Billy McAdams

On 13 October in 2002 Fifties goalscoring star Billy McAdams died. During his Manchester City career he made 134 first team appearances and scored 65 goals. He had joined City on 6 December 1953 and on 2 January 1954 McAdams, signed from Distillery, made his debut. It was a memorable one as he scored an equaliser in the 49th minute against Sunderland at Maine Road.  The game was played in poor, foggy conditions but City won.

A week after the Sunderland game, McAdams scored a hat-trick in City’s 5-2 Cup win at Bradford.  He followed that with an equaliser in the 56th League derby match at Old Trafford.  His arrival and goalscoring streak was viewed as refreshing that season..

Perry Suckling

On this day (12 October) in 1965 1980s Manchester City ‘keeper Perry Suckling was born in Hackney. Here’s a brief profile of him:

Perry Suckling

Bought for £50,000 plus the popular David Phillips, England youth international Perry Suckling was anticipated to be City’s first choice for several years when he arrived from Coventry City in May 1986.  It didn’t work out that way however and by the end of December 1987 he was on loan at Chelsea.  A permanent move to Crystal Palace followed in January 1988 – City received £100,000 – and after 39 League appearances that was it.

Spells for West Ham, Brentford, Watford and Doncaster followed. 

Appearances:  League: 39 FAC: 1 League Cup: 3

You can read a 4,000 word article on the 1987-88 season here:

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A Complete PDF Of My 1st Book To Download

Subscribers to my site download a PDF of my entire first book. It was published back in 1989. It’s not my best but if you subscribe why not have a look and see where it all began. Here are more details:

https://gjfootballarchive.com/2021/06/22/a-complete-pdf-of-my-1st-book-to-download/

The book was published in April 1989 and I talk a little bit about it here:

The 200th Post – Joe Mercer

and here:

A Writing Flashback!

Woo Gordon Davies

On this day (10 October) in 1985 Chelsea forward Gordon Davies joined Manchester City (the team he supported; his hero was Colin Bell). Davies made 3 Welsh international appearances while at City. There was a chant connected with him which was, err, well, typical 1980s. It was based on the ‘Woo Gary Davies, woo Gary Davies, woo Gary Davies on the ra-di-o’ jingle used by Radio One DJ Gary Davies (of course). The chant (I’m sure you can guess) went ‘Woo Gordon Davies, woo Gordon Davies, woo Gordon Davies in the ar-e-a’ (meaning penalty area of course!). Those were the days, hey?

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Enjoying this website? Fancy supporting my research into Manchester football history? Why not subscribe? Every subscription directly helps support my research and provides each annual subscriber with access to everything posted on this site, including the entire Manchester A Football History and From Maine Men To Banana Citizens books, plus interviews, articles and more. I am not employed by anyone and all my research is self funded or comes from subscriptions to this site.

If you enjoy all the free material on my website and would like to support my research and keep this website going (but don’t want to subscribe) then why not make a one-time donation (or buy me a coffee). All support for my research is valued and welcome. It allows me to keep some free material available for all. Thanks.

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Bill Williams: The One and Only

Bill Williams made his one and only appearance for Manchester City when he came on as substitute for Mark Seagraves in the 8 October 1988 meeting with Ipswich.  He’d arrived at Maine Road five days earlier from Stockport, and returned to the club on 30 November the same year after realising playing for City interfered with his non-footballing trade. It was an odd time at City!

You can read more on that season here:

If you enjoy all the free material on my website and would like to support my research and keep this website going (but don’t want to subscribe) then why not make a one-time donation (or buy me a coffee). All support for my research is valued and welcome. It allows me to keep some free material available for all. Thanks.

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Associated Party Transaction Rules

So it’s been released today that the Premier League’s Associated Party Transaction (APT) rules have been found to be unlawful. There’ll be a lot of claims and counter claims on what this all means but this article in the Times explains the APT verdict in a way that cannot be considered either MCFC-biased or PL-biased. It also shows the financial advantage Arsenal (& others) had by the shareholder loans rules in place. Very Interesting and perhaps shows why those rules had to be challenged:

https://www.thetimes.com/article/c11fc05b-b046-4f6e-b592-29fe7e359080?shareToken=00e535877a056b352ab094a56b7703ee

City have said:

 –        The Club has succeeded with its claim: the Associated Party Transaction (APT) rules have been found to be unlawful and the Premier League’s decisions on two specific MCFC sponsorship transactions have been set aside

–          The Tribunal found that both the original APT rules and the current, (amended) APT Rules violate UK competition law and violate the requirements of procedural fairness.

–          The Premier League was found to have abused its dominant position.

–          The Tribunal has determined both that the rules are structurally unfair and that the Premier League was specifically unfair in how it applied those rules to the Club in practice.

–          The rules were found to be discriminatory in how they operate, because they deliberately excluded shareholder loans.

–          As well as these general findings on legality, the Tribunal has set aside specific decisions of the Premier League to restate the fair market value of two transactions entered into by the Club.

–          The tribunal held that the Premier League had reached the decisions in a procedurally unfair manner.

–          The Tribunal also ruled that there was an unreasonable delay in the Premier League’s fair market value assessment of two of the Club’s sponsorship transactions, and so the Premier League breached its own rules.

The summary of the 164 judgement can be read here:

Coppell Arrives

It’s that day each year (7 October) when we remember that on this day in 1996 the former Manchester United player Steve Coppell arrived as Manchester City manager at Maine Road. A month later he resigned after only 33 days in the job. This contemporary article explains that he was suffering with stress:

So much different from the start of his reign:

Harley’s Goals; Dowd’s First Clean Sheet

On this day (6 October) in 1962 Manchester City beat Leyton Orient 2-0.  Alex Harley and George Hannah scored while Harry Dowd kept his first clean sheet for the club.  This was only his third game but in his previous two matches he’d conceded ten goals. Not a great start but he became popular and was City’s ‘keeper for the 1969 FA Cup win.

Manchester City’s Red and Black

On this day (5 October) in 1968 Manchester City wore Red & Black stripes for the first time. Malcolm Allison had suggested adopting AC Milan’s colours and City first wore them for their meeting at Everton on October 5th 1968. The game ended in a 2-0 defeat and the result brought a lot of complaints from fans about the use of the colours.  However, due to a colour clash with Leicester, the new colours were worn in the 1969 FA Cup final. The club won that trophy and the kit soon entered City folklore as an important kit.

City chose to wear the new style for all the successful major finals that followed during Joe Mercer & Malcolm Allison’s time, including the club’s first European trophy in 1970.  At one point Allison suggested making red and black the first choice kit.

There were however plenty of complaints about City adopting the colours. Take a look at an earlier post I made on those complaints here: