First viewed : Early May 1993
There's no trace of it in the schedules but I'm pretty sure there was a special programme on BBC One to mark Manchester United;'s first title win for 26 years in the first season of the Premier League. It seemed to confirm every prediction that the Premier League would be all about money that the richest club finally got their mitts on the trophy and, with all due respect to Leicester, that's been the case ever since. Still they won it in time for Matt Busby who was dead by the time of the next one and Bryan Robson who got a couple of championship medals at the end of his playing career although his contribution in both seasons was peripheral.
While United may well have been the richest club of the time, I would argue other clubs had spent equal if not more cash in the two or three years up to 1993... Liverpool had thrown big sums on the likes of Walters, Thomas, Stewart, Saunders; City on Phelan, Curle, Quinn, Coton, McMahon etc. The title win was the accumulation of five years work by Ferguson, with a huge stroke of luck with the arrival of Cantona.
ReplyDeleteAs a near-teen at the time, it was a key moment and I enjoyed bragging rights at school. It remains a source of amusement to me that a Liverpool fan at the time handed me a list of world events between 1967-1993 with the warning "winning it is one thing, defending it is quite another!"
I wouldn't argue with that. Liverpool seemed adept at turning good players into donkeys under Souness and most of those City buys were seriously over-priced. Neither of them put a serious title challenge in that season and the less said about the defending champions the better.
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