Blue Moon: Down Among The Dead Men With Manchester City Page 2

  A double act which had hitherto bordered on comedy, Quinn and Uwe Rosler, suddenly found a punch-line of a goal so tidy that it served to amplify the previous disarray. Rosier impudently removed his shirt, waved it at the crowd and, like waking from a dream, soberly pulled it back on as Coventry waited to kick off.

  Coventry’s Dion Dublin, who had revealed in the programme that he shaved his head twice a day, pierced the home side’s new poise when he put his burnished dome to a consummate cross from Hall. It was barely deserved. Coventry had been dogged, Dublin and Burrows especially, but torpid outside their own half of the field.

  Afterwards, Ron Atkinson, their manager, was wonderfully agreeable. A smile, a wink to the press posse, another chew of the gum. ‘We’ve had four points out of City this season, and they could be big, big points at the finish. We played intelligently, we sealed off the little spaces.’ He was candid enough to admit that avoiding defeat had been the objective.

  Ball, meanwhile, maintained his petulance. Did he think Nigel Clough would improve the team? ‘He won’t make any difference,’ he answered sarcastically. Then why did he sign him? Ball looked skywards, lips pursed. ‘That’s one of the most ridiculous questions of all time. He’s top quality, he’s a good player, what do you expect me to say?’

  Manchester City were better than their manager’s public relations, and a good deal less edgy. Sometimes their play is a pastiche of ‘total football’, but some guile to complement the graft could make a wealth of difference. Ball will be discreetly making plans for Nigel.

  MANCHESTER CITY (4–4–2): E. Immel, N. Summerbee, K. Curie, K. Symons, I. Brightwell, S. Lomas (sub: M. Phillips, 51 min.), G. Flitcroft, G. Kinkladze, M. Brown, U. Rosier, N. Quinn.

  Sunday, 5 May 1996

  On the last day of the 1995–96 season, City found themselves level with Southampton and Coventry City on 37 points with only one relegation place still unresolved in the Premiership.

  City, playing against a distinctly indifferent Liverpool, found themselves 2–0 down before retrieving the game with goals by Uwe Rosier (a penalty) and Kit Symons. Rumours spread that Coventry were losing against Leeds United and City, apparently under the orders of Alan Ball, began time-wasting tactics. The rumours were erroneous and Coventry defeated Leeds at Highfield Road to send City into Division One.

  Sunday, 4 May 1998

  Once more, City went into the final day of the season caught up in a frantic relegation battle. Reading had already been relegated and the other two spots were between City, Bury, Port Vale, Portsmouth and Stoke City.

  Despite beating Stoke 5–2 with goals by Shaun Goater (two), Paul Dickov, Lee Bradbury and Kevin Horlock, they were still relegated. Portsmouth and Port Vale recorded victories at Bradford City and Huddersfield Town respectively. Portsmouth were managed by the ex-City manager Alan Ball.

  City supporters at Stoke turned their second relegation in three years into a defiant party, chanting, ‘Are you watching, Macclesfield?’ ‘I’m devastated. It’s going to hurt for a very long time but we’ll secure promotion next season for the fans,’ said Jamie Pollock. ‘This time next year we’ll be singing and dancing.’

  Tuesday, 6 May 1998

  Joe Royle was given a contract to remain as City’s manager for the next three years. Willie Donachie, the head coach, accepted a two-year extension.

  Comedian and City fan, Eddie Large, said City would, ‘go through the Second Division like a dose of salts’. Former City hero, Rodney Marsh, said it was ‘unbelievably sad’ to see the club so far down the League.

  Friday, 15 May 1998

  As expected, Georgi Kinkladze, the supporters’ hero, finally left City and joined Ajax for £5.5 million.

  Wednesday, 27 May 1998

  Manchester bookmakers Fred Done made City 6–4 to win the Second Division title. They were the shortest odds ever offered for a Football League side at the start of a new season.

  Paul Hince, chief sports writer on the Manchester Evening News and a former City player (seven appearances in the 1960s), promised to walk down Deansgate in Manchester city centre wearing just his boxer shorts if City did not gain promotion.

