The third season of the UTD Podcast has featured some huge names from Manchester United's history, each with their own unique tales to tell.
Given there have been more than 120 episodes so far, it's extremely difficult to pick out favourites. But we asked UTD Podcast producer Matt Tasker to give it a shot by picking his top five from the current third series, in reverse order...
5: JI-SUNG PARK“We made so many requests to get Ji on the podcast and we were chuffed to finally get him on. He’s someone United fans don’t hear from often, so it was great to sit down with him and get his life story. It was also the first time we had been approached by an ex-player to use the podcast as a way of speaking to the fans and get a message across to them [about their chant].”
4: JOHN ASTON JR
“I love when we get to speak to players from the 1968 European Cup-winning team. We’ve spoken to so many guests where, when they give us a story, we’re able to play in video footage from different angles. But when we get stories from the older eras, there’s often no footage and we’re relying on these people’s first-hand accounts to keep these stories alive. John was a great example of this, and his story about Nobby Stiles was jaw-dropping…”
3: FABIO AND RAFAEL DA SILVA
“This one is best described as organised chaos! We had Fabio dialling in from France, Rafael was on the training pitch in Brazil, and the hosts (Sam Homewood, Helen Evans and David May) were at their homes in England. It can be hard enough telling the twins apart when you can see them, but we had to think how on earth people would know which was which on audio! Hopefully the hosts did a good-enough job of that, and we had some great interaction between the two.”
2: JAAP STAM
“We took the pod on tour for this one, flying to Amsterdam and making the train journey over to Jaap’s home city of Zwolle. He was really generous with his time so we ended up recording a two-part epic, covering his career and of course his time at United. He was really open about how things broke down with the manager (Sir Alex Ferguson) and why he ended up leaving the club.”
1: SIR ALEX FERGUSON
“I mean, obviously! Of course his episode is my favourite. Near enough every person we’ve spoken to has mentioned Sir Alex at least once. The approach to this episode was tough, because what do you ask him that he hasn’t already been asked a thousand times before? Sam, Helen and Maysie did a great job of navigating the questions we’d prepared beforehand, but also going off on tangents about the boss’s bucket list, going to the Oscars and what it’s like for him doing his weekly supermarket shop!”
In case you missed it, the UTD Podcast has been nominated for the Best Sport Podcast category in the British Podcast Awards.
Find out more, and how you can vote for us in the Listeners' Choice section, here.