Welcome to Gary James’ Football Archive

Hartford For City Manager?

On this day thirty years ago (3 September 1996) caretaker Manchester City manager Asa Hartford was being tipped for the job on a permanent basis. Some reports, like this, claimed a win in the game against Charlton that night would help his case. CIty did win the game – 2-1 with goals from Creaney and…

Manchester City 3 Fulham 1

On this day (2 September) in 1959 Ian Barton, a key member of the Manchester City Supporters Club, attended his first game. I spoke with Ian years ago about this and here’s his story of that day all those years ago: ‘It may not be the most significant game in City’s history but for me…

Football League Stop United From Playing In European Cup

On this day (1 September) in 1958 a really distasteful moment in League football saw Manchester United prevented from taking a special place that had been awarded to them in the European Cup. It was the Football League that effectively banned United from competing. THe background is that UEFA had offered United a place in…

The 1906 City-Arsenal Heatwave Game

Today is the 120th anniversary of an odd day when Manchester City and Arsenal played in a heatwave. Here’s the background and the story. I start with the 1906 close season… Following the banning of so many Manchester City players and officials (I’ll cover this another day!) the future leaked seriously bleak for the club…

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About this Website

On this site you will find articles, posts and other material about football. Some of this material is free to access (select ‘Free Content’ from the menu above) while other material is available to those who subscribe to the site. 

The site was launched on 1 January 2021. Since then hundreds of articles, interviews (audio & written), history talks and both my PDFs of my first book (From Maine Men To Banana Citizens, published 1989 and out of print since 1990) and the 2010 edition of Manchester A Football History book (this originally cost £24.95 and has been out of print since 2012) have been posted.

To get a feel for the volume and type of article available visit the ‘Search The Archive’ page (or use either the search function at the bottom of this page or by selecting a category in the Posted Content Categories field below).

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