  Monday, 1 June 1998

  City, the official club magazine, lightened the mood by listing ‘reasons to be cheerful’ about relegation. Among them were ‘fun weekends at a variety of coastal resorts like Blackpool and Bournemouth’; ‘red-hot Lancashire derbies against grand old names of English football like Burnley and Preston North End’; and ‘the chance to snuggle up together in the “cosy” stands that we’ll be visiting on our away trips’.

  Friday, 5 June 1998

  City-supporting viewers of Sky TV’s Bravo Channel were delighted when an episode of Italian Stripping Housewives was punctuated by a performance of ‘Blue Moon’, sung by the show’s presenter.

  Friday, 17 July 1998

  Jamie Pollock revealed that he had lost a stone in weight over the summer months. ‘The manager had told me I should lose some weight and I feel a lot better for it.’ Pollock was among the full squad which began pre-season training with a stint at HMS Raleigh, the Royal Navy’s training base in Cornwall, where they also played games against Torpoint Athletic and Newquay.

  Tuesday, 21 July 1998

  Dennis Tueart, a City director and former player, revealed several cutbacks for the 1998–99 season, among them fewer overnight stops for away games. ‘It’s a question of ensuring fans’ money is spent properly and not wasted. For instance, we have worked out the games where we don’t need to stay in a hotel the night before.’

  Tuesday, 28 July 1998

  The official launch of City’s new away kit was postponed when suppliers, Kappa, delivered just a quarter of the ordered adult shirts and no junior sizes. ‘We are extremely angry and frustrated by Kappa’s failure,’ said Mike Turner, the club’s chief executive.

  Friday, 31 July 1998

  City striker Shaun Goater told the press: ‘This will be my best ever season. I have set myself a target of 25 goals. I am putting my head on the block, but nobody should be in any doubt of my intentions.’

  Tuesday, 4 August 1998

  Joe Royle announced that 19-year-old Nicky Weaver would start the season as City’s first-choice keeper, making his début in Saturday’s game against Blackpool at Maine Road. ‘I’m confident he won’t let anyone down,’ said Royle.

  Several former City players were included in a list of ‘100 Soccer Legends’ announced by the Football League to celebrate its centenary season. Denis Law, Colin Bell, Bert Trautmann, Peter Doherty, Frank Swift, Trevor Francis and Billy Meredith were listed. Many were surprised by the omission of Francis Lee and Mike Summerbee.

  Thursday, 6 August 1998

  Mike Turner revealed that the club had sold 13,771 season tickets and more than 28,000 match tickets for Blackpool’s visit.

  City began the season with just two new signings, Danny Tiatto from FC Baden of Switzerland (£300,000) and Danny Allsopp (£10,000) from Port Melbourne Sharks. Tiatto’s father had played in Italy’s Serie ‘A’.

  Friday, 7 August 1998

  A new City fanzine, City ’til I Cry!, marked its first issue with the editorial: ‘Our hopes and ambitions for the season are trivial and undemanding: 100 points, 100 goals and win the Auto Windscreen Shield before a fullhouse at Wembley. The voices of reason might call for consolidation, stability and realism. Well, bollocks to that!’ It also placed City’s relegation into context: ‘Women say there’s nothing more painful than childbirth – they’ve obviously never seen their team get relegated.’

  Bert Trautmann’s Helmet, meanwhile, pondered: ‘Even City couldn’t balls this season up, could they? No, don’t answer that!’

  ALL TOGETHER NOW, IT’S TIME TO START SINGING THE BLUES

  (The Times, Saturday, 8 August 1998)

  Number eleven would have been more practical. Two thin pieces of cloth in parallel would have spared my mother a whole evening at the sewing machine, and most of the next morning too.
In truth, it was not even open to discussion: it had to be number eight. Colin Bell wore number eight and he was the most important man on earth.

  This shirt business had dragged on for some time. Back then, football clubs and merchandising were just nodding acquaintances. Clubs fretted that anything more than the obligatory enamel badge, plastic pennant and woolly scarf amounted to memorabilia overload. Replica shirts were almost non-existent. Eventually, a sky-blue Manchester City shirt was located, neatly pressed in a wooden drawer at a shop in Moston Lane, north Manchester.

  The shopkeeper ran his fingers across it lovingly, as if it held the healing properties of the Golden Fleece. A City shirt really meant something in those days. A rough number eight was cut out of a piece of cloth. Sewing it on to the shirt took hours and, though I daren’t admit it at the time, I was disappointed with the finished item. The number leaned and the two circles were twisted and pulled. Colin Bell’s number eight was neat and orderly, mine was drunk and disorderly.

