Product Description

The history of the quintessential British football club, told from the very beginning. In 1878, the team that would become MUFC had humble beginnings and was formed at a railway depot frequented by Yorkshire and Lancashire rail workers. Brian Belton describes their historic first three decades, the Red Dawn. In the modern era it feels like everybody in and outside football is familiar with the history and serial feats of Manchester United FC, but a few have much more than a vague knowledge of the fascinating and almost incredible tale of how the Red Devils came into this world and began their journey on the road of triumph.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #106132 in Books
• Published on: 2008-11-30
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 160 pages

About the Author
Dr Brian Belton is a lifelong football fan. Hailing from a working class background, with a rich sporting ancestry, he has written more than 25 historical and biographical books relating to sport in all its diversity. A senior Lecturer at the YMCA George Williams, Brian has been involved in youth work and sports studies from Scotland to Slovenian.

Customer Reviews

red dawn review
A great read, well researched almost makes you feel as if you know the players concerned,adds some flesh to the history of a great club.Wouldnt hesitate to recommend this book to anybody who wants to know the early years of united

Oppourtunity missed
I enjoyed reading this and in my opinion United's early history is indeed very interesting. There's certainly a ceratin romance about how a club from 'humble' origins became the club it is.

Belton writes in an engaging style and the narrative moves along easily enough, whilst capturing some of the charcter of the period. The order of the book is chronological as one would expect and major games seemed to be covered in nice detail.

However, in terms of negatives, I didn't really understand why so much attention was devoted to Manchester derbies, which is fine in itself, but occurs to the exclusion of any other interesting or important ties that took place at the time. Very little detail is given about the 'Test Matches', which decided promotion/relegation.

There's almost a complete absence of league tables, photos etc, which would have really enhanced the book. It also seemed to me that the last years of the period were rather skimmed over.

However, that, which is in the book is, on the whole, engaging. And considering the price of the book, it's fair to say the book is well worth reading and should be of interest to United fans and fans of football in general.