Aston Villa U21

The age-group side traces its competitive life back to 1892, when Aston Villa first entered a reserve team into organised football, eighteen years after the senior club itself had been formed. What it produces has mattered more than what it wins: Gareth Barry, Jack Grealish and Gabriel Agbonlahor all came through the same building blocks before the first team took over their careers.

Honours have followed in phases rather than a steady run. Between 1902 and 1910 the reserves took the Birmingham Senior Cup eight years running, a run that belonged to a different era of the competition. More recently the side won the Premier League Cup in 2018-19 and the NextGen Series in 2012-13. Kevin MacDonald shaped much of that period from the touchline, coaching the age groups for more than two decades and stepping into first-team caretaker charge on several occasions before his departure in 2019.

None of it carries the noise of the derby against Birmingham City, which exists at this level too, played out in front of the same few hundred at Bodymoor Heath who know the names before anyone else does.