  Manchester City were my grandad’s club. They were made for each other. United, as he saw it, were brash and full of themselves, while City were perpetual underdogs. He had a pathological dislike of United’s Bobby Charlton, though they shared the same haircut. On windy days, he would grumble that the breeze was ‘disturbing his Bobby Charlton’ as strands broke loose at will. ‘All he can bloody do is kick it and run after it,’ he said of this footballing great. He liked dribblers, players who could fool opponents with a trick of the instep or a shimmy of the hips.

  City had these in abundance, he claimed, and they were usually small men with out-size hearts. We went on long walks, across railway tracks, over wasteland. City this, City that; players he had seen down the years. He would skip past a discarded shopping trolley, dummy an oil can. All the time: ‘Don’t be like everyone else. Don’t do the obvious. Don’t support United.’

  Among work-mates and neighbours of a United persuasion, he felt there was no greater statement than holding aloft the blue flag. It was never nasty, though; his heart was big enough to embrace ‘the other lot’, as he called them. George Best was a good ’un; Nobby Stiles (‘He went to school just over there,’ he would say, pointing towards Collyhurst) was a battler; but Bobby Charlton, dear me, shake of the head: kick and bloody run; OK, he had a decent shot on him.

  He took me to my first ever game, a 1–1 draw against Sheffield United at Maine Road. I wanted to leave after 15 minutes because my ears hurt from the sheer volume. Afterwards we went home on the bus and the windows steamed up. A lad of about 12 said he was going to sleep and asked my grandad to wake him up about two miles into the journey. He forgot, and that urchin in an anorak probably ended up at a bus depot in Bury or Oldham.

  When I was 10 we moved away from Manchester. So, like a childhood friendship, I drifted apart from City. We went our separate ways. At first I watched their deterioration with concern, but my new club, Rochdale FC, to whom my loyalty has remained steadfast for 25 years, became an obsession. There was precious little emotional fuel left to generate more than a passing interest in another club.

  City have been woefully mismanaged for nearly two decades. Only the fans have remained constant, as players, managers and directors have passed through, heavy on promises, light on achievement. A fellow reporter, one who has to visit Maine Road on a regular basis, summarised the malaise at Moss Side. ‘It’s a cross between the Polit Bureau, Fawlty Towers, Hi-De-Hi and One Foot in the Grave,’ he laughed, before coming over all serious and all but suggesting that the ground emanated a deadly blue mist. ‘Don’t go near there,’ was his final counsel. The wind howled and curtains trembled.

  Blackpool are the visitors today as City begin their campaign in Division Two of the Nationwide League. City supporters accepted a good while ago that their club is a Picasso painting (during his blue period); upside down, back to front, anyway you like, so they find nothing unusual or surreal about a league game against Blackpool. Perhaps when Macclesfield, Walsall, Gillingham, etc. pull on to the club car park, they might have a real sense of out-thereness.

  They go into the season with a new chairman, David Bernstein, who has promised to restore stability, though there has been the habitual backroom personnel changes through the summer. ‘Stability is a crucial aspect in our future success,’ he said this week. He then added, imprudently: ‘I cannot envisage circumstances where the relationship between Joe [Royle] and Willie [Donachie] will break down.’

  City fans might suggest a few circumstances, though they would rather not. They are looking to a future of resounding wins and a team that passes and dribbles and tackles. They want their club to rediscover its nobility among the journeymen of the third best division of English football or, put another way, the second worst.

  Fortunately, Colin Bell is on hand. After a messy, bundled exit under Franny Lee’s reign as chairman, he has been reinstated in an ‘ambassadorial role’. He no longer wears number eight; the sportsmanship, tact and dedication he personified, do not need a number. They can move through the corridors and dressing rooms of a football ground in a suit and tie, sweater and slacks; dignity does not need dressing up.

  Saturday, 8 August 1998

  Manchester City 3 Blackpool 0

  Goals from Shaun Goater, Lee Bradbury and defender Kakhaber Tskhadadze inspired City to a comfortable win in front of 32,134 supporters. The attendance was the largest in England’s Third Division for 20 years.

