Long-time Manchester United fans will see the irony of it better than most. About 20 months ago, a statue of Jimmy Murphy was unveiled behind the Stretford End. Yet, by the time this transfer window closes, two star pupils from United’s academy might have left the club. The owners may as well cover the statue with a steaming pile of s**t.
It’s hard to put into words just what Murphy meant to United. Few would argue at the suggestion that, after Sir Matt Busby and Sir Alex Ferguson, he is the third-most important figure in the club’s history. For a quarter-century, Murphy was everything from chief coach to scout to interim manager, as Busby – administered the last rites in Munich – recovered from the plane crash that killed the core of what could have been one of the all-time-great teams.
Some have romantic notions that football became a game of mercenaries only recently. That isn’t so. Working-class professionals, paid a pittance compared to what the greedy owners raked in – does that ring a bell? – had always hawked their services to the highest bidder. Then, as now, there were very few one-club men, and teams higher up the pyramid typically cherry-picked established players from those lower down.
That changed after WWII. A generation had been lost to the war, and with not enough senior pros around, even big clubs like United had to look at nurturing young talent. They may have come to be called the Busby Babes, but they were Murphy’s kids as much as anything.
Duncan Edwards came from Dudley in the Black Country in 1952. Bobby Charlton followed a year later, from the Northeast. Denis Law was admired even when he was a teenager at Huddersfield, but he was a relative veteran of 22 by the time he finally made it to Old Trafford. By then, nearly half a decade after Edwards’s tragic death in Munich, the great youth hope was the Belfast-born George Best. Like Edwards and Charlton before him, Best too won an FA Youth Cup. Like them, he had Murphy watching over him from the touchline.
Make no mistake, whatever the bean-counters justifying their greed might tell you, that is the history of Manchester United. The club didn’t become a global phenomenon because someone went out and got tyre and mattress sponsors. United are what they are because of Busby, Murphy and the players they brought through, a tradition that Ferguson would continue with his class of 1992 and even later.
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Now, if persistent rumours are to be believed, both Marcus Rashford and Alejandro Garnacho could be on their way out of the club. Rashford, at 27, should be in his prime. Instead, after a stellar 2022-23 season, he has resembled a lost soul in a fishbowl. There have been disciplinary issues, long scoring droughts and performances low on both energy and inspiration.
Across the East Lancs Road at Liverpool, speculation continues to swirl around Trent Alexander-Arnold and a possible move to Real Madrid. But Alexander-Arnold has thrived in his role of local hero, registering a record number of EPL assists (64) for a defender, and winning both the league and the Champions League. Rashford, it seems, has been crushed by both the pressure of expectation and the constant toxicity around Old Trafford.
When they got him from Atletico Madrid for less than 500,000 pounds in the summer of 2020, the 16-year-old Garnacho was seen as a huge coup for the club. He quickly became a talisman for the age-group teams, winning the Youth FA Cup and the Jimmy Murphy Young Player of the Year award before becoming a first-team regular.
But as United have stuttered, first under Erik ten Hag and then Ruben Amorim, Garnacho’s form has also suffered. And so dismal has the transfer strategy been for years now that on-field failures are finally catching up. With no Champions League revenue this season, and the team highly unlikely to qualify for next season’s competition – unless they win the Europa League – United are in serious danger of falling foul of the Profit and Sustainability Regulations (PSR).
Sir Jim Ratcliffe and crew – who have already gutted the club of several long-serving employees – now plan to flog their young stars, and bank the profit to balance the books. At another club, a Chelsea or a Manchester City, it may not have raised eyebrows. But this is United, the team of Edwards, Charlton, Best, Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes and David Beckham. Most of all, this is the club made immortal by Busby, Ferguson and Murphy. But telling the ownership that, even as they figure out the next ticket-price hike, might be akin to talking to Old Trafford’s crumbling walls.
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