Manchester United Greatest Games

By Rob Clark

From the thousands of matches ever played by Manchester United, stretching from their roots as Newton Heath to the present-day colossus that has racked up more league titles and FA Cups to their name than any other club, here are 50 of United's most glorious, epochal and thrilling games of all! Expertly presented in evocative historical context, and described incident-by-incident in atmospheric detail, Manchester United Greatest Games offers a terrace ticket back in time, taking in everything from the dark days of Munich to the unmatched League/FA Cup/Champions League Treble. An irresistible cast list of club legends - Tommy Taylor, Duncan Edwards and Bobby Charlton, George Best, Ryan Giggs and Paul Scholes - springs to life in a thrilling selection of hard-fought derby matches, landmark European nights, and league and cup exploits. In all, a journey through the highlights of United history which is guaranteed to make any fan's heart swell with pride.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Independent Publishers Group
• Release date: Oct 14, 2014
• ISBN: 9781909626973

Rob Clark

Rob Clark is a professional speaker and the author of Flynndini Lives, a children's book, and Smiling in the Cube, a motivational business book. He has over twenty-five years of direct sales experience and has become one of the leading authorities on resilience in the workplace. Rob has been the subject of numerous articles and podcasts, and his weekly blog, The Resilient Worker, has reached thousands of readers over the past five years. Rob lives just outside Washington, DC, with his beautiful wife, Jennifer, his four wonderful children, Justin, Riley, Courtney, and Cassidy, and his amazing dog, Parker.

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belong

THIS was the first official league game for Newton Heath, and in keeping with the nature of a club style that was destined to be based around aiming to score one more goal than the opposition, it produced goals galore. Unfortunately for the nascent club it ended in defeat after a seven-goal thriller, but the outfit that was to become Manchester United some ten years later had been born, and so too had an enduring legend begun.

In truth, the club was founded 14 years earlier in 1878, but Newton Heath LYR (Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway) was initially established as no more than a means of allowing railway workers some light relief from a hard day’s labour. They played numerous games against other railway companies but such matches were rarely reported in the newspapers and hence are not often a matter of record. However, it seems safe to say that the club nickname of ‘The Heathens’ owed something to the club’s quick accumulation of local victories.

By 1892 formal ties with the railway company had ended, although the majority of the players at that time were still its employees, so the LYR appendage had been dropped. With the Football League being expanded to two divisions on account of growing interest in the sport, Newton Heath were duly elected to the First Division.

It was not a success. Of course the mighty Blackburn Rovers were scarcely likely to provide a gentle introduction to league life – already five times FA Cup winners and one of the most notable teams in the country, they raced into a 3-0 lead inside ten minutes with goals from the prolific Jack Southworth (who scored 97 goals in 108 games for Rovers, and represented England on three occasions) and two from Coombe Hall. United fought back, however, with centre-forward Bob Donaldson pulling a goal back and James Coupar making it 3-2 to Blackburn at half-time.

In the second half honours were even as Alf Farman scored for Newton Heath and Harry Chippendale for Blackburn. It certainly wasn’t a disgrace for the new boys against one of the country’s top teams, and in front of 8,000 or so fans at Ewood Park.

The fact was, though, that Newton Heath were not quite ready for league football and they gained only a handful of victories in their first season. In fact they ended the season at the foot of the table, but with no prior arrangement having been made for relegation and promotion it was decided that the bottom three teams would play the top three teams from the Second Division and Newton Heath duly beat their near-namesakes Small Heath (later to become Birmingham City), winning a replay 5-2 after the first match had finished 1-1. That at least secured their place in the First Division for another season.

What the opening game of the season did do, though, was to display the fighting spirit and the never-say-die attitude which was to become synonymous with the club over the ensuing years. An interesting postscript to the season was that their first league victory was an almost unbelievable 10-1 win over a Wolverhampton Wanderers team which went on to lift the FA Cup at the end of the season. For all the goalscoring heroics of Tommy Taylor, Bobby Charlton and Wayne Rooney down the years – in much more successful teams – this remains United’s biggest league victory.

Hat-tricks were scored by Bob Donaldson and Willie Stewart, and further goals were added by Adam Carson, Alf Farman, James Hendry and William ‘Billy’ Hood.

Hendry was making his debut that day and indeed made only one more appearance for the club. Hood was more successful, staying at the club for two years and featuring on 38 occasions; however, his record of just six goals did not warrant a longer tenure.

