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Club History - Manchester United
Having won the league championship 18 times, Manchester United is English football’s joint most successful club in terms of league titles, level with Liverpool. They are outright the most successful Premier League side however, having won it a total of 11 times since its inception in 1992 and is the club most synonymous with winning silverware to football fans in today’s game. The recent success has not always been the case for a club formed in much more humble beginnings.
Manchester United Football Club was formed in 1878 as Newton Heath LYR (Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway) as a way for the workers in the Newton Heath railway yard to compete against other departments of the Lancashire and Yorkshire railway or other railway companies. Newton Heath joined the Football League in 1892, four years after the English League was formed by such illustrious founding members in the north west of England such as Blackburn Rovers and Preston North End. At the turn of the century the club was suffering tremendously with financial problems which threatened to plunge them into extinction. Salvation was to come in the form of local brewery owner John Henry Davies who provided investment in order to obtain some interest in running the club. The new investment led to a change in identity as well as structure with the name Manchester United being settled upon over such alternatives as Manchester Central and Manchester Celtic.
This was certainly a period of progression for United with the club finishing third in the Second Division for two consecutive seasons in 1903/04 and 1904/5. The following season they were to finish runners up and gain promotion to the top flight of English football following a 12-year absence. Two seasons later United were crowned First Division Champions for the first time in the Club’s history in the 1907/08 season with inspirational performances from the duo of Billy Meredith and Sandy Turnbull seen throughout the season. The same team then went on to claim the first ever Charity Shield in 1908 and added the FA Cup to the list of successes in 1909. The 1910/11 season is one which holds dear in the hearts of many a Manchester United fan. Not only did the club win the First Division Championship for the second time it was also the first full season of football played at the club’s current home, Old Trafford. The Manchester Brewery Company owned by John Henry Davies bought the land on which the club was built, leasing it to the club with Davies himself paying for the building work. Davies was a truly inspirational figure in the history of a truly inspirational club.
Following this very successful period at the start of the 20th century the club was not able to kick on and find regular success, instead slipping into a period of transition with both the playing and coaching stuff in some form of turmoil. Just as the club was starting to get back on track during the 1913/14 season the entire country was thrown into much deeper turmoil due to the onset of the First World War. The league was suspended until 1919 with United playing in the Lancashire Principal and Subsidiary Tournaments for four seasons. Following this, a period of underachievement began in the 1920’s. United struggled with the ever-approaching retirement of Billy Meredith with the club finishing in 12th then 13th in the 1919/20 and 1920/21 seasons with the following campaign confirming many a fans worst fears with relegation to the Second Division -the club’s first season without the inspirational Meredith. United managed to reassert their top flight status in the mid 1920s, finishing runners up in the Second Division to Leicester City. The success and top flight status was again short lived with United slipping down to finish 18th the following season, and were again relegated in the 1930/31 season, the team unable to recover from the worst start to a season in the club’s history. United was one of the first so called “yo-yo” clubs, something which many of the current fans may find hard to believe and it was only following the end of the Second World War that this was to stop. League football was suspended during the period of 1939 and 1946 due to the War, a period during which Old Trafford had suffered at the hands of German bombers during an air raid in 1941. Rebuilding was taking place both on and off the pitch, with a certain Sir Matt Busby arriving at the club in 1945. During Busby’s reign until 1969 the club were to hit real highs both at home and on the continent at the same time as suffering the worst tragedy ever to befall an English football side.
Busby finished second to Liverpool in his first season at the United helm in 1946/47, the club’s highest league placing in 36 years, and added some silverware in the form of the FA Cup in 1948 (only the second time in the club’s history). Busby’s first league title arrived in 1952, the debut season of two players nicknamed “Babes” by the newspapers - Jackie Blanchflower and Roger Byrne. Busby’s first successful side has just disbanded leading to the influx of a very young crop of local players spearheaded by the aforementioned Byrne. Byrne lifted the First Division trophy as skipper in both 1956 and 1957 propelling United to be the first club to represent England in the embryonic European Cup. Eddie Colman, Mark Jones and David Pegg were all players to come through the United academy to achieve great success, but perhaps the most inspirational of the Babes was a young man from Dudley going by the name of Duncan Edwards. Edwards was powerful and supremely talented and the League’s youngest ever-player when making his debut in 1953 at the age of 16 years and 185 days. The era of the famous Busby Babes team was tragically cut short on the March 6, 1958 following a European Cup tie second leg against Red Star Belgrade which United won 5-4 on aggregate.
The plane that the team was travelling back to Manchester aboard, following a refuelling in Munich, crashed killing 22 people of which seven were players. Byrne, Colman, Jones, Pegg, Tommy Taylor, Geoff Bent and Liam Whelan all lost their lives as did Duncan Edwards 15 days later in hospital. It was a tragic disaster for the club, English football but most importantly the family members of the deceased, and the event triggered another period of transition for the club, albeit forced. Somewhat inconceivably after the disaster, United managed to reach the final of the FA Cup in 1958 and were league runners-up in 1959.
