‘Like climbing a glass mountain’: Remembering Manchester United’s ‘89-90 season under Alex Ferguson

You could forgive Manchester United supporters for feeling more than a little nostalgic in recent years. Particularly following the 20th anniversary of the club’s fabled treble winning triumph in 1999.

The club’s start to this season, though, has taken some Old Trafford regulars back to a time they would rather forget, with Ole Gunnar Solskjaer’s faltering, shot-shy side currently emulated the bungling pre-title drought winning team of 1989/90.

This is now officially United’s worst start to season for 30 years, although they can at least boast of having two more points than the seven mustered by Sir Alex Ferguson’s side who started to the season with a 4-1 win over then champions Arsenal, before stuttering more badly than Paul Pogba’s penalty run-up.

English football, of course, was a very different place back then but there are some undeniable similarities between that United vintage and the team that is currently languishing in ninth in the Premier League following a similarly dismal start to their campaign.

“We always started the season thinking we could win the league, you have don’t you?” says Clayton Blackmore, the former United favourite who spent 12 years as a player at Old Trafford.

“The pitch didn’t really help back then. It was a really bad pitch to play on. We wanted to play football, we tried to play football but the pitch evened everything up. Look at the pitches now, there’s no comparison.

“The fans were very quick to get on our back. They had worked all week, turned up on a Saturday and they wanted to be entertained. They took their frustrations out on us.

“There wasn’t a huge amount of money around. A million was a big fee back then but we hadn’t spent a lot of money. We had Mark Hughes up front and players like Brian McClair and Bryan Robson.

“You look through that team and there was an awful lot of talent there. That season we just didn’t make the most of it. I suppose you could say the same for the current lot now.”

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Throw in Gary Pallister, Steve Bruce, Paul Ince and Lee Sharpe and the side Blackmore was a part of wasn’t that far removed from the one that would win the title for the first time since 1967, just three years later.

What the club didn’t have then was the kind of winning mentality that would sustain it for the best part of 20 years once that first Premier League title was won.

Back-to-back defeats against Derby, Norwich and Everton, punctured the optimism generated by the club’s opening day mauling of the Gunners, which followed the arrival of Michael Knighton on the scene at Old Trafford. And although a 5-1 drubbing of Millwall ended that run of three successive losses, worse, much worse, was to follow.

“It was like climbing a glass mountain,” said Ferguson, after watching his slipshod defence concede five as Manchester City ran riot in the derby at Maine Road. Chants of “easy” reverberated around the terraces as Pallister – then the most expensive player in the league – and Bruce were led a merry dance that left most disgruntled United fans heading for the exit long before the final whistle.

Ferguson said it was the worst defensive performance he had witnessed in all his years of management and, believe it or not now, left him clinging to his job. September 1989, like September 2019, is not a month that any United fan enjoys revisiting. It’s one that David Oldfield, who scored a brace for City in that match, though, is far happier to talk about it.

“Manchester City were full of really promising, really talented young footballers,” he says. “United had more experienced players, they were obviously a strong team, but Sir Alex was under pressure at the time and City seemed to be a side most definitely on the up.

“Liverpool were so strong and dominant at that stage but then vanished. And United were the same in the late 80s. They seemed way off challenging for the title. It’s a testimony to Sir Alex that he eventually turned it around so quickly.”

After that match at Maine Road it was hard to see how things could get worse, yet they recovered to win the FA Cup at Wembley in May – which should give Solskjaer some crumbs of comfort as he desperately seeks to find a solution to the club’s current woes.

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Blackmore was just one of a fine crop of United youngsters that had come through the ranks at Old Trafford in 1982 – a decade before the players who would eventually come to define the most glorious era in the club’s history won the FA Youth Cup.

And he’s still confident that those emerging from the academy now will ensure that the 26 year wait for the title, endured so painfully back then, won’t be repeated.

“We have got some really good talent in the kids,” says Blackmore, who worked at United’s academy for eight years between 2010 and 2018. “Mason Greenwood is one of the best I’ve worked with. He’s the natural talent, he didn’t need to practice finishing because he was naturally good at it. Free-kicks, penalties, he should be taking everything.

“My problem is that they’re young lads and they need direction. When Ryan Giggs came into the team he had a team of men playing with him. It’s easier when you’ve got a team of experienced players. Who does Marcus Rashford learn off? Who does Greenwood learn from?

“We were constantly reminded back then that we had to win the league. It had been 26 years and when we did win it, it was a bit weird, it was just a major relief. It was a strange feeling.

“But there’s a DNA at the club, and if you watch a video of how we won all those games, you’ll see it. It’s no great mystery as to how we won all those trophies. We’ve had some fantastic players like Ronaldo at the club but the players also worked incredibly hard. As it stands, we need a new strikers, probably two. Bringing (Zlatan) Ibrahimovic back would be a good start.”

That would certainly go down well with the fans who have been transported back to a time they would rather forget. Whether even he can lift the current fog of misery, though, remains to be seen.