Donaldson, however, was to become the club’s first great goalscorer, amassing 66 goals in 147 appearances. Although more than half his goals were scored when the club were in the Second Division, Donaldson nevertheless boasts a similar goals-to-games ratio in the higher division and his FA Cup record is even better, with ten goals in 16 games.

If on the pitch the 1892/93 season marked the arrival on the football scene of the club destined to become the greatest in the land, off it there were some major obstacles to be overcome. First of these was that the club were informed they had to vacate their home on North Road. it wasn’t much of a home, admittedly, as it didn’t even boast changing rooms – players, both Newton Heath and visitors, had to trudge to the Three Crowns pub, half a mile away instead.

Nevertheless, the football club had bought two stands which were able to hold 2,000 fans, and these had to be left behind; in fact, it has been suggested that the club’s practice of charging fans for entry broke the terms of their lease and may have been the cause of their being asked to leave. Alternatively, it may just have been that the cricketers, with whom they shared the ground, got fed up playing on a mud patch.

The club officers did well to find a new ground, in Clayton, before the start of the 1893/94 season and although it was some three miles from Newton Heath, they managed to attract 7,000 spectators to their first match, a 3-2 win over Burnley. The location of the new ground was perilously close to chemical works, and some visiting fans went so far as to claim that it gave the Heathens an unfair advantage as they were used to the noxious fumes and the smells which assaulted the senses.

But if Newton Heath’s first match was inauspicious, the advent of the club itself was anything but.

ALTHOUGH Newton Heath had survived in the First Division in their first year, by virtue of that play-off win over Small Heath, the respite was destined to last but one season. At the end of 1893/94 they finished rock bottom and this time the play-off saw them relegated. To make matters worse, it was defeat by Liverpool, of all clubs, that condemned the Heathens to the Second Division, the Merseysiders winning 2-0 at Ewood Park.

By the turn of the century, Newton Heath had become established as an average Second Division team, finishing fourth on three consecutive occasions from 1898–1900. They slipped even lower in 1901/02, dropping down to 15th out of 18 teams. The financial situation was fast moving from bad to dire but the following season their fortunes took a turn for the better thanks to one of the more unusual fundraising events in sporting history.

It came about in bizarre fashion, with a bazaar. Team captain Harry Stafford was accustomed to using his dog, a St Bernard called Major, to gather in donations by way of a barrel attached to its collar. Major was one of the main attractions at the bazaar, but when the dog went missing it was found by local businessman John Henry Davies, who was chairman of the local brewery, Walker & Homfrey – and later of the Manchester Brewery Company – making him a wealthy man in his own right. Not only that, he was also married to Amy, heiress of the Tate & Lyle Group. Davies and his wife were philanthropists noted in particular for their support of sport in the Manchester area, and he quickly agreed to invest in and take over the club.

So it came to pass that in 1902 Stafford was able to announce that he had found four businessmen (of whom Davies was one) who were prepared to invest £500 each as long as the directors gave them direct involvement in the running of the club. Whether the directors were in favour of such a move, or whether they were forced into it by the club’s creditors, is not entirely clear, but the agreement paved the way for Davies’s beneficial input.

At the start of the following, 1902/03, season, Newton Heath were renamed Manchester United. Manchester Central had been the early favourite but was dismissed as sounding too much like a railway station. Manchester Celtic was also considered, but rejected on the grounds that the club did not want to be seen to ally themselves too closely with any Celtic organisations. In the spirit of change, Davies also decided that the club should have a new strip, and they duly adopted the now-famous strip of red shirts and white shorts.

Stafford was put in charge of playing matters, not to mention being given the licence for one of Davies’s pubs, though this was probably just reward for his part in saving the club from financial ruin, and he it was who led the team out for their first match in their new guise.

It was at Gainsborough Trinity’s ground and United won it with a goal from Charlie Richards – his only league goal (he also scored one in the FA Cup) of the only season he spent at the club. It is easy to see why United signed him, in light of the three years he had spent at Grimsby Town where he scored 42 goals in 80 appearances. It was a strike rate which had played a major part in Grimsby’s push for promotion and in 1901 the small seaside town won the Second Division, though Richards himself had little time to revel in the success, moving to Leicester Fosse in June of that year.

In a little over a year he was at Manchester United, but despite having only turned 27 that summer, Richards’s best days were already behind him. Within eight months he had moved on to Doncaster Rovers, and he only remained there until the end of the season, whereupon he retired. But he will always have a place in United history as the first man to score after the team adopted their famous name.

