Manchester United F.C.

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Manchester United F.C.

Manchester United Football Club is an English professional football club, based in Old Trafford, Greater Manchester, that plays in the Premier League. Founded as Newton Heath LYR Football Club in 1878, the club changed its name to Manchester United in 1902 and moved to Old Trafford in 1910.

Manchester United have won twenty League titles, a record eleven FA Cups, four League Cups, and twenty FA Community Shields.

The club has also won three European Cups, one UEFA Cup Winners' Cup, one UEFA Super Cup, one Intercontinental Cup, and one FIFA Club World Cup. In 1998-99, the club won a continental treble of the Premier League, the FA Cup and the UEFA Champions League, an unprecedented feat for an English club.

The 1958 Munich air disaster claimed the lives of eight players. In 1968, under the management of Matt Busby, Manchester United was the first English football club to win the European Cup.

Alex Ferguson won 28 major honours, and 38 in total, from November 1986 to May 2013, when he announced his retirement after 26 years at the club.[6]Fellow Scot David Moyes was appointed as his replacement on 9 May 2013.

Manchester United is the third-richest football club in the world for 2011-12 in terms of revenue, with an annual revenue of €395.9 million, and the second most valuable sports team in 2013, valued at $3.165 billion. It is one of the most widely supported football teams in the world.

After being floated on the London Stock Exchange in 1991, the club was purchased by Malcolm Glazer in May 2005 in a deal valuing the club at almost Ј800 million.

In August 2012, Manchester United made an initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange.

Ferguson years (1986-2013)

Alex Ferguson and his assistant Archie Knox arrived from Aberdeen on the day of Atkinson's dismissal,[40] and guided the club to an 11th-place finish in the league.[41] Despite a second-place finish in 1987-88, the club was back in 11th place the following season.[42] Reportedly on the verge of being dismissed, victory over Crystal Palace in the 1990 FA Cup Final replay (after a 3-3 draw) saved Ferguson's career.[43][44]

The following season, Manchester United claimed its first Cup Winners' Cup title and competed in the 1991 UEFA Super Cup, beating European Cup holders Red Star Belgrade 1-0 in the final at Old Trafford. A second consecutive League Cup final appearance followed in 1992, in which the team beat Nottingham Forest 1-0 at Wembley.[39] In 1993, the club won its first league title since 1967, and a year later, for the first time since 1957, it won a second consecutive title - alongside the FA Cup - to complete the first "Double" in the club's history.[39]

In the 1998-99 season, Manchester United became the first team to win the Premier League, FA Cup and UEFA Champions League - "The Treble" - in the same season.[46] Losing 1-0 going into injury time in the1999 UEFA Champions League Final, Teddy Sheringham and Ole Gunnar Solskjжr scored late goals to claim a dramatic victory over Bayern Munich, in what is considered one of the greatest comebacks of all time.[47] The club also won the Intercontinental Cup after beating Palmeiras 1-0 in Tokyo.[48] Ferguson was subsequently knighted for his services to football.[49]

Manchester United won the league again in the 1999-2000 and 2000-01 seasons. The team finished third in 2001-02, before regaining the title in2002-03. They won the 2003-04 FA Cup, beating Millwall 3-0 in the final at the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff.[50] In the 2005-06 season, Manchester United failed to qualify for the knockout phase of the UEFA Champions League for the first time in over a decade, but recovered to secure a second-place league finish and victory over Wigan Athletic in the 2006 Football League Cup Final. The club regained the Premier League in the 2006-07 and 2007-08 seasons, and completed the European double by beating Chelsea 6-5 on penalties in the 2008 UEFA Champions League Final in Moscow's Luzhniki Stadium. Ryan Giggs made a record 759th appearance for the club in this game, overtaking previous record holder Bobby Charlton.[51] In December 2008, the club won the 2008 FIFA Club World Cup and followed this with the 2008-09 Football League Cup, and its third successive Premier League title.[52][53] That summer, Cristiano Ronaldo was sold to Real Madrid for a world record Ј80 million.[54] In 2010, Manchester United defeated Aston Villa 2-1 at Wembley to retain the League Cup, its first successful defence of a knockout cup competition.[55]

After finishing as runner-up to Chelsea in the 2009-10 season, United achieved a record 19th league title in 2010-11, securing the championship with a 1-1 away draw against Blackburn Rovers on 14 May 2011.[56]

After finishing as runner-up to Manchester City in the 2011-12 season, United achieved a record 20th league title in 2012-13, securing the championship with a 3-0 home win against Aston Villa on 22 April 2013.[57]

On 8 May 2013, Ferguson announced that he was to retire as manager at the end of the football season, but would remain at the club as a director and club ambassador.[6][58] The club announced the next day that Everton manager David Moyes would replace him from 1 July, having signed a six-year contract.

