Jimmy Murphy: Who was Matt Busby's genius assistant set for Old Trafford statue?

The Welshman was assistant manager at United for 25 years - where he had seen it all and won the lot

'We'll be alright.' says Jimmy Murphy, left, the Manchester United assistant manager, as he sees Matt Busby off on his journey to Scotland to attend his mother-law's funeral, April 6, 1956. Getty ImagShow more

Manchester United will unveil a statue of Jimmy Murphy behind The Stretford End on Wednesday. It has been a long time coming but the work of fans has helped get it there.

Murphy was a footballer, mainly with West Bromwich Albion, who came from the Welsh valleys and was the assistant to legendary manager Matt Busby, but the Welshman was more than that. He managed his country in the 1958 World Cup, taking them to the quarter-finals where they met Brazil.

Brazil won 1-0 with a scrambled goal from a teenage forward called Pele. Wales wouldn’t reach another World Cup until 2022.

It was after Wales beat Israel on February 5, 1958 to qualify for the World Cup that Murphy returned to Old Trafford for his other job – handing out a box of Jaffa oranges which he had been given by the visiting Israelis.

Busby had insisted that he see Wales through to the World Cup, meaning Murphy didn’t fly on the ill-fated trip to Belgrade for United’s European Cup tie against Red Star. It was then that he was told about the plane crash at Munich Riem airport which had decimated England’s finest young team, famously known as the 'Busby Babes'. And that he was in charge of United’s team as Busby fought for his life in an oxygen tent.

“Play hard for yourselves,” he told what players were left, “for the players who are dead, and for the great name of Manchester United.” Then he could not continue because of his tears.

Murphy was the great coach of attacking football based not so much on systems as on a balance of complementary instinctive talents, yet here he devised a purely tactical plan to maximise available resources.

“Same old game, Arthur,” he told one journalist. “Easy when you’ve got the ball ... hard when you’ve not!” Despite making light of it, Murphy was a coaching genius.

One of the best books ever written about Manchester United is When You Put on a Red Shirt by Keith Dewhurst. The writer is 91 years old and is still writing about United every month. It’s a beautifully written memoir of Murphy and Busby, the two chief architects of Manchester United’s resurgence after the Second World War, and the devastation of Munich. But also Dewhurst’s brilliant, unashamedly love-struck reflections on what the Busby-Murphy partnership and their footballing philosophy brought to English football and how English football wilfully chose to ignore it.

The title is inspired by one of Jimmy Murphy’s favourite maxims: ‘When you put on a red shirt, you’re the greatest player in the world, even when you know you’re not’.

Murphy came to Busby’s attention during the Second World War in Bari, Italy, in 1945 when Murphy was giving an instructional lecture on football tactics at the army recreational centre, which prompted Busby, then manager of the British Army team, to ask him to be his assistant when he took up the reins at Old Trafford.

The Busby-Murphy method was to find young players whose natural instincts dovetailed. Coaching was not to impose systems, but to give a player confidence in what he did well, and to improve what he did not. Transfers were to add what was missing.

Dewhurst, meanwhile, became the Manchester Chronicle’s United correspondent when Alf Clarke died in the plane crash. Dewhurst replaced him, becoming Murphy’s confidant, and the Welshman passionately expounded his ideas. What Murphy worked to produce in the three United teams he coached was, "an absolute balance of talents so there is always something natural and instinctive at work that makes the play seem effortless and inevitable".

Not drilling players, because he believed that under pressure they would always do what was instinctive. So, he aimed at constructing teams where its members’ strengths and weaknesses "would be complemented by the qualities of his adjacent colleagues" and which could respond to any situation. Murphy and Busby’s three teams were very different, but all shared the ability to attack and defend as a unit.

However, his first task was to pick up the pieces of the shattered team.

“The widespread response was one of deep but quiet grief, and at their next concert the Halle (Manchester’s orchestra) played Elgar’s “Nimrod”, the musicians’ traditional farewell to past comrades,” wrote Dewhurst in United We Stand in 2023. “Manchester was the world’s first industrial city and in its grime and decay the beautiful football was a dream of what life could be. The crash and what happened after made Busby and United and the Babes a sort of modern urban myth – the life, death and rebirth of heroes.

“To get the team to focus Jimmy Murphy kept them as insulated as far as he could against press and well-wishers. They stayed in a hotel in Blackpool rather than Manchester, and no outsiders were allowed on the team bus.

“As the travelling local reporters me and my colleague, David Meek, were the same age as the players, and half spectators and half part of Jimmy’s support system. Taking notes at King Arthur’s Round Table, as it were, or in mid-air with the Valkyries.”

Dewhurst watched Murphy closely and travelled with him.

“From Manchester to London he barely noticed people,” he wrote of one coach trip to an away game. “He was wrapped in his thoughts and from coach to train to coach said nothing. David Meek and I played cards with Jack Crompton and Bill Foulkes [the goalkeeper and defender] and at the Lancaster Gate Hotel waited at reception as the players were the first to get their room keys.

“Then suddenly, out of seemingly nothing, Jimmy looked round, realised that it was me standing next to him, and said, ‘There’s a great deal to be said for the deep-lying centre-forward, you know…’”

Busby returned having partially recovered from his injuries. As Dewhurst pointed out, “his skillset was different from that of Murphy". If Matt Busby had gone into politics "Henry Kissinger wouldn’t have lasted twenty minutes,” said Murphy.

"A crucial thing about Busby and Murphy is that during their rebuild they never abandoned the attempt to play at the highest level of skill and imagination," Dewhurst continued. "They tried a lot of young players and never resorted to defensive, power tactics that might have brought higher league positions, but never a truly fine team. Did they ask more than people could deliver? Did this rattle nerves? Maybe.”

Murphy stayed as assistant manager until 1971 – 25 years in the job. He had seen it all, won the lot. He later scouted for United, but he wasn’t treated well by Busby, who remained at the club, or by United. He never drove and the taxi fares he took to games were withdrawn, as was the club paying his phone bill. Murphy was hurt. He was given some recognition for what he had done later. Fittingly, the club’s young player of the year award is named after him, as is the media centre at the Carrington training ground but calls have grown for a different kind of memorial.

The statue came about when a coalition of fans wrote to then executive Ed Woodward in January 2020 and received a swift and positive response agreeing to discuss the proposal for recognition for Murphy at Old Trafford as part of a new Heritage & Legacy Committee that the Club set up.

The end result is a statue that will be unveiled on Wednesday close to the spot where he trained so many of Manchester United’s greatest players.