The 1889–90 season was the ninth season of competitive association football played by Small Heath F.C., an English football club based in the Small Heath district of Birmingham. They competed in the inaugural season of the Football Alliance. They finished in tenth position in the twelve-team league with six wins, five draws and eleven defeats, which gave them seventeen points. The team scored 44 goals in Alliance competition but conceded 67.

Small Heath entered the 1889–90 FA Cup at the second qualifying round stage. They progressed through three qualifying rounds and one round proper, eventually losing in the second round proper (last 16) to Football League club Wolverhampton Wanderers. In local competition, they were eliminated by West Bromwich Albion in the second round of the Birmingham Cup, and drew with Warwick County in the final of the Warwickshire Cup. Small Heath also played several friendly matches during the season.

Small Heath used twenty-three different players in nationally organised competitive matches during the season and had thirteen different goalscorers. Walter Gittins missed just one match over the season; his full-back partner Fred Speller missed two. The top scorer was centre-forward and captain Will Devey with 27 goals, of which 18 were scored in league competition.

In the 1888–89 season, which coincided with the Small Heath club's first year as a limited company, it made enough profit to pay shareholders a dividend of 5 per cent. The team played in the Combination, a league established to provide regular competitive football for those clubs not invited to join the newly formed Football League. The Combination was not well organised, and not all teams completed their required 16 fixtures; Small Heath achieved 11. A proposal that the Football League be expanded to 24 teams was rejected, so a new league, to be known as the Football Alliance, was formed to cater for those excluded. Small Heath was one of the 12 clubs accepted.

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