A new daily series of articles for subscribers started earlier this month covering the 1980s. This is a seasonal journey through a truly important decade in the history of Manchester City Football Club. Today’s article is a 4,100 word feature on the 1988-89 season. Enjoy!
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Today (9 November) in 1974 Manchester City presented longserving player Alan Oakes with a silver plate to commemorate his 500th League appearance. He’d actually made his 500th League appearance the previous week when City faced Everton at Goodison.
At Maine Road on 9 November City chairman Peter Swales presented him with the award before the game with Stoke (Oakes made his 501st League appearance that day). City won that match 1-0 with a goal from Rodney Marsh. You can see Marsh’s goal here:
This action shot is from 101 years ago today (14 October 1922) and shows Manchester City’s Horace Barnes heading the ball out of the Stoke goalkeeper’s (Scott) hands. City won the match 2-1 (Horace Barnes & Tommy Johnson scoring for City) at Hyde Road and the stand seen in the background is City’s Popular Side.
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Former Manchester City player Jimmy Broad, whose dad was a popular City coach for decades, scores for Stoke against City on this day (7 October) in 1922. The game ended in a 1-1 draw. The goalkeeper is Mitchell and the City scorer was the great Tommy Johnson. The game took place at the Victoria ground before about 20,000.
Recently I’ve been contacted by someone who had in their possession a couple of Manchester City match programmes from 123 years ago. These were from the first season the club did its own official match programme (there was an earlier joint effort between 2 rugby and 2 football clubs that was described as official from the 1890s – see below – but 1900-01 was the first for MCFC on their own). He sent me scans of them and one programme was produced for a match played on this day (29 September) in 1900. Here are some images and details from it.
This was a special game for City, though the programme was not produced because it was a special game. This was the fifth issue of the season and contained eight pages, like the others. The significance of the game however was that Arthur Balfour MP was a visitor that day. Balfour would become Prime Minister in 1902 and was still in that role when City won the FA Cup for the first time in 1904 (he wore a City rosette at the final!).
The back page talks about Balfour’s visit. Both the front and the back pages are quite difficult to read as they’ve faded. It is interesting that the club felt able to make light of Balfour’s lack of enthusiasm for ‘socker’ (yes, socker or soccer as we grew to call it, was an English word for association football before the Americans became recognised for their use of it). Balfour preferred golf (after the 1904 FA Cup final he called himself a football ‘ignoramous’. Bob Hulmes, who sent the programme scans to me, managed to transcribe the wording regarding Balfour:
Says Balfour: “What shall I do with the sphere?”
We have specially desired fine weather today as the Right Hon. Arthur James Balfour is due to make his first appearance on the Hyde Road Football enclosure this afternoon. Some little decoration will be made, for the most pleasing sight to the hon. gentleman will be a mighty crowd of enthusiastic well wishers. It is not often that we have a leader of the nation at such functions, and the occasion is historic as far as Manchester is concerned. No doubt our honoured guest wishes he had the opportunity to open a game of golf instead of socker but we are ready to excuse a “miskick” on this occasion. We are grateful for kind acceptance of our invitation. Mr Balfour and Lord Rosebery have patronised the Palace ground, now the former honours the Manchester City ground.
Surely the City Team will rise to the occasion and cause some of the rampant enthusiasm to be showered upon them by a dashing display.
It’s worth noting some of the advertisements. There’s one for Joseph Alexander’s coaches and carriages (the Alexander family business. Note: The Alexanders remained key members of City’s management/directorship/shareholding for most of the 120 years that followed!). There’s also the Wellington Hotel, Stockport Road, which was run by the ever popular City official Joshua Parlby, and the Matlock House Hydro – one of City director John Allison’s business.
The game was against Stoke and they are wearing their then home colours of ‘claret shirts and blue knickers’.
Bob also nudged me towards page 8 which included a wry comment about the previous Wednesday’s friendly at Newton Heath (United):
Did anyone try to count the spectators at the match with Newton Heath on Wednesday? If so, did they succeed in getting past double figures?
The official attendance was estimated by Newton Heath as 600 (I wonder if they had a mickey-take name along the lines of Emptyhad for United’s games at Bank Street?
Before the 1900-01 season there was an official match programme produced for both Newton Heath and Manchester City, alongside a couple of rugby clubs. It was first ‘mocked up’ in May 1898 but went into production for the 1898-1899 season. It continued into the 1900-01 season by which time City were producing their own official programme. Both programmes were in competition throughout that 1900-01 season.
From 9 May 1898 the first Manchester football programme was a mock up based on Everton Liverpool programme
Thanks to Bob Hulmes for allowing me to us images of his match programme. The programme belonged to Bob’s grandfather. He lived in Ardwick, near Hyde Road, and he followed City until his death in 1964. Bob found two programmes from 1900 lining a drawer when his grandfather died in 1964, which shows exactly how rare these images are. It’s a pure fluke in many ways that they survived and fortunately the family looked after them over the decades.
