Even when accepting that this past decade has hardly been easy for Manchester United, just imagine the online betting odds on them going down.

A brief flirtation with the lower half of the Premier League table is enough to have the media screaming crisis. Relegation to the second tier is inconceivable.

Yet that’s precisely what happened in April 1974 as a somewhat mediocre team managed by Tommy Docherty struggled to live up to the recent, golden legacy of Sir Matt Busby’s European Cup winners. 

From that wonderful collective, Sir Bobby Charlton was gone. Paddy Crerand and Bill Foulkes were gone. Georgie Best was still around, sort of, if a shadow of his former self.

And arguably worst of all, given that goals traditionally keep a team up, Denis Law had also departed, released on a free to Manchester City that summer. 

The ’Lawman’ as he became known, was edging into his mid-thirties on joining City and though his finest days were behind him, the legendary striker still knew his way to goal.

At United he’d won the Ballon d’Or and ultimately found the net 237 times, a figure only ever surpassed by Charlton and Wayne Rooney. As evidence of his rarefied status, a statue of the Scot resides outside the Theatre of Dreams.

Relinquishing this giant of the game to a local rival therefore was a huge loss, or a huge mistake, depending on your viewpoint. In hindsight, it was both.

Because in his place a litany of imposters fluffed their auditions as United flailed and floundered, encountering a season to forget as the defeats racked up.

For their final home game of the campaign the Red Devils faced City, needing victory to stave off the drop, while also relying on Norwich to get the better of Birmingham and this last detail is key, as it debunks a myth that has endured for many a year. 

So, let’s debunk it. 

With eight minutes remaining in this momentous derby, the contest was scoreless and tense with City on top for the most part.

Granted, this wasn’t a City side of the calibre we see today, with Kevin De Bruyne majestic and Erling Haaland formidable, but it was sprinkled with great players nonetheless and late-on one of them, Franny Lee, squared the ball across United’s six-yard line to Law who had his back to goal.

His improvisation, in back-heeling past a bemused Alex Stepney would have lit up any match. For a game of this magnitude, it has entered folklore. 

Unfortunately, it has done so for erroneous reasons, with a commonly held misconception evolving into a matter of fact that it was Law’s brilliant goal that put United down. Whereas it didn’t.

Perhaps, this came to be because it was such a powerful narrative, that with his last ever kick of a football in a professional game, this Manchester United legend sent his former club into temporary oblivion.

After all, how perfect would that be? Just imagine the online football betting odds on that.

Alas, Birmingham won that afternoon to guarantee their survival meaning United were fated to fall into Division Two regardless. And Law’s derby goal, so often claimed to be pivotal, was merely salt in a wound.


*Credit for all of the photos in this article belongs to AP Photo*

 

FIRST PUBLISHED: 20th September 2022

Stephen Tudor is a freelance football writer and sports enthusiast who only knows slightly less about the beautiful game than you do.

A contributor to FourFourTwo and Forbes, he is a Manchester City fan who was taken to Maine Road as a child because his grandad predicted they would one day be good.