Who are the greatest players in Manchester United’s history? The Athletic gave Andy Mitten the task of compiling his top 25, and we are counting them down this summer, in reverse order. He explains his thought process here.Duncan Edwards was the greatest of the Manchester United players to die in the 1958 Munich air disaster. He was just 21 years old, yet made such an impact he cannot be omitted from any list such as this.I’m far too young to have seen him on the pitch, but in 1985 Gordon Clayton told me all about his close friend. Clayton was the manager of Urmston Town, a team my dad played for in Manchester. Clayton was great to me as a kid, letting me sit at the front of the team coach for away games and asking me what I’d learned in school that week. And, because of his connections, occasionally Urmston were able to train at United’s Cliff training ground.Clayton wangled these concessions because he had appeared twice for the first team in 1956-57, but his story was more interesting than that. He joined United on the same day as his school friend, Edwards. They travelled up to Manchester by train together to sign from the Black Country industrial heartland in England’s Midlands where they were born.Both became members of United’s outstanding FA Youth Cup team of 1952-53; winners of the trophy by an aggregate of 9-3 in a two-legged final against their hometown side, Wolverhampton Wanderers. Edwards won three FA Youth Cup winners’ medals after a stellar and unprecedented three-year England Schoolboys stint.It was Edwards who would establish himself in the team that became a pre-eminent force in English football. United had not won the league between 1911 and 1952, then, after Sit Matt Busby’s first great side, the Busby Babes came along. A defensive midfielder, he was just 16 years and 185 days old when he made his United debut in 1953, the youngest player to appear in England’s First Division at the time. Two years later, he became England’s youngest post-war debutant, a colossus of a boy wonder.