barbara kenyon

This book follows the local railway works football team Newton Heath FC from it's inception when they had poor grounds, boycotted the FA Cup, fought to enter the Football League. All this happened before their first brush with bankruptcy and finding a saviour in J.H. Davies who not only changed their name to Manchester United but built a magnificient stadium. His choice of manager was Ernest Mangnall who took the team to winning two League titles and the FA Cup. During the First World War a manager emerged who not only started his own youth policy before his retirement through ill health, but handed a team of young players all from the amateur ranks to the next manager who after a couple of years in the doldrums while the younsters matured became a team that people wanted to watch. In 1931 bankruptcy threatened again and the players could not be paid but this heralded the start of a new era which included the official launching of the Youth Programme: a bombed out stadium and the rise of a great team.