Manchester United F.C.

Support

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Manchester United is reputed to be the most popular football club in the world, with the highest average home attendance in Europe.

Manchester United drew worldwide media attention after the Munich air disaster and Busby's subsequent rebuilding of the team and European Cup victory 10 years later attracted the admiration of supporters across the globe. The team's attacking style of play, and the flamboyant playing style of the popular George Best appealed to new liberal generation of the 1960s and 70s.

Manchester United's worldwide fan base has more than 200 officially recognised branches of the Manchester United Supporters Club (MUSC), in at least 24 countries. The club takes advantage of this support through its worldwide summer tours.

Supporters are represented by two independent bodies; the Independent Manchester United Supporters Association (IMUSA), which maintains close links to the club through the MUFC Fans Forum, and the Manchester United Supporters' Trust (MUST). In the wake of Malcolm Glazer's takeover in 2005, a group of fans formed a splinter club, F.C. United of Manchester.

The West Stand of Old Trafford – the "Stretford End" – is the home end and traditional source of the club's vocal support.

Ground

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Newton Heath played on a field on North Road from 1878 until moving to Bank Street in Clayton in 1893. When this ground was closed by bailiffs in 1902, club captain Harry Stafford raised enough money to pay for the club's next away game at Bristol City and found a temporary ground at Harpurhey for the next home game against Blackpool. Six weeks before United's first FA Cup title in April 1909, Old Trafford was named as the home of Manchester United, following the purchase of land for around £60,000. Architect Archibald Leitch was given a budget of £30,000 for construction; original plans indicated that the stadium would hold around 100,000, though this was revised to 77,000 when the budget became stretched. Construction was carried out by Messrs Brameld

and Smith of Manchester. At the opening of the stadium, standing tickets cost sixpence, while seats in the grandstand cost up to five shillings. The stadium's record attendance was recorded on 25 March 1939, when an FA Cup semi-final between Wolverhampton Wanderers and Grimsby Town had 76,962 spectators.Further development could cost up to £114 million, equalling the amount spent on the stadium in the last fourteen years, as the club would have to acquire up to fifty houses and any extension would have to be built over the adjacent railway line. The expansion would likely include adding additional tiers to the South Stand and filling in the South-West and South-East quadrants to restore the "bowl" effect. Estimates project the capacity of the completed stadium at approximately 96,000, more than the new Wembley Stadium.

The Treble (1998-99)

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The 1998–99 season for Manchester United was the most successful season in English club football history as they became the only English team to win the Premier League, FA Cup and UEFA Champions League, known as 'The Treble', in the same season.After a very tense Premier League season, Manchester United won the title on the final day beating Tottenham Hotspur 2–1. In the FA Cup Final United faced Newcastle United and won 2–0 with goals from Teddy Sheringham and Paul Scholes. Losing 1-0 going into injury time in the 1999 UEFA Champions League Final, late goals from Teddy Sheringham and Ole Gunnar Solskjær secured a dramatic victory over Bayern Munich, in what is considered one of the greatest comebacks of all time. The club also won the Intercontinental Cup after beating Palmeiras 1–0 in Tokyo. Ferguson was subsequently knighted for his services to football.

Sir Alex Ferguson

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Alex Ferguson arrived from Aberdeen to replace Atkinson on the same day that Atkinson was sacked, bringing with him his assistant manager, Archie Knox. Although his first match in charge, against Oxford United on 8 November 1986, resulted in a 2–0 defeat, Ferguson guided the club to an 11th place finish in the league in his debut season. Despite a promising second place finish in 1987–88, the following season the club could only manage 11th place again.The failure to win the league again in 1995 prompted Ferguson into some major restructuring of the team, selling Paul Ince, Andrei Kanchelskis and Mark Hughes and replacing them with players from the club's youth team, including David Beckham, Gary Neville, Phil Neville and Paul Scholes, who went on to help the team win the League in 1996, and another double in 1997. They started the 1997–98 season well, but they lost five matches after Christmas and finished in second place, one point behind double-winners Asenal.

Munich air disaster with Manchester United fooball team

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The Munich air disaster took place on 6 February 1958, when British European Airways Flight 609 crashed on its third attempt to take off from a slush-covered runway at Munich-Riem Airport in Munich, West Germany. On board the plane was the Manchester United football team, nicknamed the "Busby Babes", along with a number of supporters and journalists. 20 of the 44 people on board the aircraft died in the crash. The injured, some of whom had been knocked unconscious, were taken to the Rechts der Isar Hospital in Munich where 3 more died, resulting in a total of 23 fatalities with 21 survivors.

