Everton U21

The side traces its own line back further than most reserve teams bother to check — Everton fielded a second string in the Liverpool Senior Cup as early as 1884, only a handful of years after the senior club dropped the name St Domingo's. What has never settled since is where it actually plays. For long spells the Under-21s used the Merseyrail Community Stadium in Southport, a 6,008-capacity ground with no direct tie to Everton at all. A handful of games each season still get moved to Goodison Park or, now, the Hill Dickinson Stadium, usually when the draw against Liverpool's Under-21s or a cup run pulls in a crowd too big for a training pitch to hold.

That derby against Liverpool carries the weight of the fixture a level down, minus the occasion. Everton's youth sides have also collected FA Youth Cups across three different decades and a run of regional honours in the Lancashire and Liverpool Senior Cups, evidence of a production line that has rarely stopped turning out players. What it has not turned into, not since the 2019 Premier League 2 title, is another trophy at that level — the next name to break through the way Davies and Holgate did is still waiting to be found.