AstonVilla

There are old clubs, and then there is Aston Villa — a club so deeply woven into the fabric of the English game that the game itself might not exist without it. When the 2026–27 season kicked off, Villa did so as reigning Europa League champions, a giant in transition: a summer rebuild has stripped the squad of some of its biggest names and handed manager Unai Emery a fresh puzzle. The history says this club always finds a way back to the top table. The present says the climb is underway again — and the rest of the Premier League should be nervous.

The roots run to 1874, when members of the Villa Cross Wesleyan Chapel in Aston, Birmingham, formed a football team. Within two decades, a Villa director named William McGregor looked at the chaotic fixture arrangements of Victorian football and decided to organise it: in 1888 he founded the Football League, the world's first league competition, and Villa were at the table from day one. Two years earlier the club had appointed Scotsman George Ramsay as secretary-manager — the first professional football manager in history — and Ramsay's revolutionary passing game built a team that dominated English football at the turn of the century. Villa collected six league championships and six FA Cups between 1894 and 1913, added a seventh of each by 1981, and finished the 20th century as England's most successful club.

Villa Park has been the home of all of it since 1897, when the club moved into the Aston Lower Grounds — once part of a Victorian amusement park on the grounds of Aston Hall, the Jacobean stately home. It is one of English football's great old grounds: the Holte End is among the largest stands in the country, the stadium has hosted more FA Cup semi-finals (55) than anywhere else, and England have played 17 senior internationals there. This season brings change off the pitch too: the North Stand is closed for the entire 2026–27 campaign for redevelopment, temporarily cutting capacity to around 37,000 on the way to a 50,000-plus arena planned for the following year. Reduced capacity has made Villa Park tickets gold dust — and somehow made the noise even louder.

One night defines the club's place in history. On 26 May 1982, in Rotterdam's De Kuip stadium, Villa faced Bayern Munich in the European Cup final having been crowned league champions the season before. Peter Withe's scuffed 67th-minute finish beat the great Belgian keeper Jean-Marie Pfaff for 1–0, and 23-year-old reserve goalkeeper Nigel Spink — thrown on after just nine minutes when Jimmy Rimmer injured his shoulder — kept a clean sheet on his European debut. Captain Dennis Mortimer lifted the trophy; Villa remain one of only a handful of English clubs ever to win the European Cup, and they added the European Super Cup the following season. The 1980–81 league title had come under Ron Saunders; Tony Barton took the European crown after Saunders resigned mid-season.

The club was a founder of the Premier League in 1992 and finished runners-up in its very first season, but the decades that followed drifted: ownership changes, false dawns, and in 2016 a calamitous relegation that ended 29 years of top-flight football. Three years in the Championship followed. The rescue came in 2018 when American billionaire Wes Edens and Egyptian billionaire Nassef Sawiris bought the club, Dean Smith led the 2019 play-off final win over Derby at Wembley, and Villa were back — even if the £100 million sale of boyhood fan Jack Grealish to Manchester City in 2021 broke every heart in Birmingham.

Unai Emery's arrival in October 2022 changed everything. The Basque tactical obsessive transformed a relegation-threatened side into European qualifiers within months, then delivered fourth place in 2023–24 and a Champions League quarter-final run in 2024–25 that only ended in a five-goal thriller against Paris Saint-Germain. Then came the night that rewrote the modern story: the 2025–26 Europa League triumph — Villa's first European trophy in 43 years — sealed Champions League football and a place in August's UEFA Super Cup, where PSG edged them 2–1 in a classic.

The summer of 2026 was the price of success. Europa League glory made Villa's stars the most wanted men in England, and the rebuild was real: goalkeeper Emiliano Martínez and the brilliant Morgan Rogers both departed for Chelsea, while Emery reinvested boldly — prising Alejandro Garnacho away from Manchester United as the marquee arrival and bringing Tammy Abraham back to England to lead the line, a proven Premier League goalscorer with a point to prove. The early results show a team still finding its shape: a statement 3–2 win at Tottenham on 19 September, but also a 4–0 humbling at Brighton, a 1–0 home defeat to Arsenal, a goalless draw at Hull and a 1–2 home loss to Nottingham Forest — a 1-1-3 record that has the Champions League nights as the current highlight, including a 3–2 September win at Club Brugge.

The bones of a great side are still here. John McGinn, the captain, remains the soul of the dressing room — tireless, two-footed, born for the big occasion. Amadou Onana and Boubacar Kamara form one of the league's most physically imposing midfield partnerships, Pau Torres quarterbacks everything from centre-back in the classic Emery mould, Ian Maatsen flies down the left and Matty Cash brings relentless energy on the right. And then there is the fixture that still matters most in this part of the world: the Second City derby against Birmingham City, a rivalry contested since 1879. After a summer of change, the old certainties — the claret and blue, the Holte End in full voice, the weight of that 1982 night — remain. Villa's history was built by men who organised the game itself. Emery's task is simpler and harder: make the present match the past.