On this day (6 January) in 2001 Manchester City defeated Birmingham City 3-2 in the FA Cup third round. This photo of a Alfie Haaland throw in from that game has caught my eye because it says so much about football at that time. This was of course taken at Maine Road and the stand on the left of the image is the North Stand.
As this was a FA Cup tie, a larger than normal away section was allocated to Birmingham and you can see from this image that they have roughly half the North Stand and the uncovered temporary stand in the corner (dubbed the Gene Kelly – fans would be ‘singing in the rain’).
Birmingham only brought 1,038 fans that day, hence the large empty Gene Kelly and North Stand sections.
The stand to the right is the ‘new’ Kippax Stand which was almost 6 years old that season.

