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Just caught a few minutes of Radio5 post-match analysis, and the comnentatator at Old Trafford (didn’t catch his name) was full of praise for the Blades fans - contrasted the quiet apathy of the ManU crowd with the loud and constant noise from the travelling Blades fans, which he thought was...

A good while ago (a year perhaps) I read a paper by a research scientist saying the technology is not sufficiently sophisticated to be 100% accurate. With a limited number of cameras, it has to deal with the exact position of 3 different objects in different parts of the pitch moving in...

I knew you would rise to the challenge🤣

Congratulations on that title. I know we blame Don Givens for many things, but I couldn’t work out how you were going to blame him for that…

All of which meant that United played at Stoke with Cliff Mason at left-back and Denis Gratton at centre-half, and we still won 2-1! (April 11, 1959)

Has he taught McBurnie how to do the outside-of-the-foot pass?

The reports of this game, another which I have completely forgotten, bring home how some things in football have greatly improved. In this case, it is that there have been changes which keep the interest up much longer in a season. The only important position at the top of the league was top -...

There must be many examples of entertainers who love performing in public but who are reserved in private life. He was a natural entertainer at football, and clearly enjoyed the adoration that went with it. He is not a great public speaker, but presumably still likes the idea of public...

Good mix of laddish humour and interesting thoughts. Random points of interest for me were: 1. Paddy Kenny is the joker. But also allowed more serious comments from the others without interrupting. 2. The difference between players in real life and on the pitch was a theme, and it works in...

I’m going with ‘junior’. Looking at tickets available, it seems to be too late to sit next to us🤣

As a member of the goalkeepers union, I do my best to defend this much maligned species. For example, Olsen played pretty well for Ville yesterday at M a City. I think the first goal this evening is something Grbic can learn from, and needs to do so quickly. What puzzles me is why he so often...

In preparing a post for the 1963-64 thread just now, I came across this bit of information about him. He had just signed for Wolves at the age of 17 for a reported fee of £10000, a huge sum for a youngster then. And Wolves had a lot of good forwards in their squad. He didn’t play that evening...

Apologies for the slow response to the Wolves matches. Here are some pages from the home programme, which for some reason has survived the disappearance of most programmes from the last few weeks of the season. There are some interesting and bizarre bits of information there! The improvement...

He was wing-half when I first went, but soon moved to centre-half. The idea of the centre-half going up for corners did not surface until late in his career, and as his one obvious problem was dealing with tall strikers, it would not have served much purpose. I am sure someone will know who...

Thanks for that. For once, my memory is reasonably accurate. 53-54 was my first season, and I don’t think I went to that many games, so probably wasn’t at the Liverpool game. So I presumably only saw him score the one at Arsenal (apart from the occasional own goal🤣), and it was rare to see him...

Very sad news. He was one of those signings of older players who showed class in every thing they did.

Do you have easy access to which matches he scored in? I am wondering if I saw any of the others, and have forgotten them. That is a great list. Joe Shaw and Billy Sharp were not exactly similar footballers, but share that achievement.

At last, the good times return! Easter, with matches Saturday, Monday, Tuesday, and as you will no doubt be revealing shortly, it was a very satisfactory holiday period, particularly after the long run of poor results. With no school football, I actually made it to this game, and to the best of...

Another match that has been wiped from the memory bank. I don’t even remember the pop group performing before the game. According to the programme to the following home game, this was part of a broader plan to engage younger supporters: The wife of the drummer posted on the Sheffield Forum that...

An excellent read. Interesting that in retirement he watched both United and Wednesday. It is difficult to appreciate now how many used to do that.

The bad news for some of us is that we have witnessed more than half our history (70 years ago my first match), but we missed seeing us win the League Championship, FA Cup wins and finals,etc. I did see us win the County Cup. The upside is I also missed 2 World Wars, so every cloud and all that…

While seeking to educate my grandson about football in the good old days, I realised that he had never come across the concept of the communal post-match or post-training bath. A Google search quickly came up with a United photo I have never seen before. Times have certainly changed🤣

Did he mention walking past me in Limb Valley?🤣

About 40 years ago, we were walking down Limb Valley, when Steve Charles came the other way. We didn’t speak. By remarkable coincidence, last year we were walking in Whitely Woods, when Sander Berge came the other way. Again, we did not speak. But I did notice that Sander Berge is a lot taller...

The news that Gerry Summers has died sent me off to my old scrapbooks, in search of some memories. The iconic squad photo in the 1961 promotion celebration has already been posted, but some of the following will bring back a few memories:

Hardly any of that generation ever returned to the Lane as part of the opposing team’s staff. I don’t think I would have done anything other than warmly applaud them. That does not apply to everybody who has ever played for United, by the way…

A few of the best players were sold when I first went - Colin Grainger, Jim Iley, and perhaps Lewis was the last one of that era. We ended up with no right-winger for almost a season, playing people like reserve left-back Cliff Mason on the right-wing. And then we signed 2 right-wingers in time...

I am probably romanticising, but the hard players of that era seemed to be in the ‘hard, but fair’ category; it was in the 60s that the ‘hard and nasty’ players emerged in numbers (Chopper Harris, Norman Hunter, etc). And as you hint at, the game was slower, so players’ bodies were under much...

Football has improved in many ways, but for those of us that grew up with a settled team, the sense of identity of a club has been weakened. Between the ages of about 7 and 15, United to me meant a lineup like the one you have set out above. They might not have been the best in the world, but...

It was 1963, or perhaps 1964. They were in some way preparing for going into coaching/management. They came on 6 successive Wednesday afternoons, and had a couple of hours with the first and second elevens. As first eleven goalie, I got a lot of personalised coaching from my hero, but I didn’t...