Everton v Aston Villa

Twelve clubs. One bold proposal. A fixture born in 1888 that has barely left the calendar since.

When William McGregor of Aston Villa proposed a regular fixture programme for the country's leading clubs, both Villa and Everton were among the twelve founding members of the Football League. The first season kicked off on 8 September 1888. Villa finished second; Everton eighth. The fixture between the two was established from the very first campaign, and it has barely left the calendar since.

The blueprint for every great English ground was drawn here first, in 1892.

After a dispute with their Anfield landlord, Everton moved across Stanley Park and opened Goodison Park in August 1892. It was the first major purpose-built football ground in England, and its construction set a template for stadium design that others would follow. The ground hosted its first match on 2 September 1892, a friendly against Bolton Wanderers.

Villa's 1896-97 Double made them only the second club in history to conquer both competitions in a single season.

The 1890s belonged to both clubs. Everton won their first league championship in 1890-91, while Villa claimed five titles between 1894 and 1900. The pinnacle came in 1896-97, when Villa won both the League and the FA Cup to complete the Double, only the second club in history to achieve the feat. Meetings between the two were genuine clashes of the era's elite.

Sixty goals in a single season; Dixie Dean was not a footballer so much as a force of nature Villa's defence dreaded meeting.

The interwar years saw both clubs yo-yo between triumph and struggle. Everton, powered by the legendary Dixie Dean and his record 60 league goals in 1927-28, won the title in 1928, 1932, and the FA Cup in 1933. Villa, meanwhile, won the Cup in 1920 but were relegated for the first time in 1936. The fixture remained a staple of the top flight throughout, with Dean's physical presence making him a particular handful for Villa's defenders.

Goodison's finest hour: a World Cup semi-final graced a ground Villa had visited for decades.

Goodison Park was selected as a venue for the 1966 FIFA World Cup, hosting five matches including a semi-final between West Germany and the Soviet Union. It was recognition of the ground's stature as one of England's finest. Everton themselves had won the league in 1963 under Harry Catterick, and the club's profile was at a peak. The World Cup brought an international spotlight to a ground that Villa players knew well from decades of visits.

Villa slew Bayern in Rotterdam; Everton answered with silverware of their own just three years on.

Aston Villa stunned European football in 1982, beating Bayern Munich 1-0 in the European Cup final in Rotterdam. It remains one of the great underdog stories in the competition's history. Just three years later, Everton matched Villa's continental ambition by winning the European Cup Winners' Cup in 1985, alongside the league title. The mid-1980s saw both clubs operating at the highest level, and their league meetings carried genuine weight.

Villa were runners-up in the Premier League's very first season; Everton were nearly out of it by the second.

Both Everton and Aston Villa were founding members of the Premier League in 1992. Villa finished runners-up in the inaugural season under Ron Atkinson, their best top-flight finish in decades. Everton, by contrast, endured a difficult transition, narrowly avoiding relegation in 1993-94. The fixture continued as a regular Premier League encounter, though both clubs found themselves increasingly in the shadow of the division's emerging superpowers.

Three seasons in the Championship was the price Villa paid for 24 years at the top.

Aston Villa's relegation from the Premier League in 2016 ended 24 consecutive seasons in the top flight and temporarily removed this fixture from the calendar. Villa spent three seasons in the Championship before winning promotion via the play-offs in 2019. Their return restored one of the division's oldest pairings, and the fixture has been a regular feature of the Premier League schedule since.

After 133 years, Goodison's terraced streets give way to a 52,888-seat arena on the River Mersey.

After 133 years at Goodison Park, Everton are relocating to their new 52,888-capacity stadium at Bramley-Moore Dock on Liverpool's waterfront for the 2025-26 season. The move means Villa's visits to Merseyside will take on a dramatically different backdrop, swapping the tight terraced streets of Walton for a purpose-built arena on the banks of the River Mersey. It marks the end of one of football's longest-standing home grounds and the beginning of a new chapter for this historic fixture.