In 1953 Sir Matt Busby threw the management rulebook out the window and replaced most of his senior first team stars with youth players. Young, bright and exciting the legendary Busby Babes were born as this team of mainly youngsters took the league by storm and brought a breath of optimistic fresh air to austere post-war England.
The Babes featured such great talents as Bobby Charlton , Duncan Edwards , Roger Byrne, Eddie Colman , Dennis Viollet , Tommy Taylor , Bill Foulkes and Jackie Blanchflower. They were exciting, brilliant and devastating. Two League titles followed in 1956, and 1957, and the visionary Busby entered United into the European Champions Cup.
 After returning home from a Euro game against Red Star Belgrade in 1958 tragedy struck when an air crash at Munich killed many of the aircraft's passengers, including eight of the players and severely injured Busby.
It was and remains to this day one of football's worst tragedies. The team had been almost wiped out, the Busby Babes gone and the world was forever robbed of great players like Edwards and Taylor. There can be no doubt the Munich disaster and death of the Busby Babes formed an integral part in making the Manchester United the world's most famous football club. The team that lined up in the final game with Red Star Belgrade before the fatal crash was: Gregg, Foulkes, Byrne, Edwards, Jones, Colman, Morgans, Charlton, Taylor, Viollet and Scanlon, while other squad members were Blanchflower, Bent, Whelan, Wood, Pegg and Berry. Edwards, Byrne, Colman, Pegg, Bent, Jones, Taylor and Whelan died in the crash, while, of the survivors Berry and Blanchflower would never play football again.
The Munich Air Disaster
 The Busby Babes seemed destined to dominate the soccer world for time to come and had captured the imagination of the fans; already they had proved themselves both at home and in Europe. The 1957/58 season opened with talk of a treble - The League, the FA Cup, and the European Cup. But fate had decided it was not to be. On 6 February 1958 the BEA Elizabethan plane carrying them home from Belgrade crashed on takeoff in Munich and the dream was over.
United arrived in Yugoslavia to meet Red Star Belgrade in the second leg of the quarter finals. The first leg in Manchester had ended in a 2-1 win for United. United scored three goals quickly, but by the end Red Star managed to claw back to level it 3-3 after 90 minutes. The Reds went through to the semi-final 5-4 on aggregate.
The plane, a chartered aircraft, left Belgrade and stopped at Munich to refuel. Takeoff had to be aborted twice because of boost surging, a common problem in the Elizabethan. The problem was caused by too rich a fuel mixture, which causes the engines to over-accelerate. The problem was exacerbated by the altitude of the Munich airport.
 The pilots were able to control the surging on the third takeoff attempt, but as they reached the V1 "decision speed" (after which it is unsafe to abort takeoff), the airspeed suddenly dropped. The aircraft left the runway, crashed through a fence and into a house. The left wing and the tail were ripped off and the starboard side of the fuselage hit a fuel tank and exploded.
Officially, the cause of the accident was build-up of snow on the runway which had caused to aircraft to lose speed and crash.
Mark Jones, David Pegg, Roger Byrne, Geoff Bent, Eddie Colman, Liam Whelan, and Tommy Taylor were killed instantly. Club secretary Walter Crickmer, and coaches Tom Curry and Bert Whalley were also killed. Duncan Edwards, Matt Busby, and Johnny Berry were critically injured, and Duncan Edwards would die three weeks later. Johnny Berry and Jackie Blanchflower survived but never played again. Four other passengers and two of the crew were also killed, as were eight sportswriters travelling with the team, including former England goalkeeper Frank Swift. It was the most tragic day English football had ever seen.
While Busby recovered in hospital, his assistant Jimmy Murphy took temporary charge of team affairs and guided United to the FA Cup final, where a side made up of Munich survivors and youth team players lost to Bolton Wanderers.
UEFA offered The FA the opportunity to submit both United and the eventual champions Wolves for the 1958-59 European Cup, an unprecedented move, as a tribute to the victims. The FA declined.
| The Great 1960's Team
Matt Busby spent heavily on new players in the five years that followed the Munich Air Disaster, as well as retaining some players from the pre-Munich era. The likes of David Herd, Denis Law, Albert Quixall and Paddy Crerand helped United beat Leicester City 2-1 in the FA Cup final in 1963. Bobby Charlton, Bill Foulkes and Harry Gregg were the only three pre-Munich players left in the side by that date. In the 1963-64 season, a 17-year-old Northern Irish forward named George Best broke into the first team and quickly became one of the most exciting talents in the footballing world.  United won the league championship in 1965 and regained it two years later, but the pinnacle of Matt Busby's reign came in 1968 when United hammered Benfica 4-1 in the European Cup final at Wembley Stadium. Busby received a knighthood while star player George Best was voted European Footballer of the Year.
Busby retired in 1969 and became a director. He handed over the reins to reserve team manager Wilf McGuinness, whose playing career had been ended a decade earlier by a broken leg. The Early 1970's Decline
Wilf McGuinness was sacked in December 1970 after just 18 months in charge of a Manchester United team whose league fortunes had plummeted. Bobby Charlton and Denis Law were approaching the end of their careers while George Best was constantly missing training and sometimes even matches after heavy drinking sessions in nightclubs.
 Busby returned to the manager's seat on a temporary basis until the appointment of Frank O'Farrell, who had been sacked by December 1972 as United hovered just above the First Division relegation zone.
His successor was the Scottish national coach Tommy Docherty, who was unable to save United from relegation at the end of the 1973-74 season. Their fate was ironically sealed by a 1-0 defeat at home to neighbours Manchester City, with the only goal of the game coming from former United striker Dennis Law - who retired days afterwards. By this stage, long-serving legendary players like Bobby Charlton and Bill Foulkes had retired and troublesome striker George Best had been sacked.
The 1977 FA Cup Victory
Tommy Docherty got Manchester United back into the First Division at the first time of asking, as they won the Second Division championship at the end of the 1974-75 season. They lost the 1976 FA Cup final to Southampton but overcame Liverpool the following year to secure their first major trophy in the post-Busby era.
The new-look Manchester United side contained impressive young players like Steve Coppell, Brian Greenhoff, Jimmy Greenhoff, Arthur Albiston and Stuart Pearson.
Docherty was sacked just weeks after the 1977 FA Cup victory for having an affair with the wife of the club's physiotherapist (the Mary Brown Affair). The reason given by the club was that Docherty had illegally been obtaining and selling tickets for the two cup finals, though the truth was already well-known by then.
The Dave Sexton Era
Docherty had been popular with the fans, and the new manager, Dave Sexton from QPR, needed success to dispel the unfavorable comparisons. With the FA Cup win, United qualified for the Cup Winners Cup, but were nearly expelled because of crowd trouble in Saint-Etienne. Once more United made it to the FA Cup final, but narrowly lost to Arsenal in what was known as the "five-minute final" for the flurry of goals in the last minutes.
The 1979-80 season saw the Reds narrowly miss out on league glory, finishing second to Liverpool. During that season, United fans were blamed for a collapse at Ayrsome Park causing the death of two Middlesbrough supporters. Controversy also erupted over allegations that United had been making illegal payments to young players.
An injury crisis at the start of 1980-81 caused the team to slump to mid-table and fall in the FA Cup. Despite a rally in which United won seven games in a row, the fans had made up their minds and Dave Sexton lost his job.
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