X-mas blues
Ghosts of Christmas past stalk Old Trafford
Manchester United travel the short distance to Anfield on Sunday afternoon and the pressure is on against the league leaders. Lose to Liverpool and Jose Mourinho’s side go into the festive fixtures closer to relegation than the top of the tree. Their two most hated rivals, Liverpool and Manchester City, will be there. City adding another Premier League to their haul is the stuff of nightmares for United’s fans, but the prospect of Liverpool ending their own 29-year wait for the title is worse. Relegation
Those with long memories can recall a time when United went 28 years without a title until 1993, and those with longer memories can remember worse: relegation from the top flight in 1974.
But the seeds for that were sown some years earlier when Matt Busby retired at the end of the 1968-69 season, a year after putting the specter of the Munich air disaster behind him by lifting the European Cup. He had announced his intentions in January and stepped down on the FA Cup final day, April 26, when Manchester City won the trophy.
United had finished 11th in the league a year on from the club’s finest achievement. They were 25 points behind champions Leeds United, and these were in the days of two points for a win rather than three.
Busby did not disappear, though, staying on at the club to oversee his replacement Wilf McGuinness, a former United player who was coaching the reserves. McGuiness’ side lost to City in the semifinals of the League Cup, which the Blues went on to win for their third season in a row with a trophy. United also lost in the FA Cup semi. In the league, United finished eighth, better than Busby had finished the year before and with three more points, to boot.
The following season they were eighth again. A total of 43 points was their haul for the season in which Busby returned to the dugout after McGuinness was sacked in December. He had already guided United to a League Cup semi, his third semi in just 18 months at the helm, by the time he was relieved of his duties.
Busby was never going to take the job full time. Despite having retired at just 59, he was done with management. Frank O’Farrell became the second man to replace the Scot when he took over on July 1, 1971.
He made a blistering start and had the team 10 points clear at the top of the table by Christmas but they fell away, despite still having George Best and Bobby Charlton in the side. Brian Clough’s Derby County would finish the season as champions, the manager’s first-ever trophy of what would become a star-studded career. Derby had only been promoted two seasons earlier.
Manchester United finished eighth once more, although a 48-point return was their best since 1967-68 when they amassed 56 points, two less than champions Manchester City but they beat Benfica to win the European Cup. That was the only positive for O’Farrell, whose team never looked like replicating their early season form.
The following season, the 1972-73 campaign, started badly and the side were at risk of going down after a run of nine games without a win. O’Farrell was sacked on December 19, 1972, just three days after losing 5-0 to Crystal Palace and the same day that the club stated that the transfer-listed Best would never play for them again. Like McGuinness before him, O’Farrell had also lasted just 18 months in the role.
Three days later Tommy Docherty was named the new boss. The Doc, as he was known, kept United up but it had come at a cost. They finished 18th,barely surviving, and Best troublesome, Charlton retired and Denis Law was allowed to leave for free. The club’s three former European Footballers of the Year were out and the Busby era was truly over. Worse was to come, and one of those players would be at the heart of it.
It was not to be Best, he would play his very last game for the club on New Year’s Day after briefly being brought back into the fold. Instead, it was Law. The striker’s backheel for Manchester City in United’s penultimate league game of the 1973-74 season did not actually consign his old team to the Division Two but it remains the iconic image. The relegation places had increased from two to three and results elsewhere meant United were down, finishing second bottom in the end so they would have gone down anyway.
‘Too good to go down’
From champions of Europe to playing Leyton Orient, Oxford United and York City in just six years. United were “too good to go down” but they went down anyway.
Are there parallels with the current regime? Ferguson left United as the champions of England rather than Europe but they are also seen as too big if not too good to avoid the drop. He too remains in the stands, if not the corridors of power as Busby did. Charlton is a director at United and must feel he has seen it all before, although he was Preston North End boss when United actually went down.
Forgotten man
Like David Moyes, McGuinness is still well regarded in his native Manchester, just not as a former manager of Manchester United Football Club. The job was just too big for both men. O’Farrell, started well enough, but like Louis van Gaal he will be a forgotten man for future generations of United fans.
As for Mourinho, he does not have the support of the fans that Docherty had. The Portuguese might well fear for his job this December as the ghost of United’s Christmases past swirl around. Avoiding defeat at Liverpool this weekend is key but it is a long yuletide for the manager.