Benefactor Davies had not previously shown much interest in football, preferring to lend his financial muscle to bowls and cycling, but he quickly showed that he was not going to be a sleeping partner. The club’s financial difficulties dated back to their eviction from their North Road ground and although secretary James West had had an impact, Davies realised more needed to be done – and urgently.

Delighted though he was over United’s first victory as United, he saw the need to attract large crowds to the Bank Street ground. In this, he was an instant success, drawing 20,000 to the first home game of the season, another 1-0 victory, over Burton Albion, secured by forward Daniel Hurst. Over the season, United’s average crowd more than doubled from the 4,500 or so who used to watch Newton Heath, to over 10,000 in the club’s first season as Manchester United.

A lot of those new fans, however, also expected to see instant success on the pitch, and while United improved from 15th position to fifth, they remained 13 points adrift of a promotion place which went to Small Heath in second spot. Even more gallingly, the league was won by Manchester City.

They did at least get the better of their city rivals in the league, drawing 1-1 at home and winning 2-0 away. United also enjoyed knocking Liverpool out of the FA Cup in February, when a double strike from Jack Peddie sent the Merseysiders home with their tails between their legs.

Peddie proved to be a stalwart of the team that year, making 36 appearances (the most of any player) and scoring 15 goals; regular strike partner Dick Pegg made only one appearance fewer and scored 13 times. A good return from the two men up front, but elsewhere it was not hard to see where the problems lay: 33 different men played for United in 1902/03, up from 21 the previous season. It was a huge number for that era, especially as 15 of them did not make it into double figures in appearances.

United never lost badly – no team defeated them by more than two goals all season, home or away, but they just didn’t score enough. Eight of their 17 opponents in the division scored more goals than United did, a telling statistic, and one which Davies swiftly moved to correct.

A footnote to the career of Harry Stafford, who had played such a big part in the club’s survival. Shortly after the club became Manchester United, Stafford was found guilty of making illegal payments to players and banned from football until 1907. Stafford admitted there might have been the odd ‘irregularity’, though his defence was that it was never done in order to line his own pockets, but to benefit the club.

He further claimed that the only ‘crime’ he was actually found guilty of was paying a Scottish player his wages in advance, before he had been registered with the club, a fairly minor matter in days when financial probity was rare. Satfford declared, ‘Everything I have done has been done in the best interests of the club.’ That is indisputable, and clearly Davies felt the same as he stood by Stafford.

Once his ban had been served, Stafford returned to Bank Street as a director of the club and doubled as the groundsman, though seemingly not entirely successfully as the pitch was frequently castigated by home and visiting players alike as resembling a mudbath. After the First World War, Stafford finally severed his long-serving ties with the club, emigrating to Canada where he opened a hotel in Montreal and also returned to one of his first loves: dogs.

If Stafford’s defending on the pitch was occasionally somewhat agricultural in nature, his defence of the club off the pitch should never be discounted, and nor should his role in its preservation.

AFORTUITOUS side-effect of Harry Stafford and secretary James West being forced to step aside from playing and managing team affairs owing to ‘financial irregularities’ was that John Henry Davies was forced to look around for a new secretary. And so it was that the highly respected Burnley secretary Ernest Mangnall was persuaded to take over at Manchester United.

Mangnall was, as had already become apparent, a master promoter, both of himself and of whichever club he was working for. Taking charge of the club, Mangnall demanded – and got – complete control of the playing side, making him in effect the first professional manager of the club. The Jose Mourinho of his day, Mangnall liked only one thing more than being asked for his opinion – giving it.

In his defence, however, it should be pointed out that Mangnall was hugely successful, and makes a good case for being included in a triumvirate of brilliant Manchester United managers alongside the better-known Sir Matt Busby and Sir Alex Ferguson. Under the guidance of these three men between them, United claimed all of the club’s league championship titles and eight of their 11 FA Cup triumphs. Not only that, but Mangnall looked towards Europe too.

If it took the persuasion and determination of Busby to take United into pan-European competition, it was Mangnall who first saw the possibilities. In 1908 he was to embark on the club’s first continental tour – to Prague, Vienna and Budapest. A riot in the last of these great cities did give him food for thought, but United had shown that they were willing to go beyond the usual frontiers to seek out, if not new life, then at least new frontiers.

