After Cantwell, Matt Busby and Jimmy Murphy were thwarted when they made what they thought would be an equally crucial move for another top-class defender – Blackburn Rovers’ imposing Welsh international centre half Mike England. A £100,000 bid was put in to Blackburn, but it was rejected. For many years Jimmy went on about the scale of the miss, saying, ‘We could have had one of the best centre halves around if we’d forked out another £7,000.’ Even today, I think of Murphy’s fury when I see clubs haggling over the cost of a player a manager has identified as a potentially vital recruit. So much of United’s buying in those transition years was aimed at strengthening weaknesses rather than shaping a team for the future, and that was probably inevitable in our circumstances. Stan Crowther had supplied some muscle and strength in the first months after Munich, but you never really felt he was going to become part of the building. Perhaps understandably, I remember him most for the fact that in all my years in the game he was the one opponent, after he moved to Chelsea, to leave a permanent mark on me – a small scar on my left leg.
Ernie Taylor, like Crowther, had been parachuted into the emergency, and in their different ways they confirmed Jimmy Murphy’s ability to recognise valuable qualities across the whole range of football talent, but they were both gone by the halfway point of the 1958–59 season, Taylor returning to his North East roots when he signed for Sunderland.
Taylor and Crowther missed our charge up the league in the New Year, but it was a feat which was made to look merely cosmetic soon enough as we entered what might be classed as the years of struggle. Ironically, we reached our lowest point, a nineteenth place in the First Division, during the run-up to the 1963 cup final which would prove as much a deliverance as a triumph.
One reason for our losing momentum was that it became clear soon enough, after that rush of goals and second place in the league in the first post-Munich season, that the pace and cleverness along the wings that had been a United staple since the days of Jimmy Delaney and Charlie Mitten had run low with the loss of David Pegg and Johnny Berry.
For a while there had been some reason for a more optimistic view. Warren Bradley had done well for us after being drafted in from the top amateur club Bishop Auckland. He didn’t have the wiles of Berry, but he was quick and brave and he knew how to cross the ball. His initial impact was good enough to win him a few appearances with England, but in the long haul it was clear the Old Man wanted more. Warren, who would go on to a fine career as a headmaster, was sold to Bury.
Also, Albert Scanlon had at first promised a full recovery in the 1958–59 season, scampering down the left wing and putting in a stream of crosses, many of which I benefited from as I scored twenty-nine goals, missing Jack Rowley’s club record by just one. But behind Albert’s appearance back in the limelight was a sad fact which became more and more apparent down the weeks and the months. He was not the same man. He was not the winger who performed so brilliantly at Highbury a few days before Munich. The reality could be pushed back only for so long. His career was ebbing and he too was sold the following season, to Newcastle United. On Tyneside he made just a few appearances before slipping down into the lower division – another survivor of Munich who found the years hard and painful after the first relief of coming through it with his life, and after a brave fight against his injuries.
Another contender was the Ulsterman Sammy McMillan, a game player but one who, for all his effort, failed to provide the bite and the spark on the flank that Matt Busby and Jimmy Murphy now believed was vital if the team was to get back its old rhythm and balance.
At that time a lack of width, and thus no regular stream of crosses, was still seen as a basic deficiency, even though new trends working against the orthodox brilliance of wingers like Stanley Matthews and Tom Finney were on the horizon. The old convention that a full back alone would tackle a quick and talented winger was running towards the end of its shelf life, and at Manchester City Don Revie had been given the deep-lying role pioneered by the great Hungarian Nandor Hidegkuti. However, even though there were breezes of change in football, if not a full blowing wind, the prevailing fashion was still to have a big centre forward feeding on crosses, and doing it quite ruthlessly with pushes and shoves and plenty of use of his elbows.
At Old Trafford a decision was made. We needed a new winger. It was late in the 1959–60 season, when the problem had become very apparent, that the Old Man spoke to me after a training session. He said, ‘You can use your left foot and your right. We’re struggling a bit on the left side. What about playing left wing?’ It was typical of the Old Man that an order would be couched in terms that suggested you might have a choice. It was bit of a shock because I had grown to love playing in midfield; I liked the freedom of action, the ability to roam wherever I wanted in pursuit of a chance to move on goal. But I did see the problem. We had
