The best Manchester United books to read this summer

July 18, 2024

Who says we don’t do requests?

“Any chance of an Athletic article on the best United books to read over the summer to get us fans away from the toxic shite here on Twitter?” asked Kev_F.

Consider it done.

There are hundreds of books about Manchester United. A lot of them, to be frank, are not very good. There are player autobiographies that say almost nothing (the 98-page Sparky – Barcelona, Bayern & Back from 1989 takes the biscuit here) and even supposedly controversial ones like Jaap Stam’s Head to Head which led to him leaving the club is largely insipid.

There are some belters though and the ones below are among the best.

Keane: The Autobiography

The peerless United autobiography, Keane’s book sold more copies in Ireland than any other book except the Bible. Gripping from the start, it begins amid the meltdown in Saipan before the 2002 World Cup. Crafted by Irish journalist Eamon Dunphy, Keane is charged and brutally honest throughout.

The United captain paid the price for his lucrative and headline-attracting autobiography when he was banned for five games and fined a record £150,000 after being found guilty of two misconduct charges for his comments about Alf Inge Haaland.

There was a second version, 2014’s The Second Half written with novelist Roddy Doyle, which was equally compelling. As Roy Keane was and is.

A Strange Kind of Glory: Sir Matt Busby and Manchester United – Eamon Dunphy

The Busby family didn’t appreciate it, but that shouldn’t detract from one of the greatest books written about United and legendary manager Busby.

Released in 1991, it was a No 1 warts-and-all bestseller where Dunphy, a former member of United’s youth team, who’d written a superb diary on his life as a Millwall player, pulled no punches and exposed double standards all over the place. Dunphy draws from a terrific cast of characters, many of whom he knew. His conclusion that Busby is the “last great football man” hasn’t stood the test of time, but his book is as fascinating as it is absorbing.

Busby once said that “winning isn’t everything. There should be no conceit in victory, and no despair in defeat.” He was a grand, great, man, but he wasn’t infallible.

There’s Only One United – Geoffrey Green

Published in 1978 as The Official Centenary of Manchester United, Green’s prose brings warmth to tell the club’s story. It’s entertaining, moving and, according to the Manchester Evening News back then, “one of the best football books ever written.” Legendary writer Hugh McIlvanney adds: “Geoffrey Green is the right man to tell the club’s story… we should be very grateful to him.”

It’s long out of print, but second-hand copies can be picked up easily enough.

Are You Watching Liverpool? – Jim White

Mancunian and United fan White, now with The Telegraph, spent the 1993-94 season close to the team. The “season with” format has become a well-worn one, but it felt fresh then and White spent real time, travelling from Budapest to Blackburn, with fans and not just players, covering issues like the trouble in Galatasaray when 164 fans were deported.

Superbly written, it’s full of knock-out quotes like: “Ryan has a shit-disposal unit in his head and much of what he hears goes into that,” from Sir Alex Ferguson or “Eric Cantona is a cry baby who hides when the going gets tough,” from Arsenal manager George Graham.

White’s Manchester United: The Biography is a 420-page unofficial and unbiased biography of the football club, published in 2008 which fits the billing of the description: From Newton Heath to Moscow, the complete story of the world’s great football club”. His 2022 book Red on Red (with Phil McNulty) on the United and Liverpool rivalry is also highly recommended.

1999. Manchester United, the Treble and All That – Matt Dickinson

Dickinson had been a Manchester beat reporter during the treble season and wrote: “It was a privilege to be on the journey as a sports writer; close enough to feel Ferguson’s hot breath on the days when he would blow his top; close enough to have David Beckham’s mobile number, at least for 24 hours before he became the dictionary definition of famous; close enough to be intimidated by the furious intensity of Roy Keane, to marvel at the thrilling genius of Ryan Giggs, the relentless drive of Gary Neville.”

Twenty-two years on, he went back to speak to some of the main protagonists from Beckham to Stam and Sheringham. It’s set over 99 short chapters and it works well — there’s even a Bavarian perspective.

