Category Archives: Seasons

The 1890s: Ardwick and Manchester City

A new series of features starts tomorrow. This series provides a season by season account of Ardwick AFC and Manchester City FC in the 1890s. Some are 2000+ word articles, others are a bit less, but each adds to the story of how the club evolved. So, if you’ve ever wondered how MCFC came into being and what happened to Ardwick AFC, here’s your chance to find out. This series covers the final years of Ardwick, the birth of Manchester City and Manchester’s first national title.

Watch this space tomorrow for details.

A Wembley for the North?

This story gets repeated often over the decades as individuals, clubs and authorities talk about building a ‘Wembley of the North’. Back on 20 June 1992 the latest version of the story was that a new stadium would be built as Manchester’s bid for the 2000 Olympics. The article claimed that work on this stadium would start whether Manchester was awarded the Games or not.

In the end Manchester was not awarded the Games but the city did stage the 2002 Commonwealth Games and a new stadium, present day Etihad, was built for that.

The article was published in a Liverpool newspaper and it’s interesting that there’s talk in this of building an arena at King’s Dock, which of course has also happened.

There are some errors in the article, for example it claims that neither City nor United had expressed an interest in moving to the stadium but City had been in discussions for several years about supporting the Olympic bids. In fact in 1989 the club had announced it was interested in a move if a stadium was ever to be planned.

Manchester City v TNS in Wrexham?

On 20 June 2003 following the UEFA Cup draw, which had seen Manchester City drawn against Welsh Club TNS, discussions were being taken as to where the Welsh leg of the game could be played. Initially reports like this one suggested Wrexham but ultimately the game was moved to Cardiff. With the City leg played at the new City of Manchester Stadium (now Etihad) this meant both legs were played in the two newest major stadia in the UK.

This cutting has some interesting quotes on the European status of the two clubs at the time.

Manchester City 2024-25 Fixtures


18/08/2024 – 16:30 – Chelsea (a) (4.30pm kick-off time confirmed)

24/08/2024 – 15:00 – Ipswich Town (h)

31/08/2024 – 15:00 – West Ham United (a)

14/09/2024 – 15:00 – Brentford (h)

21/09/2024 – 15:00 – Arsenal (h)

28/09/2024 – 15:00 – Newcastle United (a)

05/10/2024 – 15:00 – Fulham (h)

19/10/2024 – 15:00 – Wolverhampton (a)

26/10/2024 – 15:00 – Southampton (h)

02/11/2024 – 15:00 – A.F.C. Bournemouth (a)

09/11/2024 – 15:00 – Brighton (a)

23/11/2024 – 15:00 – Tottenham Hotspur (h)

30/11/2024 – 15:00 – Liverpool (a)

04/12/2024 – 19:45 – Nottingham Forest (h)

07/12/2024 – 15:00 – Crystal Palace (a)

14/12/2024 – 15:00 – Manchester United (h)

21/12/2024 – 15:00 – Aston Villa (a)

26/12/2024 – 15:00 – Everton (h)

29/12/2024 – 15:00 – Leicester City (a)

04/01/2025 – 15:00 – West Ham United (h)

14/01/2025 – 19:45 – Brentford (a)

18/01/2025 – 15:00 – Ipswich Town (a)

25/01/2025 – 15:00 – Chelsea (h)

01/02/2025 – 15:00 – Arsenal (a)

15/02/2025 – 15:00 – Newcastle United (h)

22/02/2025 – 15:00 – Liverpool (h)

25/02/2025 – 19:45 – Tottenham Hotspur (a)

08/03/2025 – 15:00 – Nottingham Forest (a)

15/03/2025 – 15:00 – Brighton (h)

02/04/2025 – 19:45 – Leicester City (h)

05/04/2025 – 15:00 – Manchester United (a)

12/04/2025 – 15:00 – Crystal Palace (h)

19/04/2025 – 15:00 – Everton (a)

26/04/2025 – 15:00 – Aston Villa (h)

03/05/2025 – 15:00 – Wolverhampton (h)

10/05/2025 – 15:00 – Southampton (a)

18/05/2025 – 15:00 – A.F.C. Bournemouth (h)

25/05/2025 – 16:00 – Fulham (a)

England at Maine Road

As we’re in a period of International football, I thought it would be worth remembering that there were four full internationals played at Maine Road. 

Each of these took place during a six year spell in the 1940s. 

FULL INTERNATIONALS AT MAINE ROAD

DateType of gameAgainstScoreScorersCrowdTeam
16 October 1943War
Interna-tional		ScotlandW 8-0Lawton (4), Hagan (2), Carter, Matthews60,000Swift, Scott, Hardwick, Britton, Cullis, Mercer, Matthews, Carter, Lawton, Hagan, Compton
24/4/46Burnden Park Disaster Fund MatchScotlandD 2-2Welsh (2)70,000Swift, Walton, Hardwick, Wright, Leuty, Mitchell, Matthews, Welsh, Lewis, Fielding, Mannion
13/11/46Home InternationalWalesW 3-0Mannion (2), Lawton59,121Swift, Scott, Hardwick, Wright, Franklin, Johnston, Finney, Carter, Lawton, Mannion, Langton
16/11/49Home International/ World Cup qualifiersN. IrelandW 9-2Rowley (4), Froggatt, Pearson (2), Mortensen (2)69,762Streten, Mozley, Aston, Watson, Franklin, Wright, Finney, Mortensen, Rowley, Pearson, Froggatt

In addition to these matches various other representative matches have been played at Maine Road.  These include the following inter-league games, under-21 fixtures and B Team games.

