Every previous United Women visit to Everton's Walton Hall Park
Manchester United make the short trip to Merseyside to face Everton in the second week of the 2024/25 WSL season.
Walton Hall Park is pretty unique as far WSL home grounds go.
It is more a community sports centre than a football stadium, a pitch served by a single stand ringfenced within a much larger complex. Another pitch lies adjacent, with a sizeable field to the back and even more pitches.
The big open surroundings and the lack of building structures can leave it exposed to the elements, and particularly susceptible to strong winds.
The 500 supporters who aren’t seated gather around the sides of the pitch and the overall, capacity of 2,200 makes it significantly smaller than every other venue in the league. But its quirks make WHP a fun place to watch football, right up close to the action, and it has proven a perfect home to Everton.
The Toffees used to play way up the coast in Southport, but the 2020 move brought the club right back into the heart of their true home in Liverpool – just a stone’s throw from Goodison Park a few hundred metres down the road.
Manchester United are the visitors in the WSL this weekend, hoping to build on a promising 3-0 win from the opening fixture against West Ham at Old Trafford. Walton Hall Park couldn’t be more different from the towering stands at the Theatre of Dreams.
“The pitch is beautiful,” United manager Marc Skinner has commented.
“You do have to adjust. When you have a tight ground like that, you have no vantage point. At Old Trafford and so on, you can get your staff in [high] vantage points to look at tactical innovation. When you’re pitch-side level, it’s more difficult to see. So we have to find strategy around that.”
Being one of the shortest away trips for United fans, they visit in numbers. When the ‘Barmy Army’ is in town, the away section behind the far goal usually drowns out noise from the home fans.
“That support is vital for us,” said Skinner.
“What I’ve loved as we’ve grown over the years, at Walton Hall Park, the end that Man United [fans] usually take, it gets bigger and bigger and bigger. So they literally end up being round by the dugout and round the other side.”
Everton 2-3 United (WSL, 23 February 2020)
Everton moved from Southport to Walton Hall Park in February 2020, slightly later than hoped for, and United were the very first visitors. With concerns about the gradual spread of Covid-19 starting to deepen, it was less than a month before the country was locked down and the WSL season ultimately abandoned.
It wasn’t the start to life in a new home that Everton wanted, especially in front of a near sell-out (at the time) crowd just shy of 900, when Leah Galton had Casey Stoney’s United two goals ahead inside half an hour. A 63rd minute counter attack provided the third, scored by Ella Toone, set up by Jane Ross.
Everton’s fight-back came too late. Danielle Turner heading in a corner from Chloe Kelly, before Lucy Graham (now Lucy Hope) caught Mary Earps off her line.
Everton 1-0 United (Conti Cup, 16 December 2020)
This league cup tie was originally supposed to be played a month earlier, with safety concerns at Walton Hall Park caused by wind damage prompting a last minute postponement of the fixture.
United were frustrated by the process and the timing of the decision. Casey Stoney said: “I must make it clear that we as a club wanted this game to be played and were accommodating in the options that were put forward.”
When the game was played in December, behind closed doors due to the ongoing Covid-19 lockdown restrictions that continued to impact daily life, Everton narrowly won thanks to a 74th minute goal from Lucy Graham. But neither club made it through the group stage into the knockout rounds.
Everton 0-2 United (WSL, 31 January 2021)
Another postponed game between Everton and United at Walton Hall Park took place in January 2021. Controversy reigned in the WSL following the winter break and what was dubbed ‘Dubai-gate’, when a loophole in travel restrictions allowed players based in London to jet off internationally on ‘business’. Other parts of the country weren’t barred from travel but it was advised against.
Casey Stoney permitted United players to go away and later apologised for a “poor error of judgement”. No Covid-19 cases were reported in the United squad, but there were five in the Everton squad and only one WSL fixture the first game weekend of 2021 went ahead as scheduled due to postponements.
