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Premier League, 1st
History
Early years (1878–1945)
Main article: History of Manchester United F.C. (1878–1945)
A chart showing the progress of Manchester United F.C. through the English football league system from joining as Newton Heath in 1892–93 to 2007–08
Manchester United was formed in 1878 as Newton Heath LYR Football Club by the Carriage and Wagon department of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway depot at Newton Heath.
The team initially played games against other departments and rail
companies, but on 20 November 1880, they competed in their first
recorded match; wearing the colours of the railway company – green and
gold – they were defeated 6–0 by Bolton Wanderers' reserve team. By 1888, the club had become a founding member of The Combination, a regional football league. Following the league's dissolution after only one season, Newton Heath joined the newly formed Football Alliance,
which ran for three seasons before being merged with the Football
League. This resulted in the club starting the 1892–93 season in the First Division, by which time it had become independent of the rail company and dropped the "LYR" from its name. After two seasons, the club was relegated to the Second Division.
The Manchester United team at the start of the 1905–06 season, in which they were runners-up in the Second Division
In January 1902, with debts of £2,670 – equivalent to £210,000 as of 2012 – the club was served with a winding-up order. Captain Harry Stafford found four local businessmen, including John Henry Davies
(who became club president), each willing to invest £500 in return for a
direct interest in running the club and who subsequently changed the
name; on 24 April 1902, Manchester United was officially born. Under Ernest Mangnall,
who assumed managerial duties in 1903, the team finished as Second
Division runners-up in 1906 and secured promotion to the First Division,
which they won in 1908 – the club's first league title. The following
season began with victory in the first ever Charity Shield
and ended with the club's first FA Cup title. Manchester United won the
First Division for the second time in 1911, but at the end of the
following season, Mangnall left the club to join Manchester City.
In 1922, three years after the resumption of football following the
First World War, the club was relegated to the Second Division, where it
remained until regaining promotion in 1925. Relegated again in 1931,
Manchester United became a yo-yo club,
achieving its all-time lowest position of 20th place in the Second
Division in 1934. Following the death of the club's principal
benefactor, J. H. Davies, in October 1927,
the club's finances deteriorated to the extent that Manchester United
would likely have gone bankrupt had it not been for James W. Gibson, who, in December 1931, invested £2,000 and assumed control of the club. In the 1938–39 season, the last year of football before the Second World War, the club finished 14th in the First Division.
 Busby years (1945–1969)In October 1945, the impending resumption of football led to the
managerial appointment of Matt Busby, who demanded an unprecedented
level of control over team selection, player transfers and training
sessions. Busby led the team to second-place league finishes in 1947, 1948 and 1949, and to FA Cup victory in 1948. In 1952, the club won the First Division, its first league title for 41 years.
With an average age of 22, the media labelled the back-to-back title
winning side of 1956 "the Busby Babes", a testament to Busby's faith in
his youth players. In 1957, Manchester United became the first English team to compete in
the European Cup, despite objections from The Football League, who had
denied Chelsea the same opportunity the previous season. En route to the semi-final, which they lost to Real Madrid, the team recorded a 10–0 victory over Belgian champions Anderlecht, which remains the club's biggest victory on record.
 The following season, on the way home from a European Cup quarter-final victory against Red Star Belgrade,
the aircraft carrying the Manchester United players, officials and
journalists crashed while attempting to take off after refuelling in
Munich, Germany. The Munich air disaster of 6 February 1958 claimed 23 lives, including those of eight players – Geoff Bent, Roger Byrne, Eddie Colman, Duncan Edwards, Mark Jones, David Pegg, Tommy Taylor and Billy Whelan – and injured several more.
Reserve team manager Jimmy Murphy took over as manager while Busby recovered from his injuries and the club's makeshift side reached the FA Cup final, which they lost to Bolton Wanderers. In recognition of the team's tragedy, UEFA invited the club to compete in the 1958–59 European Cup alongside eventual League champions Wolverhampton Wanderers.
Despite approval from the FA, the Football League determined that the
club should not enter the competition, since it had not qualified. Busby rebuilt the team through the 1960s by signing players such as Denis Law and Pat Crerand, who combined with the next generation of youth players – including George Best – to win the FA Cup in 1963.
The following season, they finished second in the league, then won the
title in 1965 and 1967. In 1968, Manchester United became the first
English (and second British) club to win the European Cup, beating Benfica 4–1 in the final with a team that contained three European Footballers of the Year: Bobby Charlton, Denis Law and George Best. Matt Busby resigned as manager in 1969 and was replaced by the reserve team coach, former Manchester United player Wilf McGuinness.
