How different would our club's history have been? Would Ron Atkinson have won the league or regularly challenged for it? Also would Diego Maradona waltzed through the heart of that English midfield for that famous second goal in 86? I know it's all a big what if but Robbo was some player.
The much derided former host of ‘the Word’ turned #FBPE champion Terry Christian was making this point on Twitter around about the time Maradona died (in pretty poor taste but whatever...)
He was adamant that Maradona would not have scored that goal if Robson was playing, and he used the United-Barca game in the Cup Winners Cup in ‘84 at OT as a frame of reference. Obviously Robson was dominant in that match and Diego was pretty subdued.
I don’t know though: England and United are not the same thing (ditto Barca and Argentina) and the Maradona that faced England in 1986 was probably in better form than the ‘84 version. It’s fun to speculate though.
One thing I’ve always maintained about the ‘goal of the century’ though: I think that the England players were so incensed by the handball goal that they weren’t concentrating properly for the second one, which occurred a few minutes later. So in my mind, one would not have happened without the other.
With regard to Robson for United, he was not injured all the time! He played a lot (and well) for many years. Liverpool in the mid-80s were just too disciplined, organised and strong. Big Ron encouraged the boozing culture which meant that they could never really be serious challengers for Liverpool, just like the Spice Boys were never up to it against 90s United. Not focused enough.
Robson is a true legend of the English game however. In Roy Keane’s first autobiography (the one in which he was full of praise for Ferguson, before they fell out), he described coming to United as a kid. He noted that Robson was respected ‘to the point of awe’ by every other player at the club. And there were a lot of good footballers in the team at that time.