The 1897–98 Football League season was the 17th season of competitive association football and 6th season in the Football League played by Small Heath Football Club, an English football club based in Birmingham. They finished in sixth place in the 16-team division. Having failed to gain exemption from the qualifying rounds of the 1897–98 FA Cup, they entered the competition in the third qualifying round and lost that opening match to Burslem Port Vale. In local cup competitions, they lost to Walsall in the second round of the Birmingham Cup, were eliminated by West Bromwich Albion in the first round of the Mayor of Birmingham's Charity Cup, and reached the semi-final of the Staffordshire Senior Cup where they again lost to West Bromwich Albion.

Nineteen different players represented the club in nationally organised competitive matches during the season and there were thirteen different goalscorers. Walter Abbott was the top scorer with 19 goals, and he and wing half Thomas Dunlop played in every match. The match against Burnley attracted a crowd of 12,000, an improvement on the highest attendance in the previous two seasons.

Looking back at the 1896–97 season, the Sports Argus' editorial expressed disappointment with the team's performance and dissatisfaction with the running of the club. At the start of the season, they had "confidently looked forward" to Small Heath reaching the test match positions, even if they proved unsuccessful therein. But the team's fine finish to the season on top of such a poor start made it "terribly aggravating to think that the least bit of extra effort earlier on in the season would in all probability have seen them a good second to [Notts] County." The club's failure to gain exemption from the qualifying competition of the FA Cup strengthened the writer's belief that "the club wants a thorough wakening-up". The club made a loss of £369 on the year, which the Dart suggested was due less to the effects of bad weather, as claimed in the annual report, than to a "penny wise and pound foolish" approach to the signing of players which they hoped would not be repeated in the season to come.

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