The basic point, I realised, was that everyone who played football for a living had a duty to involve himself in all aspects of a team effort. Winning wasn’t guaranteed, I noted against Wolves, even as Billy Whelan and David Pegg scored early, and Tommy Taylor completed a win which, in the end, was so comfortable that Billy Wright, the England captain, was said to have been rendered speechless. Planning was required and worked. If you knew exactly what you were doing, and who on the opposite side was your particular responsibility, the challenge was quite straightforward. If you ignored the demands made on you by someone like Jimmy, your team would lose – and there would be nowhere to hide.
I had looked across the field, picking out all the big-name players in the famous old-gold shirts and black shorts and had said to myself, ‘Some people think this is really the best team in England but we’re beating them 3–0. It’s really true. The best team doesn’t always win.’
Fifteen months later, against Arsenal, football was easy again. It was both a rush of some of our best form and a celebration of the fact that we had grown strong on what had proved a surprisingly tricky road.
Even before the 1957–58 season’s first kick off – a com fortable 3–0 victory over newly promoted Leicester City, which saw Billy Whelan score a fine hat-trick that helped shut the door on any hopes I had of a swift return to glory – there had been a couple of unsettling developments. Both of them flowed directly from the splash we had made in the European Cup.
Internazionale of Milan, having seen the impact of John Charles, the great Welsh international, after his transfer from Leeds United to Juventus, began to court Tommy Taylor, much to the fury of Matt Busby. Then the Italian Football Federation, noting the way Busby had developed his team at Old Trafford, went to the top of the United tree and invited him to become their national coach. The Old Man declared, as he had the previous year when Real Madrid came courting, that he wasn’t going anywhere, and nor was Tommy, however much money the Italians put on the table.
Having dismissed such distractions, United went charging into the new season, thrusting their way into the leadership of the First Division for a third straight year. However, momentum flagged in September and we began to lose, three times in four games while slipping to fourth place. Busby was concerned that Ray Wood may have lost some of his nerve after his nightmare at Wembley, and Tommy Taylor, perhaps unsettled by the Italian interest and the fact that he was the latest English player to discover he had no control over his own destiny, was finding goals more elusive than usual. Busby was never prone to panic, but nor was he a manager inclined to sit on his hands in the face of signs that his team were in danger of drifting away from their best standards.
By December we had a new goalkeeper, Harry Gregg, bought at the record price of £25,000 from Doncaster Rovers, and a new forward who was being invited to make himself a permanent part of the team. That was me – and by way of celebration I began scoring almost as a matter of course. Everything that came my way on the field, I went for. I was no longer afraid of shooting at distance. Every time I did I believed I would score a goal, and often I was right to have such confidence.
I had heard about the Taylor situation only at second hand. Tommy, a shrewd Yorkshireman, kept the matter to himself in the dressing room, and in this he may have been recognising the fact that most young United players – and perhaps along with Wilf McGuinness I was a classic case – would no more think of leaving Old Trafford than join the Soviet astronaut programme. At the financial convenience of English clubs, there would over those years be a trickle of players going to Italy – led by John Charles and followed by players like Gerry Hitchens, Jimmy Greaves and my future team-mate Denis Law – but for most of us the idea was unthinkable.
In nearly twenty years as a professional with Manchester United, I wasn’t notified of a single approach. Inevitably, there would be the odd rumour and a whisper in my ear, but there wasn’t anything even vaguely official. I heard that Glasgow Rangers had made an enquiry about the possibility of signing me, and I was told later that there had indeed been something in it, but I didn’t attribute any deviousness to Matt Busby’s failure to notify me. I’m sure he just assumed I wouldn’t be interested. And of course he was right.
A few years later I had reason to believe that Real Madrid might try to persuade United to let me go. Santiago Bernabeu, the president, was always very friendly whenever I saw him and he sent a present when Norma and I were married in 1961. Given the aura of Real, and all they meant to me as representatives of beautiful football, it was extremely flattering, but Busby knew better than anyone that my vows to United were, in the context of football, as strong as the ones I had made to my wife.
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