Anniversaries of Man Utd Academy youth development dates with destiny in 2022 and 2023

When Manchester United welcome West Ham to Old Trafford on Sunday 30 October 2022, if all goes to plan it will mark exactly 85 years since the start of an astonishing record.

By that date, United will have played 4,164 consecutive matches with an Academy graduate included in the matchday squad. This extraordinary statistic’s beginning is as far back as a late October day 22 months before the outset of World War Two. It has persisted through enormous changes to football, most notably the conversion of United from a club much-loved by Mancunians and a smattering of Britons elsewhere to an institution recognised worldwide and devoutly followed by hundreds of millions of supporters. This landmark is about numbers – barely believable numbers.

It was against another London club, Fulham, in 1937 when an otherwise unremarkable footballer by the name of Tom Manley started for United in a Division Two match. His appearance was not of note in the national newspapers, nor should it have been. He had made 160 of them already. The importance of this fixture is in retrospect only. Manley was United’s first U18 signing to graduate to the first team.

He was joined by Jackie Wassall, Stan Pearson and Johnny Carey. Seventy-eight successive matches with a graduate preceded World War Two, in the aftermath of which the world’s development accelerated at an unprecedented rate. Football went with it. But in Matt Busby’s team were Johns Aston, Anderson, Carey, Morris and Hanlon, all homegrown; Charlie Mitten, Stan Pearson and Joe Walton, too. Busby’s ‘Babes’ followed, then the boys who tragically stepped into their boots – Pearson, Brennan, Harrop and Carolan – then Best, and Kidd, McIlroy, Albiston, Whiteside, Hughes and Blackmore. Soon came Giggs, Neville, Beckham, Butt and Scholes, and Brown, O’Shea, Fletcher, Welbeck, Lingard and Pogba.

With Anthony Elanga, Scott McTominay and Marcus Rashford making a combined 96 appearances last season, and other graduates playing an additional 86 times, it is in little doubt that United will maintain this heritage up to October’s fixture with West Ham. The Academy still bursts at its seams with talented prospects and so the inheritance of this wonderful, organic legacy appears strong, too.