Origins, Munich and the Ferguson years: Manchester United history

Manchester United history: origins at Newton Heath

Manchester United history starts in a railway yard, and its origins are still visible in the club's early name. On 5 March 1878 the Carriage and Wagon department of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway depot at Newton Heath formed a works team, Newton Heath LYR. Its first ground was a field on North Road, and the club's first recorded match, in 1880, ended in a 6–0 defeat by Bolton Wanderers' reserves. For that game the side wore the railway company's colours, green and gold.

Those colours outlived the works team: Newton Heath returned to green and gold jerseys between 1894 and 1896, and a halved green-and-gold shirt returned as a third kit between 1992 and 1994.

In 1892 Newton Heath entered the Football League's First Division, dropped "LYR" from its name and became independent of the railway company. It moved to Bank Street in Clayton in 1893. The top flight did not last: after losing a play-off to Liverpool in 1894, Newton Heath went down to the Second Division.

The 1902 rescue and a new name

By January 1902 the club faced a winding-up order over its debts. Harry Stafford gathered a group of local businessmen, and the brewery owner John Henry Davies became president and the main backer. On 24 April 1902 the club was renamed Manchester United. The kit changed too: red shirts, white shorts and black socks, the combination that has defined the club ever since.

With Davies's money behind the club, Ernest Mangnall arrived in 1903 as the first real team manager and built the side that won the First Division in 1908, the club's first league championship. The FA Cup followed in 1909 with a 1–0 win over Bristol City, and a second league title came in 1911, decided on the final day ahead of Aston Villa.

Old Trafford, 1910, and the lean years

Bank Street was judged unfit, so Davies funded a new ground at Old Trafford. The Scottish architect Archibald Leitch designed it for 100,000 spectators, a figure cut to about 80,000 to save money. It opened on 19 February 1910 with a match against Liverpool. Liverpool won 4–3.

The decades that followed were thin. United were relegated in 1922 and again in 1931, and in 1934 the club finished 20th in the Second Division, the lowest league position in its history. James W. Gibson had invested in December 1931 and taken control. Then came the war: a German air raid on 11 March 1941 destroyed much of Old Trafford, including the main stand. United played home matches at Manchester City's Maine Road from 1945 and only returned in August 1949, to a ground without a roof.

Matt Busby and the Busby Babes

Gibson's most important decision came in February 1945, when he offered the job of manager to Matt Busby, then 36. Busby asked for five years rather than three, took charge in October 1945, and won the FA Cup in 1948 with a 4–2 final win over Blackpool. The league title followed in 1952, United's first in 41 years.

Busby trusted teenagers. In November 1951 Tom Jackson of the Manchester Evening News called the young side the "Busby Babes". They won the league in 1956, with a team averaging around 22 years of age, and again in 1957. Against the wishes of the Football League, United entered the 1956–57 European Cup as England's first representatives and reached the semi-final before losing to Real Madrid.

Munich, 6 February 1958

The team was flying home from a European Cup quarter-final in Belgrade, a 3–3 draw with Red Star, when the chartered Airspeed Ambassador stopped to refuel at Munich-Riem. On the third attempt to take off from a runway covered in slush, the aircraft failed to reach flying speed and crashed beyond the end of it.

Twenty-three of the 44 people on board died. Eight were players: Geoff Bent, Roger Byrne, Eddie Colman, Duncan Edwards, Mark Jones, David Pegg, Tommy Taylor and Billy Whelan. Edwards died in hospital on 21 February. Three club staff and eight journalists also died. Busby spent more than two months in hospital and was twice given the last rites. His assistant Jimmy Murphy, who had missed the trip because he was managing Wales, held the club together and took a patched-up side to the 1958 FA Cup final, which Bolton Wanderers won 2–0. A detailed account of the Munich air disaster includes the 1969 finding that slush, not the pilot, caused the crash.

At Old Trafford the Munich Clock sits at the junction of the East and South Stands, and the old central tunnel was renamed the Munich Tunnel in 2008.

Rebuilding to the 1968 European Cup

Busby recovered and rebuilt around survivors such as Bobby Charlton and younger players including George Best. The FA Cup came back in 1963 with a 3–1 win over Leicester City, and the league followed in 1965 and 1967. On 29 May 1968 at Wembley, ten years after Munich, United beat Benfica 4–1 after extra time. Charlton scored twice, with Best and Brian Kidd adding the others, and United became the first English club to win the European Cup. Busby stepped down as team manager in 1969.

A slide followed. United were relegated in 1974, returned to the top flight a year later and won the FA Cup in 1977, 1983 and 1985, but the league title stayed out of reach for the rest of the 1970s and the whole of the 1980s.

The Ferguson era, 1986–2013

Alex Ferguson arrived from Aberdeen on 6 November 1986, the day Ron Atkinson was dismissed. The 1990 FA Cup, won in a replay against Crystal Palace after a 3–3 draw, is widely seen as the trophy that secured his position. The Cup Winners' Cup followed in 1991 with a 2–1 win over Barcelona in Rotterdam, and in 1993 United were champions of England for the first time in 26 years.

The titles then came in a rush: Doubles in 1994 and 1996, making United the first English club to win the Double twice, and in 1999 the treble of Premier League, FA Cup and European Cup. Newcastle United were beaten in the FA Cup final on 22 May. Four days later, at the Camp Nou, Bayern Munich led through Mario Basler's sixth-minute goal until stoppage time, when Teddy Sheringham and Ole Gunnar Solskjær scored within three minutes to win the 1999 Champions League final 2–1.

A second Champions League arrived in Moscow in 2008, against Chelsea on penalties, followed in December by the Club World Cup. The 19th league title, sealed at Blackburn on 14 May 2011, took United past Liverpool's record of 18. The 20th was confirmed on 22 April 2013 with a home win over Aston Villa. On 8 May 2013 Ferguson announced his retirement, and his last match, at West Bromwich Albion, ended 5–5. Over 26 years he won 38 trophies with the club, 13 of them league titles.

Manchester United honours by era

The record below counts the main competitive honours from 1878 to the end of the 2012–13 season. Community Shields are left out.

Read by era, the record is lopsided. Thirteen of the 20 league titles won by 2013 came in Ferguson's 26 years, while in the 26 years between Busby's last title in 1967 and the first Premier League crown in 1993 the club won no league title at all.