Busby’s next great side contained Munich survivors Dennis Violet, Bill Foulkes and Bobby Charlton. The new-look team managed to gain some stability with the FA Cup in 1963, the same year Busby brought in a young George Best. Sir Matt added another League title in 1964/65 with the sublime trio of Best, Charlton and Denis Law propelling United to never-before-seen heights with a European Fairs Cup semi-final appearance and FA Cup semi-final to boot. Law became the first player in the club’s history to be named European Footballer of the Year whilst Busby’s finest hour came in 1968. Following another League success in 1967, the club progressed to their first ever European Cup final, against Benfica. United claimed the title of European Champions following a 4-1 victory at Wembley, two goals provided by Charlton and one by Best. Ten years following the Munich air disaster Busby had pulled off a miraculous, near on impossible achievement.
Following Busby’s retirement a string of Managers including Wilf McGuinness, Frank O’Farrell and Tommy Docherty tried their hand at leading the side and another period of transition ensued. Following Docherty’s appointment in 1972, Charlton was to retire, Best’s off-field antics were to overshadow his on-field achievements and Law was given a free transfer. Law’s back-heel for Manchester City was to send United down in 1973 with the side bouncing back in 1975. This may have secured United’s current top-flight status but it was the beginning on a very barren period for the club in English football’s highest division. Neither Dave Sexton nor Ron Atkinson could bring back the success the club craved in terms of league championships. The latter was always very close to arch-rivals Liverpool in the 1980s and did collect two FA Cups in 1983 and 1985 but this wasn’t enough for the fans.
In November 1986 Alex Ferguson was appointed United Manager, the club remaining patient with the man desperately seeking to overturn Liverpool’s dominance. United did manage to finish runners up to Liverpool in 1988 but only 11th in both the season prior to and following this season. Fergie did achieve success in 1990 winning the FA Cup and adding the European Cup Winners’ Cup in 1991, the club’s second ever European trophy. United were again runners-up the following year in the final season of the Old First Division, but it was with the change to the Premier League that would bring them further success. Fergie was to bring league success to Old Trafford for the first time in 26 years in 1993, and become the first Manager to do so since Busby. Eric Cantona was the catalyst in his first season following his transfer from Leeds United, the club who pipped United to the title the previous season.
Another Premier League title followed the next season alongside the FA Cup with Cantona again instrumental in a side containing such United greats as Peter Schmeichel, Roy Keane, Ryan Giggs and Mark Hughes. Cantona’s eight-month suspension was to prove United’s downfall in 1995 as United finished runners-up in all three domestic competitions. Cantona was again at the helm of a young United side who became the first in English League history to win the “double-double” by again securing the Premier League Championship and FA Cup. Another League title followed in 1997, which was to be Cantona’s last in a United shirt. The Frenchman never to be forgotten at the Theatre of Dreams.
Sir Alex Ferguson’s crowning glory came in 1999 as his United side won an historic Treble in the form of the Premier League title, the FA Cup and the European Cup or the Champions League as it was now known. The first and only English side ever to do so. This was a fantastic side containing the likes of Schmeichel, Jaap Stam, Keane, Giggs, Paul Scholes and David Beckham. They are regarded as the finest side in Premier League History with tremendous ability, work ethic and a never-say-die attitude epitomised by the two injury-time goals in the Champions League final in Barcelona. Another two League titles were added in 2000 and 2001 ensuring United as the only team to win the Premier League three times on the bounce.
United again won the league in 2003, but it was another period of transition that was to follow. This was nothing like earlier periods in the club’s history where relegation was an issue, indeed the side never finished outside the top four, but such was the constant demand for success that the four years without the Premier League title was below usual standards. The 2006/07 campaign provided the next league success with United pipping an increasingly dominant Chelsea to the title, again propelling them on to further dominance. The new crop of talented youngsters including such world talents Wayne Rooney and Cristiano Ronaldo again beat Chelsea to the League title in 2007/08 and pipped the same side in the Champions League final in the same year in a dramatic penalty shout-out. Ronaldo went on to become the fourth United player to win the coveted European Footballer of the Year award in 2008 after the trilogy of Law, Charlton and Best and was the first in a United shirt to win the World Player of the Year that same year. The side of 2008/09 boasted a squad that had at least two players of international-level talent for each position, with the Press speculating on if the club could achieve a historic quintuple haul of trophies. The team went on to win the 2008/09 Premier League, League Cup and FIFA Club World Cup, finishing runners-up in the Champions League final to Barcelona, runners-up in the UEFA Super Cup to Zenit St. Petersburg and falling at the semi-final stage of the FA Cup to Everton.
Sir Alex Ferguson has cemented himself as the most successful English Club Manager of all time let alone the most successful in the history of Manchester United. However, the influence of Sir Matt Busby and the Busby Babes has never been far from the thoughts of the current Manager and the thousands packed into Old Trafford week-in, week-out.
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