Man, sometimes you just get a bee in your bonnet about something totally random. I was sitting here, trying to figure out what to do with a mountain of old newspaper clippings my grandad left me—you know, the kind of paper that turns to dust if you breathe on it too hard—and I stumbled across an article from, like, 1929. It mentioned Everton playing Brentford. And I thought, wait a minute, when the heck did they actually start playing each other regularly? We only see them now, but I knew there must be ancient history.
So, I got started digging. I mean, I really dove into the archives. I spent three full days sitting in front of my beat-up old monitor, squinting at microfiche records online, cross-referencing ancient league tables, and even calling up a mate who collects obscure football programs just to see what he had filed away. It was a proper detective job. Most people just look at the last five games, but I wanted the whole damn timeline.
The Great Silence: Finding the Forgotten Early Clashes
The first thing I realized was how scattered this history is. This isn’t Liverpool vs. Manchester United where every game is logged in stone. For decades, these two clubs barely looked at each other. They were floating around different divisions, worlds apart. I had to piece together those initial scraps from way back when.
I found that the real starting gun was fired before the Second World War. They met up in the top flight, but only briefly. These were the moments that set the whole thing rolling:
- 1924/25: The First FA Cup Meeting. I tracked down the result. Everton absolutely hammered them, 4-0. That must’ve been a rough trip home for the Brentford lads. This was the first proof I needed—the initial official clash.
- The 1930s Top-Flight Runs. Brentford actually had a decent spell up high in the mid-thirties. I found records of tense league games, often low-scoring affairs. That’s when they built their initial, albeit small, bank of history. Then, boom, the war happened, the leagues shuffled, and they vanished from each other’s view for what felt like forever.
I swear, trying to find anything about them playing between 1955 and 1990 was like trying to find a needle in a haystack. I scrolled through dozens of season summaries, just to confirm they were nowhere near each other in the divisions. They existed in parallel universes, only to be yanked back together by the cups.
The Cup Encounters and Modern Resurgence
The next big chunk of history I had to painstakingly log came from the League Cup, or whatever they were calling it back then. These were usually messy, one-off nights under the lights, far less glamorous than the league games.
I specifically remember hunting down the details of the 1992 League Cup tie. I remember arguing with a guy in a pub about this result years ago. I finally found the official record: Everton won 2-0. That felt good, finally settling a decades-old bar argument just by doing this research. It proved my point!
But the real, seismic shift, the one that made this whole timeline a hot topic again, was their recent reunion. Brentford’s rise to the Premier League changed everything. Now, these games are annual events, packed with drama.
I compiled the data focusing on the modern era, starting from 2021. This is where the intensity really hits:
- September 2021: The Return. First league meeting in nearly 75 years, I think. Brentford won 1-0 at home. It was massive for them. That day, I remember sitting there and realizing, “Okay, this fixture matters again.”
- The 2022 Fixture at Goodison Park. This one was wild. I had to re-watch the highlights several times just to get the sequence of events right—Brentford won 3-2 after Everton went down to ten men, then nine men. It was pure chaos. I made sure to mark down that moment as arguably the biggest upset in the modern history of this matchup. It was a turning point.
My Conclusion and Final Log
So, what was the biggest takeaway from all this work I put in over the weekend? It’s not just about who won or lost. It’s about how context changes everything. You have the ancient history—the initial scraps of the 1920s and 30s. Then you have the massive, silent period where they were just two ships passing in the night.
And then, you get the modern intensity. I logged every single recent match because they all feel like six-pointers now, especially with Everton’s recent struggles. The fact that Brentford has often managed to beat Everton since their Premier League promotion is what makes the current timeline so spicy. If you look at the full historical log I managed to compile, Everton is clearly ahead overall, thanks to those long-ago wins. But right now, Brentford is definitely making up for lost time.
I feel better now. I managed to organize the whole thing, prove a point to myself about that 1992 game, and I have a perfect reference for the next time someone asks me about the history of this seemingly unremarkable fixture. It just goes to show, you gotta dig deep if you want the real story, not just the highlights reel.