Aston Villa Women

Birmingham's second club has never had the same pull on a Sunday afternoon as its neighbours across town, but the women's side that plays under the Aston Villa badge grew out of a much smaller venture: a group of supporters who formed Solihull F.C. in 1973. The team took on Villa's colours in 1989, when it affiliated with the men's club and became Villa Aztecs, and only in 1996 did it take the Aston Villa name outright, becoming Aston Villa Ladies before a further rename to Aston Villa Women in 2019. Proper investment from the men's club began in 2004, and Villa took full ownership of the women's side in 2007.

Rachel Daly's arrival from Birmingham City in 2022 gave the club its clearest recent identity: in her first season in claret and blue she scored 22 goals to win the WSL Golden Boot, the first English woman to reach 20 in a single WSL campaign. Promotion to the WSL itself had come two years earlier, in 2020, after the club won the Championship under Gemma Davies — a return to the top flight the club had left in 2004. Carla Ward then carried the side through until 2024, before Natalia Arroyo took over in January 2025.

From the 2024–25 season the team has played its home matches at Villa Park itself, moving on from spells at Walsall's Bescot Stadium and The Lamb; the ground's North Stand redevelopment currently leaves capacity reduced to 36,887 from its listed 43,205.

No fixture matters more than the one against Birmingham City. The Second City Derby carries the weight of a rivalry that predates the women's game in Birmingham by generations, and it is sharpened further by Daly's own switch from one side of the divide to the other. Matches against West Bromwich Albion and Wolverhampton Wanderers, grouped as the West Midlands Derby, sit a rung below it in intensity.