But all that was still in the future on the day that Alex ‘Sandy’ Turnbull scored Manchester United’s first league hat-trick and it came against, joy of joys, none other than Liverpool. It was the second matchday of a season which had started with a 4-1 win away at Aston Villa, but it was Turnbull’s performance in a demolition of United’s fiercest rivals which made the rest of the league sit up and take notice.

Turnbull was to prove a somewhat controversial figure, but his goalscoring prowess was never in doubt. Born in Hurlford in Scotland, Turnbull scored 53 goals in 110 appearances for Manchester City, then added a further 101 in 247 games for United. And it was Liverpool that he particularly enjoyed scoring against, recording nine goals in his ten matches against them – the most he scored against any other team. Turnbull was very different from most of the ‘all-action’ strikers of his day; rather he would conserve his energy and only burst into life when he had a genuine opportunity to affect play, which frequently meant getting on the end of one of Billy Meredith’s many crosses.

The season after his goals had taken United to their first league triumph, he also scored the winner in their first FA Cup victory. In those days the FA Cup was a much more prestigious trophy than the league, and United’s succession of wins over Everton, Blackburn Rovers, champions Newcastle and Bristol City – all teams which finished above them in the league – was lauded far and wide. The final against Bristol City was a scrappy match played out in front of over 71,000 fans at Crystal Palace and decided in the 22nd minute when a Harold Halse shot came back off the crossbar and Turnbull was the quickest to the rebound.

Towards the end of a match lacking in clear chances, Vince Hayes was forced off with a cracked rib. In the days before substitutes this meant United having to reorganise to hold out for the win.

Turnbull, who had already been implicated in the Manchester City scandal which resulted in the entire team being suspended from playing, was later found guilty of match fixing and in 1915 received a lifelong ban from football.

In fact, Turnbull did not play in the match in question (a 2-0 win over Liverpool), but evidence that he had been part of a United ‘delegation’ which had twice met with Liverpool captain Jackie Sheldon was enough to condemn him. However it was to have little relevance as Turnbull joined the army and became a lance sergeant in the East Surrey Regiment. He was presumed killed in action at Arras, in France, on 3 May 1917. His body was never found but he is commemorated on the famous Arras memorial. Turnbull was posthumously reinstated in 1919, in recognition of his war service.

Modern-day United stars owe Turnbull a greater debt than just as a goalscorer, however. He, along with other United players, was instrumental in founding the Players’ Union (the PFA as it is today) in 1907. Meredith had seen two friends from his Manchester City days die and their families not be given any compensation, so when 25-year-old team-mate Thomas Blackstock collapsed after heading a ball during a reserve game it was to prove the final straw. Turnbull and Meredith, possibly on account of their mining backgrounds, were the prime movers in establishing a Players’ Union at a meeting at The Imperial Hotel, Manchester, on 2 December 1907.

Meredith eloquently summed up his stance, saying, ‘I have devoted myself to football and I have become a better player than most men because I have denied myself much that men prize… If football is a man’s livelihood and he does more than others for his employer, why is he not entitled to better pay than others?’

A year later the PU stated its aims as abolishing the maximum wage, establishing the right of players to more freely between clubs and for players themselves to receive a percentage of any transfer fee that was paid. The FA tried to make a stand and suspend any players who refused to resign from the union, but the United players were no fools and Charlie Roberts arranged a photoshoot with the players holding up a board reading ‘The Outcasts FC’.

Concerned about the real possibility of a breakaway league forming, the FA backed down and recognised the union, allowing it to negotiate wages on its members’ behalf. The union activists did pay a personal price, though, in that none was picked to represent his country again.

The rout of Liverpool that Turnbull inspired was the start of a glorious season for United. After one season of consolidation in the First Division, when they finished eighth out of 20 teams, they blazed their way through the 1907/08 season. At the halfway point they had lost just twice – at Middlesbrough and at Sheffield Wednesday, both of whom finished the season inside the top six. Just as significantly, they had scored four goals or more on nine separate occasions: this was the Manchester United its fans grew to love in all its swashbuckling glory.

Turnbull was to finish as the top scorer, with 27, though George Wall wasn’t far behind with 22 and Jimmy Turnbull and Meredith both got into double figures.

Ironically, the success of United that season was due in large part to the demise of Manchester City, coupled with the astute business dealings of Mangnall. Mangnall had often seemed to be one step ahead of rival managers and in the days before scouting had become a recognised part of the football world, he always had an ear to the ground and a number of ‘spies’ reporting back to him and enabling him to subtly alter his style and tactics to suit specific opposition.

