Alex: The Man Behind The Legend by David Lyons

Author:David Lyons [Lyons, David]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: RedBarn Books
Published: 2021-11-25T00:00:00+00:00

1995-1998

Ryan Giggs, Nicky Butt, Paul Scholes, David Beckham and Gary & Phil Neville aren’t collectively known as the Class of ’92 because that is the year in which they broke into the Manchester United first team. 1992 is the year they won the FA Youth Cup together—when they essentially came of age and Alex realised he would be able to rely on them as first team starters in the not so-distant future. Giggs was so far ahead of every other player who came through the academy that he had actually made the first team as early as 1990 as a wispy and lanky sixteen-year-old. Butt also made the jump slightly earlier than the others and was already competing with Roy Keane and Paul Ince for a place in central midfield by the second half of the 1994/95 campaign. But Scholes and the two Neville brothers, well… they didn’t really impose themselves in the first team until the beginning of the 1995-96 season even if they had made an appearance in the odd cup tie over the previous months. However, Alex had been so impressed with the temperament and discipline they had proven to have in the academy that he was certain they wouldn’t let him down. So, in the overcast summer of 1995, and in a move that stunned Manchester United fans, he would inform stalwarts Mark Hughes, Paul Ince and Andrei Kanchelskis they were all free to move on.

When no signings were forthcoming to replace that trio by the time the season was due to kick-off, United fans were seething. They had no idea who was going to replace the legendary figures who had been sold. The fans would find out when Alex named his team for the first game of that league campaign away to Aston Villa, with Scholes and Butt picked in what looked like a very makeshift midfield, and Gary and Phil Neville in both full-back positions while Beckham and another academy graduate John O’Kane were named on the bench. Villa would tank United 3-1 with relative ease.

‘Ye can’t win anything with kids,’ Liverpool legend Alan Hansen would comment on Match of the Day that very night. That quote would become a phrase adorned across the T-shirts of match-going United fans for years to come. Those “kids” would go on to claim a second domestic double for Alex that very season — despite losing their first game so comprehensively — before going on to win thirty-nine Premier League titles between them. Butt and Scholes would vie for a midfield position alongside Roy Keane to replace Ince; Beckham would prove to be a direct replacement for Kanchelskis on the right-side of midfield (although direct is an odd way to label it given that they are total opposites in every facet of how they approach that role) and the Neville brothers would battle it out for starting berths on each defensive flank. Trying to oust Denis Irwin from left-full was proving difficult for Phil, though Gary had managed to push Paul Parker out of the side quite early on to become a mainstay at right-full.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.