley win
- English Premier League Birmingham City beat Arsenal to win the Carling Cup in 2011 but the decade since has not been kind
- Then owner Carson Yeung was jailed while new HK-based ownership has not been popular with long-suffering supporters
It is 10 years since Hong Kong-owned Birmingham City enjoyed the biggest day in the club’s history, lifting the Carling Cup after beating Arsenal at Wembley.
On-loan striker Obafemi Martins came off the bench to grab a late winner and leave the Blues faithful and then owner Carson Yeung Ka-sing – who was celebrating his birthday that Sunday afternoon – in dreamland.
What followed has been the stuff of nightmares.
Blues were relegated at the end of that season and played European football in the English second tier, while the rise and fall of Yeung and the former hairdresser’s prison time has been well documented, nowhere more so than the pages of Haircuts & League Cups: The Rise and Fall of Carson Yeung by Blues blogger Daniel Ivery and Hong Kong lawyer Will Giles.
The club changed hands but the ownership remained in Hong Kong while another constant has been the downward trajectory of a team who have long disappeared from the conversation of promotion from the Championship to the English Premier League.
That is not to say that Blues will not change divisions but they are flirting with the third tier of League One once again.