ImagesGetty ImagesAbove
Manchester
United celebrate
winning the
Premier League
in May 1993
to become
champions of
England for
the first time
in 26 years
Below David
Beckham
celebrates
scoring in
United’s 4-0 win
over Newcastle
in the 1996
Charity Shield
at Wembleytransition from one championship-winning side to another without
any loss of momentum,” Roy Keane has reflected. “He had the easy
option to do nothing and buy [more] success, but he took the hard,
risky option and placed his trust in the club’s young players. He liked
a punt, but this was less of a gamble to those of us within the club
[who knew these players].”
Ferguson had let three established players leave to give an
opportunity to a talented group of young players he had been
nurturing within the club and who would come to be known as the
‘Class of ’92’ after winning the FA Youth Cup that year.
He was convinced the rare talent of David Beckham, Paul
Scholes, Nicky Butt, Gary Neville, Phil Neville and Ryan Giggs,
who was already in the first team, would keep delivering
United trophies.
Despite this young new side losing 3-1 to Aston Villa
on the opening day of the season, a defeat that
prompted the former Liverpool captain Alan Hansen to dismiss them
and claim on that evening’s Match Of The Day, “You can’t win
anything with kids”, United went on to lose only once more in their
next 16 league games.
Bolstered by the return of Cantona in October, United grew in
confidence and began to compete with Kevin Keegan’s entertaining
Newcastle side for the title, who at one stage held a 12-point lead in
the Premier League.
In March 1996, United’s 1-0 victory over Newcastle at St James’
Park would prove to be a turning point, one that would drive them
towards regaining the title, which they secured on the final day of the
season with an impressive 3-0 victory over Middlesbrough at the
Riverside Stadium.
United also made a third consecutive appearance in the FA Cup
final, where they met Liverpool in a taut and tense game that was
settled with only four minutes remaining when Cantona scored his
19 th and final goal of the season.
“We had won another double,” Keane, United’s man of the match
in the final, has said. “The moment of victory is short, but what’s
worth savouring is the vindication. The double vindicated the
manager [because] he had won something with ‘kids’.”
After winning three titles in four seasons, the priority for the 1996-
97 season was to win the club’s first European Cup for three decades,
but United would have to be content with making the semi-finals for
the first time since 1969, where they lost 2-0 over two legs to the
eventual winners Borussia Dortmund.
But in the Premier League normal service continued with yet
another league title as they finished seven points ahead of second-
placed Newcastle, Ferguson’s young side visibly gaining in confidence,
with Beckham winning that season’s PFA Young Player of the Year
and emerging as a real force at Old Trafford.
On the day United lifted the Premier League trophy Cantona
appeared a little distracted, and within days he would announce his
shock retirement from the game just before his 31st birthday.
In the following season, without the Frenchman, the catalyst for
their Premier League success, as well as his successor as captain Roy
Keane, who would miss almost the entire campaign after a serious
injury in September, United would at first continue to prosper, and by
March they had amassed a 12-point lead in the Premier League and
reached the Champions League quarter-finals. But the loss of so
much experience would begin to be felt by what was still a relatively
young side as they lost to Monaco on away goals in Europe and
could do nothing to stop a revived and powerful Arsenal side,
in Arsène Wenger’s first full season, overtaking them in the
table with ten consecutive league wins.
Beaten but unbowed, Ferguson would spend the
summer of 1998 rejuvenating his side with some key
buys in anticipation of another gruelling season.
Little could he have known how fruitful his efforts
would be.BRUCE DRAGS UNITED
BACK FROM THE BRINK
Two late goals from United’s captain Steve Bruce in
a famous game against Sheffield Wednesday kept
them on track to win the title
On Easter Saturday 1993, Manchester United were a point
behind league leaders Aston Villa in the Premier League table
with only six games remaining and painfully aware it was
at this stage of the previous season when their campaign
had imploded.
The visitors to Old Trafford on this day were a strong
Sheffield Wednesday side who would reach the final of
both the League Cup and FA Cup that season, and with
25 minutes remaining they took the lead with a penalty
converted by John Sheridan.
“An eerie feeling engulfed Old Trafford, the crowd were
getting anxious, and that began to affect us,” former United
captain Steve Bruce has recalled.
With only four minutes left, Bruce himself equalised with
a looping header, but there were no celebrations; it wasn’t
enough, and United knew they still needed another goal.
Deep into an unusually long seven minutes of added time,
caused by an injury to the referee, Gary Pallister swung over
a cross for his centre-back partner Bruce to meet with another
firm header to score one of the most important and famous
goals in United’s entire history.
“At that moment Old Trafford exploded; I have never heard
such noise in a stadium,” Bruce has said. “The tension and
nerves that had consumed us evaporated and were replaced
by relief and joy.”
United were now top of the table and a point ahead of
Villa, who had drawn that afternoon. “We knew we couldn’t
be beaten now and that wait of 26 years was nearly over,”
Bruce has said.UNITED
DOMINATE
THE ’90SFourFourTwo.com The Story of Man Utd 79