The team was returning from a European Cup match in Belgrade, Yugoslavia, against Red Star Belgrade, but had to make a stop in Munich for refueling, as a non-stop trip from Belgrade to Manchester was out of the "Elizabethan" class Airspeed Ambassador aircraft's range. After refueling, the pilots, Captains James Thain and Kenneth Rayment, attempted to take off twice, but had to abandon both attempts due to boost surging in the port engine. Fearing that they would get too far behind schedule, Captain Thain rejected an overnight stay in Munich in favor of a third take-off attempt.

By the time of the third attempt, it had begun to snow, causing a layer of slush to build up at the end of the runway. When the aircraft hit the slush, it lost velocity, making take-off impossible. It ploughed through a fence past the end of the runway, before the port wing hit a nearby house and was torn off. Fearing that the aircraft might explode, Captain Thain set about getting the surviving passengers as far away as possible. Despite this, Manchester United goalkeeper Harry Gregg remained behind to pull survivors from the wreckage.

An investigation by the West German airport authorities originally blamed Captain Thain for the crash, claiming that he had failed to de-ice the wings of the aircraft, despite statements to the contrary from eyewitnesses. It was later established that the crash had, in fact, been caused by the build-up of slush on the runway, which had resulted in the aircraft being unable to achieve take-off velocity; Thain's name was eventually cleared in 1968, ten years after the incident.

Name of Died Players in Air disaster

Geoff Bent
Roger Byrne
Eddie Colman
Duncan Edwards
Mark Jones
David Pegg
Tommy Taylor
Liam "Billy" Whelan

Manchester United staff

Walter Crickmer (Club secretary)
Tom Curry (trainer)
Bert Whalley (chief coach)

History

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The club was formed as Newton Heath L&YR F.C. in 1878, the works team of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway depot at Newton Heath^. The club's shirts were green and gold halves. They played on a small, dilapidated field on North Road for 15 years before moving to Bank Street in the nearby town of Clayton in 1893. The club had entered The Football League the previous year and began to sever its links with the rail depot, becoming an independent company, appointing a club secretary, and dropping the "L&YR" from its name to become simply Newton Heath F.C. By the beginning of 1902 though, the

club was on the verge of bankruptcy with debts of £2,670, equivalent to about £210,000 as of 2010. The club's finances had been hit by a combination of dropping attendances and the "body blow" of the expense of a court case it had initiated against the Birmingham Daily Gazette newspaper and one of its reporters following a 4–1 defeat of on 14 October 1893: "It wasn't football" the newspaper reported, "it was simply brutality and if these are the tactics Newton Heath are compelled to adopt to win their matches, the sooner the Football Association deal severely with them the better it will be for the game generally." The judge who heard the case eventually awarded Newton Heath one farthing in damages and ordered that each side should pay its own costs.

CLUB INFORMATION

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Manchester United Football Club is an English Premier League football club which plays at Old Trafford in Greater Manchester. The club was formed as Newton Heath in 1878, joined the Football League in 1892, and has played in the top division of English football since 1938 with the exception of the 1974–75 season. Average attendances at the club have been higher than any other team in English football for all but six seasons since 1964–65.
Manchester United are the reigning English champions, having won the 2008–09 Premier League, as well as the Football League Cup holders. The club is one of the most successful in the history of English football and has won 26 major honours since Alex Ferguson became manager in November 1986. In 1968, they became the first English club to win the European Cup, beating Benfica 4–1. They won a second European Cup as part of a Treble in 1999, and a third in 2008, before finishing runner-up in 2009. The club holds the joint record for the most English league titles with 18 and also holds the record for the most FA Cup wins with 11.
Since the late 1990s, the club has been one of the richest in the world with the highest revenue of any football club, and is currently ranked as the richest and most valuable club in any sport worldwide, with an estimated value of around £1.136 billion (€1.319 billion / $1.870 billion) as of April 2009. Manchester United was a founding member of the now defunct G-14 group of Europe's leading football clubs, and its replacement, the European Club Association.
Alex Ferguson has been manager of the club since 6 November 1986, joining from Aberdeen after the departure of Ron Atkinson. The current club captain is Gary Neville, who succeeded Roy Keane in November 2005.