The Red Devils Trash The Throstles

John Fitzpatrick

When Manchester United supremo Sir Matt Busby retired at the end of the 1968–69 cam­paign, Wilf McGuin­ness was appoin­ted as his suc­cessor. A former Manchester United player, McGuin­ness made 81 league appear­ances for The Red Dev­ils before a broken leg fin­ished his pro­fes­sional foot­ball career when he was only 22 years old.

In April 1970, Manchester United gave West Brom­wich a trash­ing they will prob­ably never for­get to this day. The Manchester Reds may never have per­formed at their best under Wilf McGuin­ness but the team still had plenty of fire­power. And although they came into this fix­ture on the back of a dis­ap­point­ing 5–1 defeat to New­castle United at St James´s Park in mid­week, it didn’t take them long to recover as they used an offens­ive explo­sion to demol­ish The Throstles to the tune of 7–0. West Brom man­ager Alan Ash­man, a former chicken farmer, could only sit and watch as mid­fielder John Fitzpatrick opened the scor­ing account for Manchester United with a bril­liant header. It was the start of a very, very busy after­noon for the West Brom­wich goal­keeper. Bobby Charlton, John Fitzpatrick and Alan Gowl­ing all went on to score a brace each before George Best net­ted the last goal of the game with ten minutes remain­ing on the clock. Des­pite com­ing under a lot of cri­ti­cism, Wilf McGuinness´s Manchester United team fin­ished eighth in the First Divi­sion, and reached the semi-finals of both FA Cup and Foot­ball League Cup in his first season.

Manchester United Books