65 year anniversary Man Utd last match on British soil before 1958 Munich Air Disaster

Let’s get the simple chronology of the goalscoring in order before we turn to the contemporary newspaper reports on the match to add the necessary layers of vivid colour. United went 1-0 up early (Duncan Edwards 10 mins) before turning that into a 3-0 lead by half-time (Bobby Charlton 34 mins, Tommy Taylor 43 mins). Then the Gunners offered a sudden three-goal salvo of their own after the break to bring the scores level at 3-3 (future Red David Herd 58 mins, Jimmy Bloomfield 60 and 61 mins). That stung Busby’s men into restoring a two-goal cushion at 5-3 (Dennis Viollet 65 mins, Taylor 72 mins) before Arsenal set up the proverbial grandstand finish with the ninth goal to make it 5-4 (Derek Tapscott 77 mins).

Remarkable stuff just when written through as a list, but it’s in the fulsome sports reports of the time that we bring to life an incredible game, a wonderful sporting contest and a monument to youthful exuberance.

The Times dated 3 February set the scene by describing how ‘the crowds fairly poured in, a 64,000 gathering filling to the rim of the stadium far up where it cut a grey sky’. It continues: ‘They were fairly repaid with a feast as the giants of yesterday and today fought out a chivalrous, wavering struggle. There were two heroic phases. It will take a month of Sundays to forget them.’

United’s opening goal from Duncan Edwards was recounted thus by Ben Brown in The Sunday Times, published one day earlier – ‘Edwards ran on to a pass from his outside-right Morgans and rolled the ball under Kelsey’s body’ – while Desmond Hackett in the Daily Express (3 February) painted a slightly more detailed picture, opining that United’s opener was ‘aided by Jack Kelsey making an ultra-rare mistake and misjudging a powered drive from Duncan Edwards’. (Perhaps Brown had been more generous to keeper Kelsey on account of himself having formerly been a goalkeeper.)

Albert Scanlon on the left wing was clearly having a blinder at Highbury. ‘Manchester United swept the field with movements based on precision passing,’ continued Brown, ‘and Scanlon, at outside-left, showed how he keeps international Pegg out of the Manchester team. Throughout the afternoon the Arsenal defence panicked before Scanlon’s subtle approach work. It was thus that Charlton scored from his pass and later Taylor nipped in and drove home a loose ball which had been parried by Kelsey.’

Hackett, too, praises Scanlon for his work in setting up Charlton’s second goal. ‘The cheers for this piece,’ he writes, ‘went to Albert Scanlon for an old-fashioned wing burst of 70 yards.’ The Times, meanwhile, describes the young Mancunian as showing ‘a clean pair of heels to everyone in sight’.