When this game was played, 21 days later than planned, first half goals from Ella Toone and Christen Press handed United a comfortable win. It was a 10th victory from 13 WSL fixtures and moved Stoney’s team level on points with Chelsea at the top of the table. But four defeats in the final nine games saw United slip to fourth by the time the campaign finished that May.
Everton 1-1 United (WSL, 14 November 2021)
Simone Magill’s 76th minute equaliser in November 2021 remains the last time that Everton actually scored against United at Walton Hall Park. It was one of several late equalisers conceded that season - along with those scored by Tottenham a week earlier and West Ham the following March - that cost Marc Skinner’s United a place in the top and a first ever Champions League place.
Once more against Everton, it was Ella Toone who put United ahead. It was an excellent team goal that started with Hannah Blundell sending Alessia Russo into space, before Martha Thomas laid it on for Toone to finish.
The equaliser was a poor one from a United point of view. Magill chased down a speculative throw-in that Maria Thorisdottir was trying to shield back to Mary Earps. But a second’s hesitation from the England goalkeeper allowed Magill to get a toe on the ball that directed it into the net, much to the horror of the travelling United fans gathered behind the goal.
Everton 0-2 United (Conti Cup, 15 December 2021)
Sharing England’s north west corner, Everton have been a regular opponent in the geographically-led Conti Cup group stage over the years. Squad depth and rotation came into it for United, with Marc Skinner only naming six players from the XI that had started the WSL fixture a month earlier.
That included a rare start for Ivana Ferreira Fuso and opportunities for Kirsty Hanson and Kirsty Smith. But the breakthrough for a dominant United came by way of an own goal from Danielle Turner, who diverted a near-post free-kick from Katie Zelem into the net just 20 minutes in. Zelem was involved again in the quickfire second, a one-two with Martha Thomas that the forward then polished off with the clinical finish.
Unlike in previous seasons, and indeed since, United qualified for the knockout stages of the competition and reached the semi-finals after beating Arsenal at Meadow Park in the last eight. But Chelsea was a step too far in the last four.
Everton 0-3 United (WSL, 30 October 2022)
Having dropped league points at Walton Hall Park in 2021/22, United fans were delighted to see an ultimately convincing win in the early weeks of 2022/23. They had already claimed an away victory at West Ham, another of those problem fixtures the year before, and this would be United’s best WSL season to date - their eventual 56 points is still the joint third best tally in WSL history.
New signing Nikita Parris needed only 13 minutes to find the net against the club where she made her name. She turned the ball into an open goal from Leah Galton’s aerial knockdown. It was then Galton who made sure there would be no repeats of the dropped points from 11 months prior early in the second half by driving into the penalty area from the left and finding the bottom corner.
Hayley Ladd put the icing on the cake with the pick of the bunch, converting a first-time shot from the edge of the area, and the result made it five wins from five for United to begin the WSL season. By full-time they were top of the table and very nearly went all the way seven months later.
Everton 0-5 United (WSL, 22 October 2023)
United’s most recent trip to Walton Hall Park is the most convincing win to date. In the context of the start to last season, it was also a source of relief, having needed a last ditch goal to beat Aston Villa on the opening weekend, dropped points against Arsenal and Leicester, as well as exited the Champions League. It was almost as if this was the frustration of previous weeks coming out.
Although Melvine Malard scored early to keep up her strong start to life in English football, high-fiving the United fans behind the goal in celebration, most of the damage came later. Nikta Parris struck just shy of the hour mark, before a Rachel Williams brace inside the final 15 minutes and a further Parris strike in stoppage time. “Back to what we do best,” was Marc Skinner’s assessment.
The game marked Irene Guerrero’s debut for United, off the bench late on. Things didn’t work out for the Spaniard, but a perfectly weighted through ball for Parris offered a brief glimpse into the quality she was capable of.
Just under three weeks later, United hit the Toffees for seven in the Conti Cup at Leigh Sports Village - Parris, who ultimately scored six times in five appearances against Everton in a United shirt, got a hat-trick.