Aston Villa Football Club is a professional football club based in Aston, Birmingham, England. Founded in 1874, it competes in the Premier League, the top tier of English football, and has played at its home ground, Villa Park, since 1897. Aston Villa is one of the oldest and most successful clubs in England, having won the Football League First Division seven times, the FA Cup seven times, the League Cup five times, as well as the European Cup, European Super Cup, and Europa League once.
During the 1880s, Aston Villa were a pioneer of the modern passing game, introduced by Scotsman George Ramsay, who Villa appointed as the world's first professional football manager in 1886. The club was influential in the sport's move to professionalism in 1885, and it was a Villa director, William McGregor, who founded the world's first Football League in 1888. Ramsay's trophy haul of six League Championships and six FA Cups established Aston Villa as the most successful club in England, a position it held from the 1890s until the 1970s.
Villa scored a record 128 goals in 1930–31, however the club began its first decline in the mid-1930s; the 1940s and 1950s were generally a period of mediocrity followed by a steep decline in the 1960s which culminated in a takeover of the club by Doug Ellis in 1968 and Villa's first and only relegation to the third tier of English football in 1969–70. Villa returned to the top tier from the mid-1970s under manager Ron Saunders, who led the club to a seventh top-flight league title in 1980–81. They became only the fourth English club to win the European Cup, in 1981–82, followed by victory in the 1982 European Super Cup. In 1992, Aston Villa were founding members of the Premier League, one of only three sides to have been a founding member of both the Football League and the Premier League. Throughout the 1990s and early 2000s, Villa regularly qualified for European football, but following a period of decline after the departure of Martin O'Neill the club suffered its only relegation from the Premier League in 2015–16. After three seasons in the EFL Championship and two ownership changes, the club returned to the Premier League in 2019. Under Unai Emery, the club qualified for the UEFA Champions League for the first time since 1982–83 and won the Europa League in 2025–26.
During its history, Villa has spent 113 seasons in the top-flight, the second highest of any club, and has provided 78 England internationals, also the second highest of any club. Aston Villa is ranked fifth in the all-time English top flight table since its creation in 1888, and is the seventh most successful club in English football by competitive honours. Villa have a fierce local rivalry with Birmingham City and the Second City derby between the teams has been played since 1879. There is also a local rivalry with West Bromwich Albion, with matches between the sides known as the West Midlands derby. The club's traditional kit colours are claret shirts with sky blue sleeves, white shorts and sky blue socks, and its traditional club badge features a rampant lion. The club has been fully owned by V Sports since 2019.
History
Formation and rise to prominence (1874−1886)
Aston Villa are believed to have formed on 21 November 1874, by members of the Aston Villa Wesleyan Chapel in Handsworth: which is now part of Birmingham. The chapel stood at Villa Cross, a road junction whose name derived from a house known as Aston Villa, a suburban Georgian villa that over time had given its name to the surrounding locality. The four founders of Aston Villa Football Club were Jack Hughes, George Matthews, Walter Price and William Scattergood, who were members of the chapel's cricket team looking for a way to stay fit during the winter months. Having watched a fellow member of their Bible class playing in a rugby match, they paused beneath a dim gas lamp near Villa Cross and agreed that rugby was a little too rough, deciding instead to play association football.A Football Jubilee, John Hughes, Sunday Mercury & Sunday News 9 March 1924 The meeting beneath the gas lamp is traditionally regarded as the birth of Aston Villa F.C.
Due to the lack of local football teams Aston Villa's first match was against the local Aston Brook St Mary's Rugby team. As a condition of the match, the Villa side had to agree to play the first half under Rugby rules and the second half under Association rules. Villa won their first game 1–0.Ward, Adam; Griffin, Jeremy; p. 6. The infant club's fortunes changed forever when a young Scotsman called George Ramsay stumbled across the Villa players' practice match in Aston Park in 1876. He was asked to make up the numbers, and they were amazed by his skills; they had never seen such a display of close ball control before. When the game was over, the Villa players surrounded him and invited him to join the club and become their captain.
Word spread about how fine a player Ramsay was, spectators began turning up to watch the little man nicknamed "Scotty". He also took charge of training, Ramsay later described the newly formed club's approach to the game as "a dash at the man and a big kick at the ball". On the other hand, Ramsay had been influenced by the Scottish club Queen's Park, who pioneered what became known as "combination football" in his native Glasgow. The intricate passing game he introduced was a revolutionary move for an English club in the late 1870s. Villa began to establish themselves as one of the best teams in the Midlands, winning their first honour, the Birmingham Senior Cup in 1880. The club went on to lift the trophy nine times in the next 12 seasons.
