Aston Villa FC was formed in 1874 by members of the cricket team attached to the Aston Villa Wesleyan Methodist Chapel in Birmingham who wanted to establish a winter activity. Villa quickly became one of the best teams in the Midlands, winning its first FA Cup in 1887. Founder members of the Football League in 1888, Aston Villa was one of the dozen teams that competed in the inaugural season. Villa emerged as the most successful English club of the Victorian era, with numerous League titles and FA Cup wins. In 1897, the year Villa won The Double, they moved into their present home, the Aston Lower Grounds which supporters dubbed "Villa Park".   After Aston Villa won their sixth FA Cup in 1920, the club began a slow decline that led to relegation in 1936 for the first time to the Second Division. 

The club re-emerged after the Second World War and won its’ first trophy for 37 years in the 1956–57 when they defeated the 'Busby Babes' of Manchester United in the final. The team was relegated two seasons later.  Villa returned to the top flight in 1960 as Second Division Champions and the following season  won the inaugural League Cup.  Success was once again followed by decline and Villa was relegated for the third time in 1967. The following season the fans succeeding in forcing the entire board to resign as Villa, with mounting debts, finished 16th in the Second Division. However, new ownership could not prevent Villa being relegated to the Third Division for the first time at the end of the 1969–70 season.  They returned to the Second Division at the end of the  1971–72 season  asseason as Champions with a record 70 points. 

In 1973 Ron Saunders was appointed manager and by 1977 he had taken them back into the First Division winning the Championship in 1980-81.  Saunders quit halfway through the 1981–82 season, after falling out with the chairman, with Villa in the quarter final of the European Cup. He was replaced by assistant manager Tony Barton who guided them to 1–0 victory over Bayern Munich in the European Cup final in Rotterdam. Villa declined for the rest of the decade culminating in relegation in 1987. This was followed by promotion the following year and second place in the football League in 1989. Villa was one of the founding members of the Premier League in 1992, and finished runners-up to Manchester United in the inaugural season. In the rest of the nineties however Villa went through three different managers and their league positions were inconsistent, although they did win two League Cups (1994 and 1996). Villa reached the FA Cup final in 2000 (for the first time since 1957) but lost 1–0 to Chelsea in the last game to be played at the old Wembley Stadium.  Once again Villa's league position fluctuated under several different managers. The arrival of a new owner and manager marked the start of a new period of optimism at Villa but the sudden resignation of Martin O’Neill as manager just five days before the start of the new season in August 2010 led once again to a period of uncertainty with neither Gerard Houllier nor Alex McLeish unable to halt a decline in form. The club did reach the FA Cup Final in 2014-15 (lossing 4-0 to Arsenal) but there was a sense of inevitability about it when the club was finally relegated after a disasterous 2015-16 campaign. The club returned to the Premier League in 2019.