A derby loses nothing when you don’t know the result. What changes the way you watch is knowing why these two clubs are not like any other fixture on the calendar. Here is where each of the Premier League’s main rivalries actually started.
North London derby (Arsenal v Tottenham)
One of the deepest grudges in English football, and the cause was a house move.
Arsenal began life in Woolwich, in south-east London. Financial trouble pushed the club north in 1913, to Highbury — a few kilometres from Tottenham’s ground, in territory Tottenham already considered theirs. It read as an invasion. The resentment then spread into the institutional side of the game: the circumstances of Arsenal’s promotion to the First Division after the First World War were disputed for decades afterwards.
So this rivalry did not begin as a competition for trophies. It began as a claim on territory. A relocation from more than a century ago still sets the temperature on matchday.
Merseyside derby (Liverpool v Everton)
This one is a split, not an invasion. Everton played at Anfield first. In 1892 a dispute with the ground’s owner over rent led Everton to leave for Goodison Park — and a new club, Liverpool, was formed to fill the stadium they had vacated.
Because one community divided into two rather than two communities colliding, allegiances often run through families rather than between neighbourhoods. That is where the “friendly derby” label came from. The card count in recent decades suggests the ninety minutes themselves are not especially friendly.
Manchester derby (Manchester City v Manchester United)
Proximity matters here, but the defining feature is how completely the balance of power has flipped. United dominated domestically and in Europe for long stretches while City spent time in the lower divisions. Investment from 2008 onwards inverted the relationship.
What makes this derby unusual is the length of supporter memory. A generation that has only known the current hierarchy sits in the same stand as one that remembers the opposite, so the two sides taunt each other in different vocabularies.
Tyne-Wear derby (Newcastle v Sunderland)
A north-east rivalry built on industrial history. Shipbuilding and coal shaped both cities, but they sit on different rivers — the Tyne and the Wear — and belonged to different industrial economies. Accounts of the rivalry sometimes reach as far back as opposing sides in the seventeenth-century civil war.
The two have not often been in the same division. In 2026-27 both are in the Premier League, which makes this the fixture where regional feeling is most visible.
Elsewhere on the map
- West London (Chelsea, Fulham, Brentford, Crystal Palace) — several clubs within a short distance and no settled hierarchy between them
- The promoted clubs — Coventry, Hull City and Ipswich came up for 2026-27. Coventry’s return ends a 25-year absence from the top division, and Ipswich’s is nearly as long. The East Anglian derby with Norwich won’t happen in the Premier League this season, but both promotions are stories in their own right
What to look for before kick-off
Derbies tend to turn on individual histories more than on tactical match-ups. A player facing a former club, an academy graduate, someone who grew up locally — those things show up in the intensity of the ninety minutes.
On our match pages you can tap any player in the line-up to see their previous clubs and playing profile. We never show scores or scorers, so it is safe to open before kick-off or mid-match. Scanning both line-ups for those connections first makes the game read very differently.