Meanwhile, there was speculation that the club would fold, but a threadbare United team completed the 1957–58 season, with Busby's assistant Jimmy Murphy standing in as manager; he had not travelled to Belgrade as he was in Cardiff managing the Welsh national team at the time. A team largely made up of reserve and youth team players beat Sheffield Wednesday 3–0 in the first match after the disaster. The programme for that match showed simply a blank space where each United player's name should have been. With seven players dead (Duncan Edwards died just over 24 hours later), and with only Harry Gregg and Bill Foulkes fit to play out of the surviving players, United were desperate to find replacements with experience, so Murphy signed Ernie Taylor from Blackpool and Stan Crowther from Aston Villa. Three players, Derek Lewin, Bob Hardisty and Warren Bradley, were transferred to United on short-term contracts by non-League club Bishop Auckland. Bradley was the only one of the three players to play for the first team, and the only one to sign a permanent contract. The remaining places in the team were filled by reserve players including Shay Brennan and Mark Pearson. In the aftermath of the crash, Manchester United's fierce rivals Liverpool offered United five loan players to help them put a side together. Manchester City goalkeeper Bert Trautmann also aided United by acting as a mediator and translator with German authorities to the benefit of the victim's families.