Birmingham City have won only 11 of their 46 League games this season, but their 11th draw was enough to keep them in the SkyBet Championship on goal difference. Yet they left it until the 11th hour on a dramatic final day before Paul Caddis scored the 93rd-minute goal that kept Birmingham in the second tier.

Lee Clark’s side had needed to better Doncaster Rovers’ result at Leicester City but looked doomed when goals from Chung-Yong Lee and substitute Lukas Jutkiewicz gave Bolton Wanderers a 2-0 lead.

But, as news filtered through of David Nugent’s penalty for Leicester, Nikola Zigic pulled a goal back. What followed provided the most extraordinary denouement to a dismal season for a club which plied its trade in the Barclays Premier League just three years ago.

With the game deep in stoppage time it fell to Caddis, a 25-year-old Scot who cost just £150,000, to score the decisive header and then wheel away to celebrate in front of the ecstatic, 3,800-strong away end.

‘I tried to do a Ryan Giggs but I haven’t got the hairy chest,’ he said, a reference to the Manchester United star’s celebration after scoring the winner against Arsenal in the 1999 FA Cup semi-final.

Caddis’ goal was certainly not in the class of Giggs’ hazy run 15 years ago, but it was vital to Birmingham’s future. It could be worth up to 100 times its scorer’s transfer fee, such is the gulf in revenue and gate receipts between the second and third tiers.

Demotion to the third tier for the first time in 20 years – just three years after winning the League Cup – would have meant ‘Armageddon’ according to Clark.

The Birmingham manager admitted, however, he still does not know what next season will hold for a club for sale for £20million and whose owner, Carson Yeung, is serving a six-year sentence for money-laundering.

Clark did not know who had scored Birmingham’s equaliser, but neither did he care as he sprinted down towards the swarm of travelling fans after the final whistle with far more speed than he displayed in his playing days. The ‘big soft lad from Newcastle’ was also in tears at the end.

‘It was just madness, absolute madness,’ said Clark. ‘Mayhem.

‘I used the word “Armageddon”. If we went down and there’s no fresh ownership it would have been difficult to attract the players to League One. That was my fear.

‘It’s the most satisfying moment and the biggest achievement I’ve had in football as a player, coach or manager because of the scenario around the club and the parameters I’ve had to work with.

‘We need to use this as motivation and never let this happen again.’

Birmingham played a dangerous game on Saturday, surging forward and leaving space for Lee and Rob Hall to exploit, but fortunate favoured the brave.

They needed an interception from Hayden Mullins to prevent Jermaine Beckford poking in Hall’s cross just before half-time, while they were fortunate Bolton could only capitalise on one of the three fouls Paul Robinson conceded.

Lee stroked a shot into the bottom left-hand corner after a David Wheater header from a free-kick which followed the Birmingham captain’s third transgression and then Jutkiewicz added a second after an error from goalkeeper Darren Randolph.

But it was Zigic, of all people, who initiated the revival less than two minutes later. The 6ft 7in £65,000-a-week striker, whose annual salary is equivalent to last season’s entire gate receipts, had cut a frustrating figure in what will surely be his final game for the club, leaving Lee Novak to create Birmingham’s best chances. But the Serb managed to convert substitute Mitch Hancox’s cross to give the visitors hope.

They pushed forward in search of an equaliser, narrowly avoiding being caught twice on the break, and Zigic saw another effort cleared off the line by Tim Ream.

Caddis was, however, there to nod in the rebound and ensure this was a blue day, for all the right reasons.

—Daily Mail