Grounds

Newton Heath initially played on a field on North Road, close to the railway yard; the original capacity was about 12,000, but club officials deemed the facilities inadequate for a club hoping to join The Football League.[71] Some expansion took place in 1887, and in 1891 Newton Heath used its minimal financial reserves to purchase two grandstands, each able to hold 1,000 spectators.[72] Although attendances were not recorded for many of the earliest matches at North Road, the highest documented attendance was approximately 15,000 for a First Division match against Sunderland on 4 March 1893.[73] A similar attendance was also recorded for a friendly match against Gorton Villa on 5 September 1889.[74] football manchester stadium

In June 1893, after the club was evicted from North Road by its owners, Manchester Deans and Canons, who felt it was inappropriate for the club to charge an entry fee to the ground, secretary A. H. Albut procured the use of the Bank Street ground in Clayton.[75] It initially had no stands, by the start of the 1893-94 season, two had been built; one spanning the full length of the pitch on one side and the other behind the goal at the "Bradford end".

At the opposite end, the "Clayton end", the ground had been "built up, thousands thus being provided for".[75] Newton Heath's first league match at Bank Street was played against Burnley on 1 September 1893, when 10,000 people saw Alf Farman score a hat-trick, Newton Heath's only goals in a 3-2 win.

The remaining stands were completed for the following league game against Nottingham Forest three weeks later.[75] In October 1895, before the visit of Manchester City, the club purchased a 2,000-capacity stand from the Broughton Rangers rugby league club, and put up another stand on the "reserved side" (as distinct from the "popular side"). However, weather restricted the attendance for the Manchester City match to just 12,000.[76]

When the Bank Street ground was temporarily closed by bailiffs in 1902, club captain Harry Stafford raised enough money to pay for the club's next away game at Bristol City and found a temporary ground at Harpurhey for the next reserves game against Padiham.[77]

Following financial investment, new club president John Henry Davies paid Ј500 for the erection of a new 1,000-seat stand at Bank Street.[78] Within four years, the stadium had cover on all four sides, as well as the ability to hold approximately 50,000 spectators, some of whom could watch from the viewing gallery atop the Main Stand.[78]

However, following Manchester United's first league title in 1908 and the FA Cup a year later, it was decided that Bank Street was too restrictive for Davies' ambition;[78] in February 1909, six weeks before the club's first FA Cup title, Old Trafford was named as the home of Manchester United, following the purchase of land for around Ј60,000.

Architect Archibald Leitch was given a budget of Ј30,000 for construction; original plans called for seating capacity of 100,000, though budget constraints forced a revision to 77,000.

The building was constructed by Messrs Brameld and Smith of Manchester. The stadium's record attendance was registered on 25 March 1939, when an FA Cup semi-final betweenWolverhampton Wanderers and Grimsby Town drew 76,962 spectators.[79]

Bombing in the Second World War destroyed much of the stadium; the central tunnel in the South Stand was all that remained of that quarter. After the war, the club received compensation from the War Damage Commission in the amount of Ј22,278. While reconstruction took place, the team played its "home" games at Manchester City's Maine Roadground; Manchester United was charged Ј5,000 per year, plus a nominal percentage of gate receipts.[80]

Later improvements included the addition of roofs, first to the Stretford End and then to the North and East Stands. The roofs were supported by pillars that obstructed many fans' views, and they were eventually replaced with a cantilevered structure. The Stretford End was the last stand to receive a cantilevered roof, completed in time for the 1993-94 season.[34] First used on 25 March 1957 and costing Ј40,000, four 180-foot (55 m) pylons were erected, each housing 54 individual floodlights.

These were dismantled in 1987 and replaced by a lighting system embedded in the roof of each stand, which remains in use today.[81]

The Taylor Report's requirement for an all-seater stadium lowered capacity at Old Trafford to around 44,000 by 1993.

In 1995, the North Stand was redeveloped into three tiers, restoring capacity to approximately 55,000. At the end of the 1998-99 season, second tiers were added to the East and West Stands, raising capacity to around 67,000, and between July 2005 and May 2006, 8,000 more seats were added via second tiers in the north-west and north-east quadrants. Part of the new seating was used for the first time on 26 March 2006, when an attendance of 69,070 became a new Premier League record.

The record was pushed steadily upwards before reaching its peak on 31 March 2007, when 76,098 spectators saw Manchester United beat Blackburn Rovers 4-1, with just 114 seats (0.15 percent of the total capacity of 76,212) unoccupied. In 2009, reorganisation of the seating resulted in a reduction of capacity by 255 to 75,957.

Manchester United has the second highest average attendance of European football clubsonly behind Borussia Dortmund.

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