Manchester United, The History So Far: A book for United fans who want to improve their English skills

By Adrian Bradbury

Are you a Man United fan? Do you want to improve your English skills? Then Manchester United: The History So Far is the perfect book for you. It’s a short history of our great club, written for people who find English difficult, but want to get better. The English is easy to read, and after each chapter there is a fun grammar or spelling task, all about football and United.
The book covers all the main events in United’s history: the beginning, in 1878, when the Newton Heath football club was set up for railway workers; the name change to Manchester United, and the difficult times when the club almost went out of business; the glory of the Busby Babes; the terrible night in Munich when eight players were killed in a plane crash; the great team of Best, Law and Charlton in the 60s; the pain of relegation in 1974; the wonderful Sir Alex Ferguson years, when the club were the kings of both England and Europe. The story finishes as the 2016-17 season begins under new manager Jose Mourinho. In addition, three chapters tell about Manchester United legends: Duncan Edwards, Eric Cantona and Wayne Rooney.
“Linking football and English learning is such a great idea. This book combines lovely storytelling with tips for improving grammar and spelling. It’s ideal for football fans who want to find out more about their club and improve their English at the same time.” Ruth Miskin OBE, creator of the most popular literacy programme in the UK and long time government adviser.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Adrian Bradbury
• Release date: Sep 26, 2016
• ISBN: 9780955351143

Book preview

www.adrianbradburywriter.co.uk

1. MAN UNITED: THE BEGINNING

Manchester United is one of the biggest football clubs in the world. But at first it had a different name. It began in 1878 as ‘Newton Heath’, a club for men who worked on the railways. They played matches against other railway teams. You may not believe it, but when the English Football League was formed in 1888, Newton Heath thought they were not good enough! Their pitch was terrible, and the players had to walk ten minutes to get there from the changing rooms. They only joined the Football League in 1892, and in their first season they finished bottom. Not a great start. The next year they moved to a new ground, but it was still terrible. There was no grass on the pitch, and the air was full of smoke. They finished bottom of the league again.

Only a few years later, Newton Heath’s short life nearly ended. They had no money. Luckily some rich local men, including John Davies, decided to save the club. He gave them money, but said they must change their name. It may seem strange now, but you could easily be a fan of ‘Manchester Celtic’ or ‘Manchester Central’! These were two of the ideas for new names, before they decided on ‘Manchester United’ in 1902.

United’s first success came with the help of a Man City player! Billy Meredith, who had the nickname ‘the Welsh Wizard’, had problems at City. The Football Association said that he had paid the Aston Villa captain £10 to try to lose their game against City. Meredith said that City often tried to pay players from other teams. Both Meredith and City got into big trouble. It was clear that he had to leave. United took him on a free transfer. He soon began to make a big difference, and in 1908 United won their first Division 1 championship (that’s what the Premier League was called in the old days). The next year they won the FA Cup for the first time, beating Bristol Rovers 1-0 in the final at Crystal Palace. The players had a night out in London, but in the morning they could not find the FA Cup. They began to get very worried. Had they lost football’s most famous trophy? After looking for a long time, they found it on the floor, under a coat.

Did you know?

In 1908 United, the new champions of England, went to play some friendly games in Austria and Hungary. It was half holiday, half football. They were United’s first games in Europe, but not everything went well. The fans in Hungary wanted their own club to win, but United were much too good for them. The fans started to throw stones at the United players. The referee sent off three United players, but they still won 7-0. Police on horses had to stop the angry fans from getting at the United players. They decided not to go back next year!

John Davies knew that the club needed a bigger ground. He bought some land in the Old Trafford part of Manchester and built a new stadium. United played their first game there in February 1910, in front of 80,000 people. It was a great day, but not a great result: a 3-4 defeat to Liverpool. Only a few days before that game, strong winds blew away part of the old ground, so the move was obviously a good one.

After this great start, Manchester United had a hard time. They dropped near to the bottom of the league table. In 1915 the football league was stopped for four years during World War 1. But before that there were more problems for United. In April 1915 they played Liverpool and won 2-0, but many Liverpool players didn’t seem to try very hard. After the game it was found that players from both teams had made bets that United would win 2-0! They won a lot of money on the bets. This was against the law, and some players were told they could never play football again.

Grammar Task: Past Tense Verbs

This chapter was all about things that happened in the past. I used verbs like played, worked, ended and needed. This is the normal way we change verbs to talk about the past: we just put -ed on the end. Simple! We call these ‘regular’ past tense verbs.

The problem is, a lot of English verbs are not regular. In the past tense they change in many different ways. Here are some other verbs I used: began, thought and gave (not begined, thinked and gived). We call these ‘irregular’ past tense verbs.

Can you see any more in Chapter 1???