As I was googling for James Mullen, I found this picture at
The International Marveld Tournament for under-15 teams. It's on the page for
Manchester United's Under-15 team.
This is the first photographic record of Fabien Brandy and Danny Rowe I've ever seen on the web. But you'll have to guess who's who coz the tournament website listed the team by jersey number, not according to their position in the photo:
1. Luke Daniels, 2. Mathew Kendrick, 3. Alex Drinkwater, 4. Mitchell Booth, 5. James Chester, 6. Danny Rose, 7. Sam Hewson, 8. Kieran Lee, 9. Febian Brandy, 10. Nathan Hotte, 11. Jamie Mullen, 12. Richard Eckersley, 13. Chris Backhouse, 14. David Owens, 15. Danny Rowe, 16. Thomas Rowe, 17. Joe Heath, 18. Richard Chinn
Anyway, it is with some relief that I can confirm that Fabien Brandy and Danny Rowe EXISTS!
I also found the following blurb for Jamie Mullen on
The FA website:
James Mullen - Manchester United
James is an attacking player at Old Trafford. Favouring his right side, he is another member of the England side to have featured in his club's Under-17s side.
But somebody put him down as a defender
here.
Looking at the Under-15 team list, I also notice a few 'possible' younger brothers of older players - Eckersley, Rose, Heath?
Which got me thinking about the brothers who've been through United youth ranks - besides the most obvious Nevilles. Well I don't know for sure if they're brothers, I'm only going on their surnames - perhaps someone can confirm either way?:
Ronnie and Kyle Wallwork
Michael, Steven and George Clegg
David and Kirk Hilton
Stephen and Michael Rose
Dominic and Mark Studley
Jamie and Neil Wood
And there are some surnames like Johnson and Williams which are too common.
I started supporting United in the mid-80s, so my memory of United brothers before that is limited to prominent ones i.e. Jimmy and Brian Greenhoff (and the Astons, another much smaller category all together).
Trying to remember youth player names going back to the 80s, I had to pause to consider just how far Fergie has brought us. It's staggering just to think of the 'quality' of his first batch of fledglings circa 1987-88, which were really babes brought up under Ron Atkinson's tenure:
Nicky Wood, Derek Brazil, Tony Gill, Deiniol Graham, Paul Harvey, Denis Cronin...
Amongst the best of Atkinson's batch (and only Fergie gave them a chance) was... Mark Robins. Though Robins did score one of the most important goals in the club's HISTORY, he really wouldn't be able to secure a place in our reserve team line-up today. I'd take my chances with Cooper, Timm, Johnson, Ebanks-Blake and Calliste over Robins any day.
Gary Walsh deserves some credit, he was impressive in the first half of 1987-88 until his injury. Lee Sharpe doesn't count amongst this lot coz he was bought from Torquay by Fergie.
Some of the posters on this board seem to think that we can conjure a whole batch of world-class players from youth just like that, but thats nonsense if you consider just how long it took for Fergie to reform United's youth set-up until the system showed it could deliver results.
I'd put Sharpe and Giggs aside as they were as much the result of good scouting but it was Fergie's reformed youth infrastructure that produced our golden batch of Scholes, Beckham, the Nevilles, Gillespie etc.
Fergie started from scratch. He inherited from Atkinson a poor youth setup and big name players like Whiteside, McGrath and Robson who drank their way through training.
As compared to Wenger, who inherited a club with a long-established and admired youth setup, put in place by George Graham around the same time as Fergie took over at Old Trafford. Wenger also inherited Graham's entire defence, highly disciplined/committed warriors like Ray Parlour and even Bergkamp was served up on a plate by Bruce Rioch.
I'll end this thread on a little nod to Graham who created the solid foundations which allowed a good manager like Wenger to conveniently prosper, while lesser managers like O'Leary and Hoddle f*cked up the excellent youth groundwork he did at Leeds and Spurs. There was a time I even entertained the idea of Graham as heir to Fergie.