Huddersfield Town & Preston’s fixture twist involving Everton explained | OneFootball

Huddersfield Town and Preston North End will be starting their 2026-27 seasons at an unusual venue as a result of ongoing work at Deepdale.

Preston North End and Huddersfield Town will begin their competitive seasons by playing each other at an unusual venue which is steeped in history.

The start of the 2026-27 will have a different look to usual, with a round of EFL Cup matches to be played the week before the Championship, League One and League Two schedules kick off. League fixtures commence on the weekend commencing the 14th August, with the First Round of the Cup being played a weekend earlier.

The format of the competition has been slightly tweaked from last year, due to the large number of English clubs involved in European competitions next season. Two ties - York City v Crawley Town and Tranmere Rovers v Rochdale - will be played as a Preliminary Round in the week before the First Round fixtures are to be played.

The draw for the First Round of the EFL Cup was made on the 25th June, and one of the ties thrown up pits Championship outfit Preston North End against League One's Huddersfield Town. But while Preston were drawn to play the match at home, it's now been confirmed that the fixture will have to be played elsewhere because of ongoing work at Deepdale.

Preston North End's EFL Cup match against Huddersfield Town will be played at Goodison Park

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Preston and Huddersfield fans looking forward to their EFL Cup First Round meeting in August will be surprised to find out that this fixture is not to be played at Deepdale. A news story on the official Huddersfield website has confirmed that instead, the tie will be played thirty miles from Preston, at Goodison Park in Liverpool.

The reason given for this by the Terriers is ongoing work at Deepdale which will not be completed in time for the start of the new season. Preston have successfully applied to have a hybrid pitch installed at their ground, but a delay in getting the work complete has led the Lancashire club to move the fixture.

Preston's statement on the matter confirms that this is a one-off, and that the pitch at Deepdale will be ready for their opening home Championship match of the new season against the freshly-relegated Wolverhampton Wanderers on the 22nd August. The club had already applied to the EFL to play their first League match of the season away from home, and will consequently start their Championship campaign away to Bolton Wanderers on the 15th August.

There is a small irony in Preston having a hybrid pitch installed, since they were one of the four English league clubs to have an artificial pitch alongside Queens Park Rangers, Luton Town and Oldham Athletic, before such pitches were banned in 1994. Preston only got rid of theirs at that time, by which point they were the last of these four to still have one installed.

What fans are saying about Huddersfield and Preston's trip to Merseyside

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Both Preston North End and Huddersfield Town fans will be making this unusual journey to start their competitive seasons, and here's what fans of different clubs have had to say about the decision.

This Preston fan feels that his club should be subsidising home supporters who'll have to travel thirty miles to watch their team play a home tie:

But another Lilywhites fan speaks for the majority of fans on the social media platform X, who seem delighted to have the opportunity to pay another visit to such a famous old ground:

Preston & Huddersfield fans have a unique opportunity to visit one of English football's great ancestral homes

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It's not a surprise to see a positive reaction from Preston North End and Huddersfield Town fans at the prospect of playing their EFL Cup matches at Goodison Park, since this stadium truly is one of the great ancestral homes of English football. Goodison Park hosted numerous FA Cup semi-finals, League Cup semi-finals and memorable European evenings, and it even hosted a World Cup semi-final in 1966, when West Germany beat the Soviet Union there to book their place in that year's final against England.

Furthermore, Goodison Park holds a pivotal place in the history of the English game. Everton played their home matches at Anfield from 1884 to 1892, but a row with their landlord John Houlding over rent increases led to them vacating the site and moving into Goodison Park, a purpose-built stadium on the other side of Stanley Park to their former home. Stuck with an empty football ground and no-one to play in it, Houlding formed Liverpool FC, and the Merseyside derby was born.

Everton's men's team vacated the ground at the end of the 2024-25 season, playing their final match there against Southampton in May 2025 before decamping to the newly-built Hill-Dickinson Stadium. But this didn't turn out to be the end of Goodison Park. While other grounds have been demolished after being vacated, Everton's owners repurposed it as the home of the Everton women's team, keeping their historic home alive.

Both Preston and Huddersfield have played at Goodison Park on numerous occasions in the past. Preston's last trip there came in a League Cup match in 2004, a match which they lost 2-0, while Huddersfield's came at the start of their last Premier League season in 2018-19, when they drew 1-1 there. Rescheduling this match is a less than ideal set of circumstances for Preston North End, but there is a real silver lining for supporters of both Preston and Huddersfield in being able to visit this famous ancestral home one more time.