Full name | West Bromwich Albion Football Club |
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Nickname(s) | The Baggies, The Throstles, Albion |
Short name | WBA, West Brom |
Founded | 1878 (as West Bromwich Strollers) |
Ground | The Hawthorns |
Capacity | 26,852 |
Owner | Guochuan Lai |
Chairman | John Williams |
Manager | Tony Pulis |
League | Premier League |
2015–16 | Premier League, 14th |
Website | www |
West Bromwich Albion Football Club /ˈbrɒmɪtʃ/, also known as West Brom, The Baggies, The Throstles, Albion or simply WBA, is an English professional football club based in West Bromwich in the West Midlands. The club was formed in 1878 and has played at its home ground, The Hawthorns, since 1900.
Albion were one of the founding members of the Football League in 1888 and have spent the majority of their existence in the top tier of English football. They have been champions of England once, in 1919–20 and have been runners-up twice but they have had more success in the FA Cup, winning it five times. The first came in 1888, the year the league was founded, and the most recent in 1968, their last major trophy. They also won the Football League Cup at the first attempt in 1966. The club's longest consecutive period in the top division spanned twenty-four years between 1949 and 1973, and from 1986 to 2002 they spent their longest ever spell out of the top division. They currently play in the Premier League.
The team has played in navy blue and white stripes for most of the club's history; and the club badge features a throstle perched on a hawthorn branch. Albion have a number of long-standing rivalries with other West Midlands clubs; their traditional rivals have always been Aston Villa and Wolverhampton Wanderers, the latter of whom they contest with in the Black Country derby.