When Birmingham City Ladies walk out at Wembley on Saturday they will be confronted by the best elements of their past and by a vision of the future they hope to embrace. Among what should be a record FA Women’s Cup final crowd will be figures from the days when, back in the 1970s, a thinly staffed club began asserting itself on a regional level. Now they take part in the biggest occasion the domestic game has seen and it is a reason to look both forwards and back.

“It represents the journey of the club from its grassroots days and being led by volunteers to where we are now,” says Heather Cowan, the general manager. “This is a big deal for us and we’re relishing everything that goes with it. We’ll be supported by ex-players and people who helped set the club up all those years ago, so it’s a kind of celebration.”

Yet Birmingham are also in this to win it and, although it is tempting to frame this final as something approaching a meeting between David and Goliath – big-spending arrivistes Manchester City against opponents with a solid track record at the top but no explicit designs on world domination – that would be a disservice to the set-up Cowan oversees. Birmingham are Women’s Super League mainstays and finished fourth last season; they have beaten two of the sides above them, Arsenal and Chelsea, in their cup run and it is hardly a stretch to imagine them accounting for a third.

“If we were just looking at budgets it would seem like [a mismatch] but in terms of our infrastructure, the quality of our players and the pedigree we have, it’s probably less of a difference than the accounting books suggest,” Cowan says.

“We’re going there to win and be very competitive, just as we have since the start of the WSL [in 2011]. We’ve probably had only one poor season since then; perhaps a lot of people think we punch above our weight but we don’t really view it that way.”

Birmingham finished runners-up in the league’s first season, repeating the trick a year later. They reached the Champions League semi-finals in 2013-14 and sandwiched among these achievements is a victory in their previous FA Cup final appearance, when they defeated Chelsea on penalties at Ashton Gate in 2012. It is only in the last couple of years, with foreign stars such as Kosovare Asllani and more recently Carli Lloyd arriving in Manchester, that Manchester City’s resources have threatened to pull them clear of the others and Cowan believes there are two ways of viewing the significant investments being made.

“It’s probably better for the game if we don’t have one or two clubs that are racing away with things financially but equally you want standards to be raised all the time. Keeping things from being too predictable is important but we don’t want to stop clubs from investing in women’s teams or stop players earning what clubs are willing to pay them. It’s a really fine balance and one that we perhaps haven’t got 100% right yet across the league.”

Birmingham have begun to move with the times themselves. The club’s structure is sound and was enhanced in November when it was fully integrated within Birmingham City Football Club following the takeover by Trillion Trophy Asia. If the battle against relegation – successfully won last weekend – endured by the men’s team after the removal of Gary Rowett was not part of the new owners’ plan, a cup final appearance is significantly more palatable and it appears the aim is to step up the level of resource from which the women benefit.

“I can see the progress but it’s happening in a really thoughtful kind of way,” says Cowan, who first began working for Birmingham 15 years ago and returned for a second spell last September. “There’s investment but it’s not to the club’s risk or detriment. I feel they’re doing it properly and in a sustainable, long-term way. We’ve got a duty – it’s a club with a rich history and we need to make sure we look after it for the future.”

Before the semi-final win over Chelsea the Birmingham striker Ellen White spoke of a need to alter the club’s mindset in big games. White said the team “don’t really like the term ‘underdogs’ any more” and subsequently asserted their supremacy by scoring the decisive spot-kick in another shootout win against the London club. Birmingham, who are coached by Marc Skinner, have drawn 1-1 at Manchester City in the controversial Spring Series competition since then; perhaps the playing field really is more level than it looks. If that is the case, the old hands sitting among a Wembley attendance that is expected to top 35,000 – a significant improvement on the 8,723 in Bristol five years ago – may well find themselves celebrating the ultimate crystallisation of that long haul from the grassroots.