Event | 2010–11 Football League Cup | ||||||
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
|||||||
Date | 27 February 2011 | ||||||
Venue | Wembley Stadium, London | ||||||
Man of the Match | Ben Foster (Birmingham City) | ||||||
Referee | Mike Dean (Cheshire) | ||||||
Attendance | 88,851 | ||||||
Weather | Mostly cloudy 6 °C (43 °F) |
||||||
The 2011 Football League Cup Final was the final match of the 2010–11 Football League Cup, the 51st season of the Football League Cup, a football competition for the 92 teams in the Premier League and the Football League. The match was contested by Arsenal and Birmingham City, at Wembley Stadium in London, on 27 February 2011. It was broadcast live on the BBC and Sky Sports. Birmingham City won the game 2–1 and were guaranteed a spot in the third qualifying round of the 2011–12 UEFA Europa League.Mike Dean was the referee.
Arsenal held the advantage over Birmingham in the league matches between the two sides in 2010–11, having beaten them 2–1 at the Emirates Stadium in October and again 3–0 at St Andrew's on New Year's Day.
Arsenal had played in six Football League Cup finals, but had only won two, most recently in 1993 when they beat Sheffield Wednesday 2–1. Birmingham's only League Cup title came in 1963, when they beat local rivals Aston Villa 3–1 on aggregate after a two-legged final. They also reached the 2001 final, which was played at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff against Liverpool, but the 2011 final was Birmingham's first appearance in the final of a major competition at Wembley for nearly 55 years, their last being the 1956 FA Cup Final.