You can read more on the 8-0 victory over Scotland in 1943 here:

“Stanley’s Match” – England 8 Scotland 0 16th October 1943

A Shameful Day

On 15 June 1972 one of the most shameful days in the history of Manchester City Football Club occurred when Joe Mercer resigned to take over at Coventry City. It’s a long story, which I go into in significant detail in Football With A Smile: The Authorised Biography of Joe Mercer, but in essence following the takeover battle of 1970-71 the new guard of directors (which included Ian Niven and Peter Swales) were gradually gaining greater control of the club. Niven, a proud supporter of Malcolm Allison, always felt Allison should have control of all aspects of team affairs and never actually rated Mercer (Niven asked me in 1989 when my first book came out: ‘Why’ve you got Mercer writing the foreword? He did nothing for City!’).

Joe felt unwanted and he was probably right. Despite being City’s most successful manager of all time until the trophy-successes of Pep Guardiola, the new board wanted Malcolm in control. Ultimately, Malcolm also felt let down by the new board and he resigned within a year.

It was a shameful day when Mercer felt so let down that he had to leave City. The highly successful era he had managed came to an end and it is significant that under the new board only one major trophy was ever won. The club lost its way and the die was cast. There were some great moments – but they were moments not years of success like Mercer had brought with Allison as his number two.

Copies of my Mercer biography are still available here:

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Manchester City 5-1 Newport County

On 16 June 1947 the Western Mail carried this match report of Manchester City’s 5-0 victory over Newport County, which was played on 14 June. The game was remarkable for a number of reasons:

  • Prior to the 2019-20 Covid affected season this was the club’s latest finish to a season. 2019-20 ended in August (Champions League) with the League campaign ending on July 26 2020. The 1946-47 season had been affected by snow and frozen pitches, causing many games to be postponed.
  • City played with only ten men for much of the second half due to an injury to Billy Walsh
  • The Blues won 5-1 with George Smith scoring all five goals. No player has ever scored more goals for the Blues in a League game (Sergio Aguero and Erling Haaland have scored 5 in the League of course – you can read about those elsewhere on this site). Denis Law did score 6 goals in a FA Cup tie v Luton but this was abandoned and wiped from the records.
  • Roy Clarke made his City debut and, as City were promoted, he became the first man to play 3 successive league games in 3 different divisions when he appeared in his next City game. He’d joined from Cardiff (Division 3); made his City debut in Division 2 then played in Division 1. Subscribers can read more about Roy Clarke here:
MANCHESTER CITY – HALL OF FAME: Roy Clarke
  • City had achieved promotion over a month earlier (May 10) when they defeated Burnley 1-0 in front of a Maine Road crowd of 69,463.
  • City were promoted as champions.

Preston and City Great: The Death Of Jimmy Ross

One of the earliest stars of League Football died this month (12th June) in 1902. Jimmy Ross, who was a major figure for almost three seasons with Manchester City and had competed in every season of League football since the League was established in 1888, died with an illness described as “an acute skin disease and a raging fever.”

Ross was one of the Preston ‘Invincibles’ in 1888-89 and also scored 7 (sometimes reported as 8) against Hyde in the famous FA Cup record breaking game (read more on that game here: https://gjfootballarchive.com/2021/02/22/hyde-v-preston-a-record-breaking-day/ ).

At the time of his death Ross was a Manchester City player. His last first team appearance was appropriately against Preston North End in the First Round of the F.A. Cup in January 1902.  

City helped his mother, whom he was looking after at the time of his death, financially.  They also arranged the funeral and he was buried at Southern Cemetery (according to newspaper reports of the time he was buried in a grave that contained another City player – Bride – who had died a couple of years earlier). Several City players/personalities carried the coffin, including Billy Meredith.

More can be read on Ross’ life here:

The Great Jimmy Ross

A Complete PDF Of My 1st Book To Download

A reminder that subscribers to my site can download lots of my writing, including all of Manchester A Football History and a PDF of my entire first book. It was published back in 1989 and sold out within 6 months of publication. Here are more details:

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!

City’s history via players?

A few years back I set myself the task of trying to find connections from the Manchester City’s first competitive game in 1890 through to the Premier League successes of today.

The idea was to see how few players I could find to form a chain through the decades. It was an interesting idea linking today’s Manchester City with the key players of the past and so can you work out how many players were included in this chain? The idea was that each player had to have played alongside the next one on the list and also the previous one.

Can you work out how many players and also can you provide your own chain, naming players that fit the criteria?

Subscribers can read the smallest number I found to make this chain and who they are below (there is a clue in the photo – the goalscorer is the final player in my chain):

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