Grounds
 Newton Heath initially played on a field on North Road,
close to the railway yard; the original capacity was about 12,000, but
club officials deemed the facilities inadequate for a club hoping to
join The Football League.
Some expansion took place in 1887, and in 1891 Newton Heath used its
minimal financial reserves to purchase two grandstands, each able to
hold 1,000 spectators.
Although attendances were not recorded for many of the earliest matches
at North Road, the highest documented attendance was approximately
15,000 for a First Division match against Sunderland on 4 March 1893. A similar attendance was also recorded for a friendly match against Gorton Villa on 5 September 1889.
In June 1893, after the club was evicted from North Road by its
owners, Manchester Deans and Canons, who felt it was inappropriate for
the club to charge an entry fee to the ground, secretary A. H. Albut procured the use of the Bank Street ground in Clayton. It initially had no stands, by the start of the 1893–94 season,
two had been built; one spanning the full length of the pitch on one
side and the other behind the goal at the "Bradford end". At the
opposite end, the "Clayton end", the ground had been "built up,
thousands thus being provided for". Newton Heath's first league match at Bank Street was played against Burnley on 1 September 1893, when 10,000 people saw Alf Farman score a hat-trick, Newton Heath's only goals in a 3–2 win. The remaining stands were completed for the following league game against Nottingham Forest three weeks later. In October 1895, before the visit of Manchester City, the club purchased a 2,000-capacity stand from the Broughton Rangers rugby league
club, and put up another stand on the "reserved side" (as distinct from
the "popular side"). However, weather restricted the attendance for the
Manchester City match to just 12,000.
When the Bank Street ground was temporarily 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 reserves game against Padiham.
Following financial investment, new club president J.H. Davies paid
£500 for the erection of a new 1,000-seat stand at Bank Street
Within four years, the stadium had cover on all four sides, as well as
the ability to hold approximately 50,000 spectators, some of whom could
watch from the viewing gallery atop the Main Stand.
However, following Manchester United's first league title in 1908 and
the FA Cup a year later, it was decided that Bank Street was too
restrictive for Davies' ambition;
in February 1909, six weeks before the club's first FA Cup title, 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 called
for seating capacity of 100,000, though budget constraints forced a
revision to 77,000. The building was constructed by Messrs Brameld and
Smith of Manchester. The stadium's record attendance was registered on
25 March 1939, when an FA Cup semi-final between Wolverhampton Wanderers and Grimsby Town drew 76,962 spectators.
Bombing in the Second World War destroyed much of the stadium; the
central tunnel in the South Stand was all that remained of that quarter.
After the war, the club received compensation from the War Damage Commission in the amount of £22,278. While reconstruction took place, the team played its "home" games at Manchester City's Maine Road ground; Manchester United was charged £5,000 per year, plus a nominal percentage of gate receipts.
Later improvements included the addition of roofs, first to the
Stretford End and then to the North and East Stands. The roofs were
supported by pillars that obstructed many fans' views, and they were
eventually replaced with a cantilevered structure. The Stretford End was the last stand to receive a cantilevered roof, completed in time for the 1993–94 seasons
First used on 25 March 1957 and costing £40,000, four 180-foot (55 m)
pylons were erected, each housing 54 individual floodlights. These were
dismantled in 1987 and replaced by a lighting system embedded in the
roof of each stand, which remains in use today.
The Taylor Report's
requirement for an all-seater stadium lowered capacity at Old Trafford
to around 44,000 by 1993. In 1995, the North Stand was redeveloped into
three tiers, restoring capacity to approximately 55,000. At the end of
the 1998–99 season, second tiers were added to the East and West Stands,
raising capacity to around 67,000, and between July 2005 and May 2006,
8,000 more seats were added via second tiers in the north-west and
north-east quadrants. Part of the new seating was used for the first
time on 26 March 2006, when an attendance of 69,070 became a new Premier
League record. The record was pushed steadily upwards before reaching its peak on 31
March 2007, when 76,098 spectators saw Manchester United beat Blackburn Rovers 4–1, with just 114 seats (0.15 percent of the total capacity of 76,212) unoccupied. In 2009, reorganisation of the seating resulted in a reduction of capacity by 255 to 75,957. Manchester United has the third highest average attendance of European football clubs only behind FC Barcelona and Borussia Dortmund.
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Manchester United F.C.
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