By David Owen
If you were ransacking Manchester United’s illustrious history in search of clues to help the Premier League aristocrats out of their current trough of underperformance, the inter-war years are not the first place you would look. With only two trophies – the Championship and the FA Cup – to aim for, the Red Devils endured a major silverware drought between their second league title in 1911 and their second Cup 37 years later.
Yet in an era when the club have struggled to get the best out of costly superstars such as Alexis Sánchez and Paul Pogba, a short article that appeared on the front page of the leading sports paper, The Athletic News, exactly 100 years ago in October 1919 gives food for thought.
Headlined ‘A League Team for £100’, the piece in its entirety reads as follows: “The question of transfer fees is one which is very much to the forefront at the present time, and it would be interesting to know if there is a side in The League that has cost less than that of Manchester United.
“The team that defeated Manchester City at Old Trafford on Saturday, on the authority of the secretary, Mr J. Robson, did not cost the club £100, and the defence, which on results is worthy of comparison with the best in the country, was secured for the proverbial postage stamp.”
A century ago, in short, United were the Sheffield United of the top tier, and just as Chris Wilder’s men have battled their way to a position of mid-table respectability after a quarter of the season, this shoestring Manchester United side ended 1919-20 a comfortable 12th in a 22-strong division.
You might even argue that Sheffield United, a team hailing from the stainless steel capital of the world and costing approximately £5,000 to assemble, were the Manchester United of the era. They finished the season 14th.
Looking more closely at that Man Utd team which won a dour derby 1-0 – and what wouldn’t the Old Trafford faithful give for a similar result come March, when this season’s corresponding Premier League fixture is scheduled to take place? – one sees that four of them ended up making 300 appearances or more for the club.
Five of them – Jack Mew, Jack Silcock, the ill-fated Tommy Meehan, striker Joe Spence and Lal Hilditch, who played in three football ‘Tests’ against South Africa – achieved international recognition.
And when four of them were sold, over the next couple of years, they raised a grand total of £8,600 to be reinvested to the club’s benefit.
Of course, the circumstances facing Ed Woodward, Ole Gunnar Solksjaer and their squad are unimaginably different from those far off days. It doesn’t do to overplay the comparability. And yet it is hard not to think that if they could regain something of the frugality of those times, something of Mr J. Robson’s determination to make the most of every pound spent, they might be in less of a quandary than that in which they currently find themselves, notwithstanding Sunday’s win at Carrow Road.
The Manchester United of 1919 were not world-beaters; far from it. But they put in a shift. The Athletic News’s match report of the win over City describes the “excellence of their defence and the energy and the enthusiasm of the team generally”. It continues: “If there was more vim than craft, more earnestness than method in the play of the forwards, they were not bereft of system.”
Of a “pulse-stirring” 3-3 draw against the same opponents at their then Hyde Road home just the previous week, a reporter known as ‘The Pilgrim’ writes in similar vein: “[United] are not a brilliant team, but they are tremendously enthusiastic – the old enthusiasm that precipitates somersaults when a goal is scored.”
Some things, by the way, have not changed: United were already packing them in at Old Trafford: a 40,000-plus crowd for the derby was said to have “yielded a financial harvest of over £3,000”.
Contact the writer of this story at moc.l1714131280labto1714131280ofdlr1714131280owedi1714131280sni@n1714131280ewo.d1714131280ivad1714131280