Post 69 in the 100 Maine Rd countdown is this image from a game played on 5 March 1934. It shows Eric Brook scoring what some believed was the greatest goal ever netted at Maine Road (see post 68 for a later contender). What else makes this image special is that it’s from the 84,569 game v Stoke when City attracted a record English crowd on a club ground that still stands today.
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Warning! The following 600 word article is the story of Manchester City’s final game of the 1997-98 season. It was against Stoke on 3 May and, well, let’s just say it was a 5-2 easy victory but the consequences were grave for the club. If you have no idea what I’m on about then have a read – or if you want to relive a painful memory then carry on. Fortunately, I’ve made this article available to subscribers only so people won’t just catch site of our misery just by passing! If you can then enjoy looking back and remembering those days!
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I’m going to talk about a period when I got totally riled by the way Manchester City was being covered by some in the media. This was this month in 2010 when considerable negative coverage was thrown City’s way. At that time I was interviewing several key figures at City and the following piece includes quotes from one of several interviews I did with City chair Khaldoon Al Mubarak. I asked him about the negativity that seemed to be building in the media towards the club and its ‘trigger-happy’ leader (ridiculous then, even more ridiculous now!). It angered me that some of those talking had not spent any time interviewing those in charge at City yet they were freely talking as if they knew them inside out. This is a free read and is well worth taking a moment to read.
The Blues were only defeated in three of their final 15 League games of the 2009-10 season and were managed by Roberto Mancini, who had replaced Mark Hughes at Christmas. City faced Stoke City three times in February – twice in the FA Cup and once in the League. The first FA Cup meeting on 13 February ended in a 1-1 draw, as did the League meeting three days later.
Stoke had scored in the 72nd minute of the League game, before Gareth Barry saved City’s blushes with an 85th minute equaliser. The draw lifted the Blues to fourth place. During the post-match interviews one journalist asked Mancini about an incident in the game. The Italian claimed he had not seen it, but another journalist said: “You’re learning fast.” Mancini replied: “Thank you. I have been watching Coronation Street.”
The following Sunday, 21 February, presumably after worrying about the situation with Coronation Street’s Gail and her missing husband Joe (whose body had just bobbed to the surface of Lake Windermere), Mancini guided City to a goalless draw against Liverpool. The result was satisfactory but some journalists claimed the manager was likely to lose his job at the season’s end. Paul Wilson wrote an article on Jose Mourinho for The Observer which suggested that the former Chelsea manager could be arriving at either Liverpool or City at the end of the season. In his Guardian report Paul McCarra referred indirectly to the rumour: “These clubs have high expectations and Mancini has the added worry of trying to retain his job.”
Some supporters saw reports like these as a validation of the rumours that continued to circulate. This contributed to a feeling of anxiety. No matter what was said the rumours were believed. When City travelled to Stoke for the FA Cup replay on 24 February the home fans teased Mancini and City supporters with the chant of “You’re getting sacked in the morning.” This is fairly normal banter when a side is facing a struggling competitor but the Blues actually lay in fifth place, with a game in hand over most sides, and of course Mancini was only two months into his managerial reign. The chants were premature but when the Stoke-City replay ended in a 3-1 home win, others suggested this would be the final straw for City’s Chairman. The fact was, however, City’s owner and other executives were not looking to make a change. There was no intention whatsoever to remove Mancini.
In his match report journalist Joe Lovejoy commented: “Mancini’s claims after the game that his team had ‘played very well and dictated for 80 minutes’ will cut no ice with demanding employers who had so little patience with Mark Hughes.”
Chairman Khaldoon found the constant speculation about Mancini’s future baffling: “It’s extremely frustrating. I read the ‘papers and see this ‘trigger-happy City’. Trigger-happy City based on what? Based on twenty managers fired in our first 18 months? No, this is based on one change. Absolutely one change of an individual that we hadn’t even selected to start with, but we had stuck with him. So where does this trigger-happy City come from?
“From day one I have always stated that we would be patient and we have been that way. I cannot see a single contradiction of anything I or ‘we’ – the team we have put in place – have said since starting out. Not a single one. We said what we would do and we’ve done it – from A to Z.”
As most Blues will recognise, the media negativity towards City has increased at times and has rarely matched the feeling of the fans or the club’s leaders. We’ve come to expect it but in February 2010 it seemed so new.
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Continuing the weekly series of ‘True Blue’ figures associated with the early years of Manchester City, here’s an article on Joshua Parlby who was the visionary who was the main figure behind the creation of Manchester City. He was also a former Stoke footballer and committeeman. As an appetizer for my forthcoming talk (1 March – see below). You can find out why this man was such an important figure in Manchester City history below:
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There will be another ‘True Blue’ featured next Monday. Use the tag ‘True Blues’ to find other profiles in this series. If you want to join my free online talk concerning Parlby and City see:
The full series of True Blue profiles will feature:
Lawrence Furniss, John Allison, Joshua Parlby, Walter Chew, William Sumner, Tom Maley, St Mark’s community leaders, Billy Meredith, John Chapman, William Beastow and James Moores.
Gary James' Football Archive 