Coventry City

Despite having been built in 1906, St. Andrew’s wasn’t actually the first stadium that Birmingham City called home. Then again, the club was formed in 1875 and was called Small Heath Alliance at the time, so that should come as too much of a shock! When the club turned professional in 1885 they renamed themselves as Small Heath F.C. Ltd and became the first ever football club to become a limited company and have a board of directors. They started life playing on waste ground in the Birmingham district of Bordesley Green before moving to a ground known as Muntz Street. This place, for it could hardly be called a stadium, could hold up to 10,000 spectators when it first opened. The capacity increased to nearly 30,000 but even this wasn’t enough to cope with the demand to watch the team play. A game against Aston Villa, the club’s fiercest rivals, in 1905 registered an official capacity of 28,000 but thousands more scaled walls or broke through the turnstiles in order to attend the match. Things were getting out of hand and a decision was made to find a new home, with St. Andrew’s being built over the course of just ten months.