And So, All right this week I'm with Harry Robinson author of the men that made Manchester United.

Podcast a regular match day goer.

You'll have seen him around the place.

Harry, good to have you on.

It's a pleasure to be here.

Thank you for having me.

Yeah, we meant to do this some months ago ago and I got busy and didn't read the book in time and so on and so on but I have now eventually read it. There is a theory when you do long form pieces with book authors that you shouldn't read the book and

just let them talk about it because it makes no sense in audio format for people to be going

back and forth about a book they might not have read yet.

But anyway, I did read it, I thoroughly enjoyed it, being the United Nerd I am, so congrats on that.

So perhaps we can just start with the kind of inspiration origin why this amongst the many stories about

Manchester United. Tell us about what it is for the listeners.

Yeah, so I'm in the shortest format possible the men who made Manchester United is about the eight, what I judged to be the eight individuals that really laid the foundations for the modern United before

Somat Busby arrived in 1945 and the inspiration came initially from one of

those characters Louis Rocker who I think United

nerds and some kind of less nerdy united fans would have heard of this kind of

mythical yeah legendary figure who has all these tall tales about his contributions to the club.

I first read about Louis Rockin when I was 17 and this, yeah, second generation Italian immigrant who joins Newton Eif in 1890, 1892 as a

T boy and progresses to very slowly at first, cleans out the buffs and then manages the kit and then becomes a

groundsman paints the fences and eventually at still quite a young age is

kind of acting as chief scout and over the next what ends up being a 60 year united career which is something only kind of

really equalled by people like Cath on reception these days and there's a few others but

...