Salford, so central to Manchester, enjoy their moment in FA Cup spotlight

It’s November 1991 in the Drayton Park, a pub near Arsenal known to away fans. The bar is full of travelling Manchester United fans ahead of a 6-2 League Cup victory when a chant goes up: “S-A-L-F-O-R-D, Salford Reds and MUFC!”

United have long drawn members of their hardcore from Salford, the city co-joined with Manchester. The border, for miles, is the banks of the River Irwell and the Manchester Ship Canal.

Salford comes so close to Manchester that it forms part of Manchester City centre. United’s players spend every night before a home game in Salford’s Lowry Hotel. The much-vaunted BBC move north to Manchester was actually to Salford, the largest metropolitan area without a professional football team in England. That’s 233,000 people (333,000 in 1931 when the docks were thriving), the majority of whom will call Manchester United their club.

George Best used to drink with friends in the Brown Bull pub near Salford Crescent station. Manchester United’s hooligans used to meet up in Salford. The Cliff training ground is in Lower Broughton, as was United’s secondary training ground of Littleton Road. United considered expanding this site before the move to Carrington in 2000, but decided against it.

Commenting on the Littleton Road site in 1995, Sir Alex Ferguson said: “It’s very exposed and the wind howls through the place. It could be a good training ground but it would cost a lot of money.” Money the club decided was better spent developing Carrington.

The southern end of Salford comes to within 200 metres of Old Trafford, a traditional red heartland.

Some of United’s greatest ever players are Salford boys. Giggs is Salford (since six), Scholes was born in Salford, Stan Pearson too, while Eddie Colman – the winger known as snakehips and who died at Munich - is Salford. One of the city’s many tower blocks takes his name. Or, more specifically, Colman is from Ordsall, an estate of 6,000 largely working-class residents sealed off by giant roads and the ship canal.

Ordsall is where you’ll find Salford Lads club, famous for its appearance on the iconic cover of The Smiths’ ‘The Queen is Dead’ album. The club opened its doors on the night of February 6 1958 for locals to mourn, especially for former member Colman, who died aged 21. He is buried in nearby Weaste cemetery, his grave marked by a black headstone.

Former defender Billy Garton was born there. When he was five, a lecturer at nearby Salford University made a film of the living conditions in Ordsall. In two parts, it was entitled ‘Life in the Slums’ and ‘Bloody Slums’. Salford, one of the reddest areas of Greater Manchester, is the subject of the Ewan MacColl’s song ‘Dirty Old Town’.

Despite the poverty, Garton is convinced that the bonds and values forged growing up in Ordsall were vital in later life.

“A lot of great people went onto better things from Ordsall because they had good values,” he says. “Take my best mate Les. He is two years older than me and when he was 16 he used to pay for me because I had no money and he had a job. He’d die for me - you get a bond like that when you come from a place like Ordsall. Where I live now in California is like paradise on earth, but there’s little loyalty.

“People want to be an acquaintance but it’d tough to get close to people. Where I grew up my mates stuck together through and thin. If you were ever on your arse mates would help you out, either financially or morally. That did and still means a lot to me. Mates were like family and any scallies who just looked after themselves ended up with no mates.”

Albert Finney was Salfordian, Shelagh Delaney, Sir Ben Kingsley, Christopher Eccleston, Emmeline Pankhurst, George Bradshaw, James Joule, Sir John Moores, Ken Wolstenholme, Shaun Ryder, Tim Burgess, Anthony H Wilson, Robert Powell, William Webb Ellis and many more. Tony Warren, creator of Coronation Street, which is set around a fictional Salford Street, hails from there.

At the northern end of Salford, beyond the Cliff training ground which is still used by United, past the Castle Irwell racecourse – ‘Manchester’s racecourse’ - which closed in 1963 and just off Littleton Road where United also used to train, is Moor Lane, the home of Salford City – the Ammies, as they used to be Salford Amateurs.

The tree-lined non-league football ground stands on land which formed the Kersal Moor racecourse between 1681 and 1847. Races there used to attract up to crowds of 100,000 including (according to local newspaper reports) “Unlicensed sutlers (vendors) and hucksters, peddlers, prostitutes and thieves” around the Whitsuntide horse races.

A local pub ‘The Kersal’, was demolished in 2004, the horse on the pub sign a reminder that for over 150 years Manchester’s main racecourse lay opposite.

At 4.5 miles, Moor Lane is the fourth closest football ground to Old Trafford after Maine Road FC in Chorlton, Trafford FC in Urmston and Manchester City FC in Bradford, East Manchester.

It has also been a site for organised sport for over 320 years, longer than anywhere else in what’s now Greater Manchester. Moor Lane has staged cricket, tennis, archery, athletics and rugby (Salford is better known for its top-flight rugby league team than any football club) before Salford City moved to Moor Lane in 1976. Until their takeover last year, the Ammies attracted gates of 150, most paying the £7 admission fee (though they had 3,000 for a cup tie in 1981) in England’s eighth tier.

Moor Lane boasts two small stands (one is little more than a bus stop), grass banks and the capacity is limited to around 1,500. It has long been a pleasure to visit. Before the 2014 takeover, people behind Salford City, like chairman Darren Quick and president Dave Russell, loved their club and love their team. Many are United fans; people who felt that they are putting something back into the community – and not just by providing excellent pie, peas and gravy in their clubhouse.

In 2014, the Class of ’92 took over in a highly publicised move which has been covered by a BBC One documentary which aired this week. Gary Neville, Ryan Giggs, Nicky Butt, Phillip Neville and Paul Scholes are partnered by Peter Lim, a Singaporean businessman who also owns CF Valencia.

Takeovers rightly attract suspicion from fans sceptical of the motives. Outside the Premier League, football doesn’t make money, but clubs are taken over for a variety of reasons. It might be the local businessman putting something back into the community or someone looking for profile, to see his ego massaged.

Salford City is unique. The Class of ’92 don’t need profile and, in part because of who they are, Salford City has so far run at a profit. A friendly game against the Class of ’92 attracted a five-figure crowd and when you’ve got famous former footballers, sponsorship is easier to attract. Revenue from media helps, too.

Gates have surged from 150 to almost 500 at home – where Salford have won only one of seven league games. They’ve won all eight away matches and sit fourth, with games in hand, in England’s seventh tier.

Salford is full of United fans who, for many reasons, don't go to Old Trafford. Salford City – and the many semi-professional sides around the non-league football hotbed of Manchester – are an alternative. FC United, for example, was set up to provide affordable football at a time when ticket prices were rising season on season.

There has not been a price rise at Old Trafford for five years and the current intelligence points towards price reductions rather than rises. But United, who have to fund the wages of some of football’s best players, will never be anywhere near as cheap as Salford. They appeal to different markets with a small crossover. Any locals who can’t afford to watch Premier League football can buy a Salford season ticket for £50.

The Class of ’92 lads see Salford as a release, a hobby, a passion. They go and watch live football home and away with their mates – each other. They stand against the crush barrier and they love it. It’s not a plaything and they realise they have responsibility. Non-league football is littered with owners who’ve pulled their money and left clubs in limbo. Would it be worth the criticism if the Class of ’92 did the same? Not that they need to put money in at the moment.

Contrary to the rumours from green-eyed monsters, Salford’s top paid player is on £400 per week. Most of their players are on less than £200.

They’ve reached the FA Cup first round and will play Notts County tonight. They’re staging the game at Moor Lane, which, while spruced up, has only very basic facilities. There’s no segregation, though it does have space for development and that will be needed if Salford get promoted, but for now the attention is on tonight’s first ever FA Cup first-round game against the world’s oldest professional club.