  Tuesday, 11 August 1998

  Notts County 0 Manchester City 2

  (Worthington Cup First Round, First Leg)

  Second-half goals by Tskhadadze and Danny Allsopp gave City the advantage for the return leg at Maine Road.

  Thursday, 13 August 1998

  Police warned City officials that the club’s new away strip, a fluorescent yellow/green colour, might clash with those worn by stewards and emergency services.

  Joe Royle gave permission for transfer-listed Nigel Clough to train with Birmingham City as he searched for a new club.

  The latest squad count revealed 39 players, compared with 54 when Royle arrived six months earlier. David Bernstein said the rationalisation would continue.

  Friday, 14 August 1998

  Fulham 3 Manchester City 0

  A poor performance by City was made even worse by the early departure of the in-form Tskhadadze. The Georgia captain twisted his knee and damaged ligaments after landing awkwardly in a challenge with Fulham captain Chris Coleman. ‘It felt like an explosion in my leg,’ said Tskhadadze. His wife, Tiniko, and 10-year-old son, Bacho, were in tears after seeing the incident back home in Manchester on Sky TV.

  An estimated 3,500 City supporters saw goals from Peter Beardsley and German striker Dirk Lehmann (two) secure Fulham’s victory.

  Noel Gallagher of Oasis watched the game from an executive box but reportedly had his drink confiscated when he began to yell abuse at home supporters.

  CYNICISM AND DEVOTION REMAIN AS CITY ADJUST TO THEIR ALIEN TERRITORY

  (The Times, Saturday, 15 August 1998)

  An assortment of dudes, suited-up and burly, stand guard at the entrance. ‘Two quid, mate,’ says the one with a neck the width of a fire extinguisher. The official car parks were full at 2 p.m., and all that remains are patches of roped-off wasteland with signs reading: ‘Safe Parking’. In a rush, kick-off time looming, we’ll believe anything.

  It is the first day of the season and Manchester City supporters, as ever, are joyous in the pain. Relegation, ineptitude, a bi-weekly change of personnel (on and off the pitch), they just love it. These are people who eat three Shredded Wheat and skip on the milk, just to make breakfast a whole lot less fun.

  Division Two is supposed to be a seaside resort out of season, creaky, in need of a lick of paint, and populated by die-hards in duffle coats, but Maine Road still feels big-time, Las Vegas in Accrington brick. People everywhere. A blur of electric blue is disgorged from narrow sidestreets to jostle for space among the police horses, fanzine sellers, burger
stalls and face-painters.

  Inside the ground, City’s MC (Madam of Ceremonies) is orchestrating support, and a proper little madam she is too. She sashays across the pitch, with all the big-grin, thigh-slapping pizazz of someone born to star in pantomime, in exotic locations like Ashton-under-Lyne or Pocklington. She has no respect for syntax, no respect at aaaaall. Words are there to be stretched until they almost snap under the strain. ‘You’re looooking good, Maine Road,’ she tells the crowd. As the team finally runs out, she shrieks: ‘Go wild, go crazy, it’s the start of a new season.’

  The City players stare at the crowd in disbelief: 32,134 fans have assembled to watch them play Blackpool, in Division Two. They have ghostly, bloodless expressions that transmit the collective thought: ‘Are we the lions, or the Christians?’ The crowd starts to fidget after 24 minutes of aimless football. Suddenly, City score. Shaun Goater, a yard from the goal-line, stubs the ball straight at Blackpool’s keeper. The referee, after a quick glance at his assistant, rules that it crossed the line. Maine Road goes wild, goes crazy.

  Goal celebrations will prove enigmatic this season for City. Since they are perceived as infinitely superior to their rivals, it might be wise if goalscorers simply hold aloft a forefinger and nod sagely, in the manner of a Scout Master testing the wind direction before a six-mile hike. No chance! The players punch the air, punch their chests, punch Goater. A goal is a goal, and it feels good, or gooood, as the lady would say. And does, at half-time.

  Mark Radcliffe and Marc Riley of Radio One are summoned from the crowd to draw the raffle. They hare on to the pitch and Radcliffe jumps up and down, throwing out his arms and legs in the manner of a starfish wired to the mains. The MC is dancing, knees bent, hair bobbing, with Moonchester, City’s peculiar alien mascot thing. City are winning, aliens have landed, the whole world’s gone mad.