We Are United

Manchester United Football Club are a world famous English football club, based at Old Trafford stadium in Trafford, Greater Manchester. The club is one of the most successful football clubs in English football history, having won the FA Premier League/Football League 15 times, FA Cup 11 times, the League Cup twice, the European Cup twice, the UEFA Cup Winners Cup once, the Intercontinental Cup once, and the European Super Cup once. The club has had the highest average attendance in English football for the past 34 seasons, with the exception of 1987-89 during redevelopment at Old Trafford. The 'Red Devils' are reported to be the best-supported football club in the world.

The club was formed as Newton Heath F.C. in 1878 as the works team of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway depot at Newton Heath. After nearing bankruptcy in 1902, the club was taken over by J H Davies who changed its name to Manchester United. The Old Trafford Football Ground was bombed during the Second World War, leading the club to seek charity from their then-illustrious neighbours Manchester City, who allowed them to play their games at Maine Road for a period. United appointed Sir Matt Busby as manager after the Second World War, and his then-unheard-of policy of producing most of the players through the club's youth team brought great success, with the club winning the Football League in 1956 and 1957. This success was halted by the Munich air disaster of 1958, in which eight of the club's players died. It was thought that the club might fold, but instead went on to win the football league in 1965 and 1967, and the European Cup in 1968.

The club did not see success again until the 1990s and early 2000s when Sir Alex Ferguson guided it to eight league championships in eleven years, most recently in the 2002-03 season. In 1999, Manchester United became the only team to win the treble, that is the UEFA Champions League, FA Premier League and the FA Cup in the same season. The club had been run as a Public Limited Company since 1991, and an attempted takeover by Rupert Murdoch had been blocked by the British Government in 1998, but in 2005 Malcolm Glazer completed a hostile takeover of the club which plunged the club into massive debt as his bid was heavily funded by borrowing on the assets owned already by Manchester United.

The current captain of Manchester United is Gary Neville, who took over from Roy Keane on 16 November 2005.

Current First-Team Squad
1 Edwin van der Sar
2 Gary Neville (captain)
3 Patrice Evra
4 Gabriel Heinze
5 Rio Ferdinand
6 Wes Brown
7 Cristiano Ronaldo
8 Wayne Rooney
9 Louis Saha
11 Ryan Giggs (vice-captain)
13 Park Ji-Sung
14 Alan Smith
15 Nemanja Vidić
16 Michael Carrick
18 Paul Scholes
19 Giuseppe Rossi (on loan to Newcastle United)
20 Ole Gunnar Solskjær
22 John O'Shea
23 Kieran Richardson
24 Darren Fletcher
25 David Jones
26 Phillip Bardsley (on loan to Rangers)
27 Mikael Silvestre
28 Gerard Piqué (on loan to Real Zaragoza)
29 Tomasz Kuszczak
38 Thomas Heaton
-- Ben Foster (on loan to Watford)
-- Tim Howard (on loan to Everton)