It is Christmas, 1989, and Manchester United are enduring yet another winter of discontent.
Ultimately that season, the Reds would finish 13th in the old First Division, accruing a mere five points more than relegated Sheffield Wednesday, and with two previous mid-table placings to his name, some of the Old Trafford faithful have had their fill of Alex Ferguson.
“Three years of excuses and it’s still rubbish. Ta-ra Fergie,” read one banner hung in the Stretford End. It is hoped that banner still exists, stashed away in an attic perhaps. It would be worth a fortune today.
But back to that period of struggle, and behind the scenes, club directors are repeatedly assuring the Scottish manager that his job is safe, as much or as little as such guarantees mean.
We have subsequently learnt that at the same time they were sounding out Howard Kendall about whether he would be willing to leave Everton.
And the defeats kept on racking up.
The one glimmer of hope in that dispiriting campaign was that United remained in the FA Cup, navigating a path past Newcastle, Sheffield United and Oldham before needing two bites at Crystal Palace before lifting the trophy that May.
It is widely regarded that this cup success persuaded the board to keep faith with their under-performing manager. That and Kendall turned them down.
On such twists of fate fortunes are made, because we all know what came next, not immediately admittedly, but prior to their outright dominance of English football came significant progress.
There was a Cup Winners Cup triumph in 1991, settled by a thunderous Mark Hughes strike. The following year United won the Rumbelows Cup and finished second in the league.
And then it all began, a machine whirring into life, its capacity limitless.
With a feared, no-nonsense, obsessive genius at the helm, Manchester United were favourites in the Premier League winner betting odds each and every season because each and every season they either won it or came close.
Across two decades and more, United finished outside of the top two on only three occasions, claiming the title an astonishing 13 times. They won the Champions League twice. They won so many other trophies it’s hard to keep track.
Moreover, legends were born, forged. From Keane to Cantona, Giggs to Beckham, this formerly faded giant mushroomed into an industry in and of itself, an industry of excellence.
Between 1992 and the year of the great man’s retirement in 2013, it took a brave or foolhardy punter to back against the Reds in the football betting in any competition. They typically either decimated the field or found a way.
On November 6th, 1986 – 37 years ago today – Alex Ferguson travelled down from Aberdeen to take charge of a club that once stood proud but was now on its knees, made ordinary by a succession of failed predecessors.
He built, in his own words, from the ‘bottom up’, first changing the mentality ‘through every layer of the organisation’ before getting to work constructing a successful football team.
Maybe he knew deep down it would get a lot worse before it got better. But when better equates to the best of our era it was a sacrifice he was willing to make.
*Credit for all of the photos in this article belongs to Alamy*
