West Bromwich Albion FC is an English football club based in the town of West Bromwich five miles northwest of Birmingham. It is one of the founding members of The Football League in 1888 and has spent the majority of their existence in the top tier of English football. Albion have been champions of England only once, in 1919–20, but have had more success in the FA Cup, with five wins. 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 was founded as West Bromwich Strollers in 1878 by workers from George Salter's Spring Works in West Bromwich.  They were renamed West Bromwich Albion in 1880 (becoming the first team to adopt the Albion suffix). Albion was a district of West Bromwich where some of the players lived or worked, close to what is today Greets Green. In March 1888, William McGregor wrote to what he considered to be the top five English teams, including Albion, informing them of his intention to form an association of clubs that would play each other home and away each season. Thus when the Football League started later that year, Albion became one of the twelve founder members. Albion won the Football League title in 1919–20 following the end of the First World War, their totals of 104 goals and 60 points both breaking the previous league records. The team finished as Division One runners-up in 1924–25, narrowly losing out to Huddersfield Town, but was relegated in 1926–27. In 1930–31 they won promotion as well as the FA Cup, beating Birmingham 2–1 in the final. 

The Double of winning the FA Cup and promotion has not been achieved before or since.  In 1953–54 Albion came close to being the first team in the 20th century to win the League and Cup double. They succeeded in winning the FA Cup, beating Preston 3–2, but a loss of form towards the end of the season meant that they finished as runners-up to fierce rivals Wolves in the league. Nonetheless, Albion became known for their brand of fluent, attacking football, with the 1953–54 side being hailed as "The Team of the Century". One national newspaper went so far as to suggest that the team be chosen en masse to represent England at the 1954 World Cup finals. They remained one of the top English sides for the remainder of the decade, reaching the semi-final of the 1957 FA Cup and achieving three consecutive top five finishes in Division One between 1957–58 and 1959–60. During the sixities they were a successful cup side winning the League Cup in 1966 and the FA Cup in 1968.  After two seasons in Division Two between 1974 and 1976, Albion qualitied for the UEFA Cup three times between 1978 and 1981 under Ron Atkinson but by 1986 they were back in the Second Division. From 1986 to 2002 they spent their longest ever period out of the top division. This included a drop to the Third Division for two years from 1991. They finally returned to the top tier of English football in 2002 but this was followed by relegation the following year. They returned to the Premier League in 2004: despite being bottom on the final day they survived after a 2-0 over Portsmouth. Relegation followed in 2005 before winning the Championship title and promotion back to the Premier League.  Once again relegation was followed by promotion under Roberto di Matteo in 2010.  In February 2011 he was replaced by Roy Hodgson who guided Albion to 11th spot, the club’s best finish since 1983.  At the end of the 2017-18 season West Brom were relegated after eight seasons in the Premier League. They were promoted at the end of the 2019-20 season but remained in the top flght for only one season.