To supporters of almost every other club on the planet, any Manchester United fan bemoaning their lot must seem like the woman with a Virginia ham under her arm crying the blues ‘cause she’s got no bread. What could there possibly be to complain about? Yet in the late 1980s, Old Trafford was a cold, dark place. United were hopeless, plain old Alex Ferguson looked out of his depth, and there were not even the familiar United compensations of cup success or aesthetic superiority: the football on offer was not sexy but Sextonian. Having not finished in the bottom half since returning to the top flight in 1975, United did so in three of Ferguson’s first four seasons. In between United finished second, in 1987-88, but they were never in the title race.

Until the catalytic FA Cup victory of 1990, the most joyous moments came in January 1989. A bunch of kids, promoted to the first team when an already anorexic squad was diminished further by injuries, sent serotonin coursing through a depressed club with some remarkably intrepid performances, most notably 20 years ago today, when the champions Liverpool were slaughtered on live television.

There was Lee Sharpe, 17, at that stage an unfettered, startlingly mature left-back; Russell Beardsmore, 20, a gawky waif who made mischief on the right wing; Lee Martin, 20, another old head on a young full-back’s shoulders; Mark Robins, 19, a supernatural, icy-veined finisher who would later prompt comparisons with Jimmy Greaves in this paper; Tony Gill, 20, a wiry, streetwise jack of all trades; Giuliano Maiorana, 19, a speedy left-winger with a sleight of foot that might have got David Mamet into football; and Deiniol Graham and David Wilson, both 19, and Derek Brazil, 20. Their lust for life infected the terraces and even the management. Manchester United FC became Feel Good Inc.

By modern standards, what the first crop of Fergie’s Fledglings achieved seems at best middling and at worst piddling: one victory over Liverpool and a famous draw away to, er, QPR in the FA Cup. But these were different times. Youth scouts rarely ventured out of the postcode, never mind the country, so the talent pool was much shallower; and football truly was a man’s game: young footballers were to neither be seen nor heard, and the English Division One was full of bristling, hairy-arsed males who were the epitome of grizzled pragmatism. Romance was at a premium.

That the brief heyday of Fergie’s Fledglings was so romantic is in part due to the club involved. The legend of the Busby Babes means that no club relates so strongly to the success of youth as United. The emergence and hegemony of the Babes would be thrillingly re-created by Paul Scholes, David Beckham, Nicky Butt and the Nevilles in the nineties, yet a few years earlier this group were also dubbed ‘the New Babes’. As Richard Kurt, a peerless chronicler of all things United, wrote in United We Stood, “Their appearance fulfilled the desire that lies within every Red, a longing instilled in the fans since the 50s and that is still there ... that nothing beats the thrill of watching a young unknown, bred by United and filled with the Red Devil ideology, coming into the team and staking his claim.”

That claim was first staked on Boxing Day 1988. United had won only one league game in 12 when Beardsmore, making his first league start, inspired a swaggering 2-0 victory over United’s perpetual nemesis, Nottingham Forest. That had nothing on the trouncing of Liverpool six days later. United’s team, containing Sharpe, Martin, Beardsmore and Robins, ran Liverpool ragged in a stunning 3-1 victory, responding to John Barnes’ 70th-minute goal sucker punch with three savage haymakers in seven delirious minutes. When Beardsmore scored a sublime third, the late Brian Moore, commentating on ITV, screamed, “You can’t believe it now!” Liverpool were no mugs, and would not lose again away for nine-and-a-half months. The orgiastic response from the United fans was more like something out of Nine 1/2 weeks: it is arguable that Old Trafford has not produced a comparable atmosphere since. Prawn sandwiches definitely weren’t on sale that day.

Beardsmore, also the creator of the first, was a particular revelation. In this paper, David Lacey wrote that, “Few youngsters are going to enjoy themselves so much against Liverpool in only their second full League appearance.”

His second full FA Cup appearance came 10 days later, when Fergie’s flock took over Shepherd’s Bush. Draws at QPR don’t ordinarily justify the description ‘epic’, given this match by Kurt, but in its very precise context this certainly did. The squad of 13 included six players under 21; one, Gill, scored a splendidly emphatic equaliser and another, Graham, gave United the lead in extra-time before Alan McDonald scored a last-minute equaliser. “The kids,” wrote Ferguson a few years later, “had a field day.”

Gill scored again three days later, in a 3-0 league win over Millwall. That was the first of seven wins in eight games that propelled United to the fringes of the title race and to the quarter-finals of the FA Cup, a sense of destiny with regard to the latter pursuit adding power to their already impressive form. But increasingly the youngsters were being marginalised by the return of established stars. By the time that run ended, in a defeat at Norwich on February 25 that also ended United’s improbable title challenge, Sharpe was the only member of the side under 25. United went out of the FA Cup two weeks later in a controversial home defeat to Forest, and the season petered out miserably into what Kurt described as a “nihilistic nothingness”. The events of January seemed like a dream.

“The kids did a magnificent job, buying time for the restructuring that carried us to eventual success,” wrote Ferguson in Just Champion in 1993. “The clinical judgement on the rookies wasn’t so important, though. They were what the crowd wanted in that period of United’s evolution – and they responded to them with a real, unbridled fervour.”

That restructuring came in the summer, when Ferguson spent £8.25m on five new players, and the youngsters were pushed further into the background. Some still had significant success on a personal level – Mark Robins’ goals against Forest and Oldham helped United to the 1990 FA Cup final, which was won improbably by Martin, while Sharpe was the PFA Young Player of the Year in 1991 – but never again was there a collective sense of achievement. And only Sharpe and Martin ever became consistent starters.

“I am well aware that a lot of people thought I should have stuck with them longer,” wrote Ferguson in 1992, in 6 Years At United. “They got their chances through injury but as the senior players regained fitness I gradually replaced them. I believe I did the right thing. I was thrilled for the young ones myself but I didn’t think they were quite good enough to sustain their form.”

Ultimately, few would argue with that. The first of the gang to die, in football terms, was Gill, who suffered a badly broken ankle in a challenge with Nottingham Forest’s Brian Laws in March 1989. He never played again, but Ferguson wrote in 1992 that he would “undoubtedly have made it”. Robins, in shades of the current debate over Michael Owen, could not get a starting place because he offered little but sublime finishing and left for Norwich in 1992. Beardsmore, said Ferguson, was a “tremendously talented little player but lacks the strength to play at our level every week”. Martin was eventually supplanted by a combination of Clayton Blackmore, Denis Irwin and Paul Parker. “But for injures, I’m sure he would now be an England full-back,” wrote Ferguson. Martin went to Celtic in 1994 but soon drifted down the ladder.

That left just Sharpe, who lost his way after a few glorious years, either because or more probably in spite of Ferguson’s pre-emptive attempts to compensate for the eventual loss of his scorching pace by turning him into a more rounded footballer. He was the only high-class player among the group, and the only one to play for his country. Ultimately, United weren’t going to win anything with these kids. But for one joyous month, the kids enabled the club to do something that is arguably even more important: rediscover its identity.