On this day (7 November) newspapers were full of the previous day’s news that had stunned Manchester City and that was the resignation of manager Howard Kendall. Kendall had decided to return to his former club Everton.
The move absolutely stunned City fans (though we did get the blame in some newspapers who claimed we’d never actually taken to him – absolute rubbish and demonstrates the typical attitude of the period which was if anything went wrong blame the fans!). Fans had voiced concern over Kendall’s signing of many, many former Evertonians but overall they were satisfied (more than satisfied) with the manager’s approach at City.
The bottom line with Kendall leaving is that chairman Peter Swales and his supporting directors had given him a contract that allowed him to walk out on the job whenever he chose. It was a strange situation and the belief at the time was that the City board had believed the ONLY job Kendall would be tempted to leave City for was the England job and, with Peter Swales in charge of the international selection committee, the chance of that happening was extremely slim.
Ah well! Here are some newspaper articles from this day back in 1990.
Gary James' Football Archive 