Villa for allegedly "tapping up" McLeish, who resigned as Blues manager on 12 June 2011, while he was still under contract at Birmingham City. McLeish's appointment marked the first time in history that a manager had moved directly from Birmingham City to Aston Villa. On 14 May 2012, one day after the 2011–12 Premier League season ended, McLeish was sacked as Villa manager after a massively disappointing one season in charge. The EFL Championship Era After being relegated in 2011, Birmingham are still yet to gain promotion back to the top flight of English football. However, since Alex McLeish was sacked as Villa manager, Villa's poor form continued. Despite several manager changes over the next few years, after several close calls they were finally relegated at the end of the 2015/16 season. Earlier on in the 2015/16 season, the two teams were drawn to play each other in the third round of the League Cup. Aston Villa ran out 1–0 winners thanks to a goal from Rudy Gestede. In the 2016–17 season the two teams faced off in the second tier of English football for the first time since 1987. The first game at St Andrew's ended in a 1–1 draw. Villa won the second match 1–0 with a 69th-minute goal scored by Agbonlahor. The two sides faced each other again in the league during the 2017/18 season, producing a dismal 0–0 draw at St. Andrews marred by Birmingham fans throwing clappers at the Villa players all throughout the game, before Villa emphatically fortified their second city superiority with a 2–0 victory in front of 41,232 spectators at Villa Park. Some fans believed this game to be a coming of age for lifelong Villa fan and local Jack Grealish, who produced a match-winning man-of-the-match display. The teams next met on 25 November in one of the most exciting derby games in recent times, Villa ran out 4-2 winners after goals from Jonathan Kodjia, Jack Grealish, a Tammy Abraham penalty and Alan Hutton who ran half the length of the pitch to score, Pedersen and Lukas Jutkiewicz scored for Birmingham. On 10 March 2019, a Birmingham City fan invaded the pitch during the reverse fixture at St. Andrew's and assaulted Aston Villa captain Jack Grealish on the pitch by punching him from behind in the head, which was labelled as "disgraceful and cowardly" by supporters of both teams. The man was