It was his ability to stay one step ahead of the pack which enabled Mangnall to pull off his biggest and most daring coup.

City had already been investigated by the Football Association for financial irregularities, and when Aston Villa captain Alec Leake claimed Meredith had offered him £10 to throw the game between the two sides, Meredith was fined and suspended from playing football for a year. When City refused to provide financial help during that period, Meredith decided to lift the lid on goings-on at the club and said that they did not adhere to the rule stating that no player should be paid more than £4 a week. The FA was obliged to investigate again and this time discovered that Meredith was correct, and the players had been receiving illegal payments.

Part of the draconian punishment imposed on Manchester City was that they were forced to sell their players, and to that end an auction was arranged at the Queen’s Hotel in Manchester. All the top clubs of the day turned up expecting to be able to bid for the City stars, only to find that Mangnall had pre-empted the public auction and already signed not just Turnbull but Meredith, Jimmy Bannister and Herbert Burgess – four-fifths of the most feared forward line in the country. As United already boasted a steely defence of Dick Duckworth, Alex Bell and Charlie Roberts (signed for a then-astronomical £600 from Grimsby Town to captain his side), United now had a team to challenge the best.

The City transfers were all free and the signing of Meredith in particular was akin to Ferguson’s casual enquiry of Leeds as to whether Eric Cantona might be available.

Meredith was the first superstar of the sport, the first in a long line of dancing, dazzling wingers who are so much a part of the United story. Down the pits in north Wales by the age of 14 (as was Sandy Turnbull in Scotland), Meredith escaped thanks to his footballing talent, though he continued to work as a ponyman for some time thereafter, until City officials deemed it an inappropriate way for him to spend his free time.

Meredith was already 33 by the time he made his United debut, but was still going strong eight years later when, in 1915, competitive football was suspended for the war. He put his longevity down to a combination of natural fitness (which must surely have been complemented by his extremely physical work in the pits) and chewing tobacco.

Whatever his secret, Meredith was there again in the autumn of 1919, ready to pick up where he had left off, and he continued to be worthy of his place for a couple more seasons. In 1921, as a result of arguments with the club over payments from his benefit matches, coupled with annoyance at being dropped when new manager John Bentley wanted to try out Jackie Sheldon, Meredith returned to City, for whom he played out the final two seasons of a long and illustrious career.

A Manchester United programme for their Boxing Day fixture against Woolwich Arsenal in 1910 summed up Meredith’s worth when it said, ‘Had he lived in an earlier age, Meredith would have been the subject of an epic poem and been immortalised with Achilles, Roland and the Knights of the Round Table. The pen of a mere football commentator cannot do justice to his genius.’

Two years later, United claimed their second league title, possibly inspired by their show of unity over the establishing of a Players’ Union. It was to be their last league title for over 40 years.

AS Manchester United lined up for the most important match in their existence, only full-back Tom Jones and forward Ernie Hine remained from the 11 who had taken the field at Millwall 14 months earlier. In March 1933, United had travelled to The Den and lost 2-0. Although it was a disappointing result, it mattered little as United finished the season in sixth place on 43 points, with Millwall finishing one position lower on the same points total but with a one-goal worse goal difference.

Wind on to May 1934, however, and the scenario was a very different one. Both teams had endured poor seasons, and on the last day it was a winner-take-all match, again at The Den to see which side would drop into the third tier of English football. A repeat of the previous season’s result would have seen United relegated to the Third Division North, but despite an early injury to Hine which left him limping and of limited use in the game, United reversed that scoreline and goals from Jack Cape and Tom Manley saw then home.

United thus avoided the ignominy of relegation to the Third Division – the closest they ever got to that happening – by the skin of their teeth. The Sunday Express reported the next day, ‘Manchester deserved to succeed because they were quicker on the ball and better together as a team… The United forwards were a more cohesive force and certainly more dangerous near goal,’ while the Daily Mail, on the Monday after the game, reported, ‘There was more thought behind the Manchester work and more resource and better covering in their defence.’ It might not go down as one of United’s greatest games in terms of the performance, but the result was everything to a team which had struggled to build on its pre-war successes.

The Great War had seen many changes. Not only was Sandy Turnbull killed in the trenches, but many other United players were now some way past their prime, or no longer interested in playing football. Billy Meredith was, but he wanted to follow United’s iconic manager Ernest Mangnall across the city and play for the ‘other’ Manchester club. Which, after a certain amount of haggling over a transfer fee (Meredith said he didn’t want to be traded, like