Birmingham City's £6m investment on £55k-a-week star was worth every penny | OneFootball

Nikola Zigic cost Birmingham City a lot of money in 2010, but he helped to deliver them something they'd only managed once before in 136 years.

When Nikola Zigic arrived at Birmingham City in 2010 he didn't come cheap, but he played a pivotal role in delivering Blues fans something very important indeed.

By the summer of 2010, Birmingham City were ready to take a big step forward. They'd been promoted to the Premier League in 2009, and their first season had seen them upset their detractors by finishing in a highly creditable 9th place in the table. But the club wanted to make that next step up, and one of the players that they chose to help them make that move was the Serbian striker Nikola Zigic.

Difficult to miss, at 6'8" tall, Zigic was by this time an experienced and seasoned international striker. He'd made his international debut for the Serbia national team six years earlier and had already enjoyed a successful playing career, taking in Red Star Belgrade, Racing Santander and Valencia among others.

The move came to pass at the end of the 2009-10 season, with the fee to take him to St Andrew's agreed at a reported £6 million, though his wages were quite high, at £55,000-a-week.

Nikola Zigic's first season at St Andrew's ended in mixed emotions for Birmingham fans

By the start of 2011, Birmingham's season wasn't going very well, with the team in 19th in the Premier League on New Year's Day. And things weren't going that well for Zigic, either. It took him until the middle of October to score his first League goal for his new club, their only goal in a 2-1 defeat at Arsenal, and that was the only goal he scored for them in the League before the start of February.

But the EFL Cup was a different matter. A tempestuous quarter-final match against fierce rivals Aston Villa at the start of December enhanced his reputation, when he scuffed in the deciding goal with six minutes to play to secure the Blues a 2-1 win and a place in the semi-finals.

January was a better month for them. A 2-1 win at Blackpool lifted them out of the relegation places, but more importantly, a two-legged win against West Ham United in the semi-finals sent them to Wembley for a place in the final against Arsenal.

At the start of February, a run of goalscoring finally broke his League drought. He scored three in three games - including a stoppage-time winner in a crucial game against Stoke - which lifted them from 17th to 14th in time for the EFL Cup final against Arsenal.

Birmingham were long outsiders to win this match, but Zigic left his mark on Wembley, scoring with a close-range header early on and then earning an assist for Obafemi Martin's 89th-minute winner. It was only their second-ever major trophy, having previously won the same competition in 1963.

Birmingham's 2011 Wembley triumph proved a disastrous distraction

At the time of Birmingham's EFL Cup triumph, things were exceptionally tight at the bottom of the Premier League, with just three points separating the bottom six in the division. Birmingham were 16th by this time, but the team took their eye off the ball in the League.

By the middle of March they'd slipped into the relegation places before two wins and a draw hauled them back up to 14th, but a disastrous run at the end of the season proved their undoing. They could only manage one point from their final six league games of the season and were relegated by a single point on the last day of the season following a 2-1 defeat away to Spurs.

WIthin a couple of seasons, Birmingham were in financial trouble and Zigic's wages were starting to become an issue. Their first season back in the Championship had ended with them losing in the play-offs to Blackpool after having finished 4th in the table, while their Europa League adventure ended in the group stages when they were edged down to third place in their group by a point, with Club Brugge and Sporting Braga occupying the top two places. Finances were starting to become an issue.

In the summer of 2012, Zigic nearly went to Real Mallorca on a free transfer as Birmingham desperately sought to reduce their wage bill. But that move fell through, and by February 2013 he was earning the ire of manager Lee Clark over what Clark described as "the worst training session … I have ever come across."

He ended that season as their second-highest goalscorer behind Marlon King. At the end of the season, King, Peter Lovenkrands, Darren Ambrose and Hayden Mullins all left the club as they sought to balance their books, but - not for the first time - there were no takers for Zigic.

The 2013-14 season was very nearly a calamitous one for Birmingham. A team shorn of its best players struggled all season, and a run of one point from their last six games of the season almost sent them down, with only a stoppage-time equaliser for a 2-2 draw at Bolton scored by Richard Caddis keeping them up and sending Doncaster Rovers down instead, on goal difference. Zigic scored their first goal as they clawed their way back into the match after having gone 2-0 down.

His contract expired that summer but, without a club following his departure, he continued to train with the Blues and signed a new temporary contract with the club, but he only made nine League appearances for them that season, failed to score at all, and was released at the end of the season. By this time approaching 35 years of age, he retired from playing altogether at the end of the 2014-15 season.

Nikola Zigic wrote his name into Birmingham City folklore during that EFL Cup run in 2010-11. Birmingham haven't returned to the Premier League since, and the ambition of the club's new owners is to end that drought. With that may come new heroes and club legends.

But much of the last 15 years has been a miserable experience for Blues fans, with only last season providing evidence of a corner having been turned. His wages may have been higher than his club could really afford, but at least Zigic provided the club's long-suffering supporters with a couple of moments that will long in their memories, becoming something of a cult hero in the process.