Red Rebels, The Glazers and the FC Revolution – John Paul O’Neill

“Another thing I’d always had drilled into me, especially being part of a big family, was if you can’t afford something you couldn’t have it yet,” wrote O’Neill, former editor of the Red Issue fanzine, in his 2017 tome.

“Yet in 2004, the Glazers came along threatening our football club – my football club. They couldn’t afford it and were only interested in squeezing it for all its money. This would inevitably mean ever-higher ticket prices, further disenfranchisement of the local youngsters and community, and even more dilution of the intoxicating Old Trafford matchday experience which I, and many others, had fallen in love with. We might not succeed in fending them off, but there was no way they’d get their hands on it without an almighty fight.”

O’Neill was at the forefront of the protests against the Glazers and the formation of FC United. Well worth reading, as is former Red Issue contributor Richard Kurt’s Red Army Years about 70s United.

Managing My Life – Sir Alex Ferguson

The first of Ferguson’s autobiographies, this was released a couple of months after the treble so the timing could not have been better. Nor could Ferguson’s choice of Hugh McIlvannney as his ghostwriter.

A year before, I’d sat next to McIlvannney in the Camp Nou press box as he watched Barcelona 3 Man Utd 3. He was purring in appreciation of Ferguson’s magnificent side. Managing My Life was a number one bestseller for months and the book is forthright and revealing. Not that everyone who had crossed him would agree.

Ferguson’s 2013 My Autobiography covers the 14 years between 1999 and the last time United won the league. The extracts were pillaged, but it’s his version of some of the most momentous times in United’s history. Also worth of note are the lesser known Six Years at United. Other Ferguson books worth reading for a definitely non-Ferguson version of events are Daniel Taylor’s This Is The One and Michael Crick’s The Boss.

When You Put On a Red Shirt: Memories of Matt Busby, Jimmy Murphy and United – Keith Dewhurst

The renowned playwright Dewhurst, who is still writing at 92, was the United correspondent on the Manchester Evening Chronicle after Munich. Oldham-born, he wrote this book in 2009. In Busby, he witnessed both the genius of the football legend and the darker side of the master manipulator. In Murphy, he found his hero. It was Murphy who would tutor him in football and dreams, and Busby’s ambiguous nature. Novelist Roddy Doyle describes the book as “a story of dreamers, hard men who wanted to create perfection on the football pitch”.

While we’re on Munich, Jeff Connor’s The Lost Babes draws on extensive interviews with the Munich victims and the players of that era.

There are plenty of autobiographies, some great, some not so great. Keane’s is the best, but Nobby Stiles After the Ball is beautifully ghosted by James Lawton, the story of a working-class hero told vividly.

Ditto Sir Bobby Charlton’s autobiography. Harry’s Game, Harry Gregg’s autobiography, includes the goalkeeper’s description of the Munich air crash, in which the former United goalkeeper rescued other passengers. It’s more visceral than any other.

Wayne Barton’s biography of George Best, titled True Genius, is better than any of the autobiographies attributed to Best himself, while Gordon Burn’s Best and Edwards perfectly contrasts two of the greatest players in the club’s history: one a saint, the other a sinner.

Gary Neville’s Red is as forthright you’d expect, while Denis Law has almost as many autobiographies as he had goals. Paul Scholes, Bryan Robson, Wayne Rooney, Juan Mata and Eric Cantona are among the players whose autobiographies could have been so much better.

A late shout too for the newly published On Days Like These, The Lost Memoir of a Goalkeeper. It’s by the excellent Tim Rich about the life of former United goalkeeper Les Sealey.

I’ve written 13 books myself, 10 of them related to Manchester United. It’s not for me to say whether they are worthy or not, but Paddy Crerand’s autobiography Never Turn The Other Cheek contained the most swear words in transcriptions, while Patrice Evra’s I Love This Game took the longest to complete.

When Gordon McQueen died recently, I was asked to speak about him and delved into a chapter I did with Big Gordon for We’re The Famous Man United – Old Trafford in the 80s, the Players’ Stories. I’d spent six hours (and six pints) with Gordon and his tales were incredible. And part of me thought, “If only every footballer was half as interesting, half as funny, as Gordon McQueen.”

(Top photo: Amazon)

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