Victorian and Edwardian golden age (1886–1914)
Following the professionalisation of football in 1885, the club decided that it needed a full-time paid manager. The following advert was placed in the Birmingham Daily Gazette newspaper in June 1886: Villa received 150 applicants for the role, but with his strong association with the club George Ramsay was the overwhelming choice of the membership. Thus on 26 June 1886, Aston Villa appointed what has been described as the world's first professional football manager. During the following season Aston Villa rose to national prominence, as the first Midlands team to win the FA Cup in 1887. Villa's captain, the powerful Scottish centre-forward Archie Hunter, became one of the game's first household names, being the first player to score in every round of the FA Cup. Aston Villa were one of the dozen teams that competed in the inaugural Football League in 1888 with one of the club's directors, William McGregor being the league's founder. Following the professionalisation of football in 1885, clubs needed regular income to pay their players' wages. Frequently friendlies were cancelled due to opponents' FA Cup or county cup matches or clubs simply failed to honour a fixture in favour of a more lucrative match elsewhere.
McGregor took action after seeing Villa matches cancelled, to the increasing frustration of the club's fans, on five consecutive Saturdays. In March 1888, he wrote to the committee of his own club, Aston Villa, as well as to those of Blackburn Rovers, Bolton Wanderers, Preston North End and West Bromwich Albion, suggesting the creation of a league competition that would provide a number of guaranteed fixtures for its member clubs each season. Following two meetings between representatives of the leading clubs, the world's first Football League season began in September 1888 with 12 member clubs from the Midlands and north of England: Accrington, Aston Villa, Blackburn Rovers, Bolton Wanderers, Burnley, Derby County, Everton, Notts County, Preston North End, Stoke, West Bromwich Albion and Wolverhampton Wanderers.
Despite Villa founding the league, by 1893 they had yet to win it. Villa Committee Member Frederick Rinder was the instigator of a club meeting at Barwick Street in February 1893 that removed the committee running the club at the time. All fourteen committee members resigned and were replaced by a committee of five led by Rinder after he gave a rousing speech criticising the board's tolerance of ill discipline and players' drinking. On the pitch, manager George Ramsay was moulding a team that became renowned for its short, quick combination passing which saw Villa win its first league title in 1893–94; the season after that the club won its second FA Cup in 1894-95. This was followed by back-to-back League titles in 1895–96 and 1896–97.
Aston Villa emerged as the most successful English club of the Victorian era, winning no fewer than five League titles and three FA Cups by the end of Queen Victoria's reign in 1901.Ward, Adam; Griffin, Jeremy; p. 192. Villa's captain during this era was Birmingham-born forward John Devey, who enjoyed a successful partnership with the lightning-fast winger Charlie Athersmith and marshalling Villa's defence was the tough-tackling Scotsman James Cowan, who had an unrivalled sense of timing and anticipation. In 1897, the year Villa won The Double, they moved into their present home, the Aston Lower Grounds.Ward, Adam; Griffin, Jeremy; pp. 33–36. Supporters coined the name "Villa Park"; no official declaration listed the ground as Villa Park.Hayes, Dean; p. 170.
Success continued into the Edwardian era, with Villa lifting the FA Cup for the fourth time in 1904–05, and a sixth league title in 1909–10. A further FA Cup triumph was achieved on the eve of the First World War in 1913, with the club narrowly missing out on winning a second Double, finishing runners-up in the league. Star players during this era included Howard Spencer, the cultured defender who captained both Villa and England, and the prolific strike force of Joe Bache and Harry Hampton who between them scored 382 goals in claret and blue.
Relative decline and first relegation (1920–1939)
In January 1920, Billy Walker scored twice on his Villa debut in a 2–1 FA Cup first-round win over QPR; the club won the FA Cup for the sixth time that season and Walker went on to establish himself as Villa's star player of the 1920s, scoring a record 244 goals in 531 appearances, captaining Villa and England. George Ramsay retired in 1926, at the age of 71, and his replacement Billy Smith was unable to continue Ramsay's success. In reality, several other football clubs had caught up with Aston Villa, most notably Arsenal, to which the club finished runners-up in the league in 1930–31 and 1932–33. Despite missing out on the league title, Villa Park crowds were entertained by attacking football; the 128 goals scored in the 1930–31 season remains the all-time top-flight record. A remarkable 49 of the league goals that season were scored by centre-forward Tom 'Pongo' Waring, with another 30 goals from winger Eric Houghton.
The club appointed Jimmy McMullan as manager in 1934, however, the move proved disastrous, resulting in Villa's first ever relegation in 1935–36 after 48 years in the top flight. Villa struggled largely due to a dismal defensive record: they conceded 110 goals in 42 games, 7 of them coming from Arsenal's Ted Drake in an infamous 1–7 defeat at Villa Park.Ward, Adam; Griffin, Jeremy; p. 71. The club made seven signings and spent a staggering sum for the time of £35,500 trying to retain top-flight status at all costs, but were unable to buy their way out of trouble. Aston Villa, at the time one of the most famous and successful clubs in world football, was relegated in 1936 for the first time in its history.