Everton v Aston Villa is the original Old Firm with clubs meeting for 212th time

Two ancient foes collide again. Mighty founder members of the Football League, with their proud histories and underwhelming recent pasts, and an interwoven narrative making theirs the most-contested of all top-flight fixtures.

On Sunday in Liverpool, they engage for the 212th time in the competition, the 231st time in all, and records are so astonishingly tight there are but four wins and three goals separating them across 135 years.

They have 34 major trophies between them — at least one in each decade from the birth of organised football to the dawn of this millennium, minus the 1940s when war intervened.

Aston Villa were prolific before the First World War, and Everton, the second ever champions after Preston North End, steadier and more consistent, with flourishes in the 1930s enriched by the goals of Dixie Dean, and the 60s inspired by the hallowed midfield of Alan Ball, Howard Kendall and Colin Harvey.

Almost 30 years have passed since either won anything significant, however, and they last ruled as the kings of English football in a golden era born out of their epic League Cup final trilogy in 1977.

It started with a bore draw at Wembley and ended more than a month later when Brian Little made it 3-2 to Villa in the 119th minute of the second replay, at Old Trafford.

Heartache for Everton, searching for their first trophy since the title in 1970.

‘Oh, there was a time when I detested Aston Villa,’ admits Derek Mountfield, only partly in jest as he recalls his angst as a teenage Evertonian on that night.

He was a devotee who sang his heart out on the Gwladys Street End long before he became integral to Everton’s great team of the 80s, and later moved to Villa Park, and that defeat still rankled when Chris Nicholl was his