MAN CITY INFO VIA THE ARCTIC #126

Date: Monday 18th September 1995

Oh boy. This has been some weekend. I was constantly thinking on how I managed to delete all the MCIVTA addresses Ashley sent me on friday. I'm not sure if I'm over it yet. Hopefully most MCIVTA readers will get this issue. At least 251 do...

Football (soccer) isn't going our way at the moment. This weekend saw another defeat for "Ball's blue army". 3-1 against Newcastle was a another bitter pill, and while our opponents are heading for Championship glory (bit early I know), we're rock steady at the bottom. It's somehow hard to argue with what Ball has done so far. Immel played wonderfully well against Newcastle and Creaney scored on his début. Kinky has been praised by more than one MCIVTA-subscriber. It lookes like all his purchases have been money well spent, but where are the results? Perhaps we should turnt to the players; after all it's their job to create and score goals. However, we're not the only club suffering hard times at the moment. Blackburn are only 3 points ahead and went 3-0 down against Liverpool. Just like City they managed to get one player sent off, following a controversial decision. It's early yet and I'm sure Ball will finally work it out! Perhaps we could aim for Wembley this year?

This issue contains some old and some fresh news, including one part about the fan of the board whereabouts from Ken Foster. Not much about the Newcastle game yet. Hopefully we'll get some reports in for the next MCIVTA. Until now it's just the stats from Soccernet, newspapers and BBC.

MATCH DETAILS

NEWCASTLE UNITED   3-1   MANCHESTER CITY
Beardsley (pen 17)       Creaney (81)
Lee (38)
Ferdinand (59)

Att: 36,501
City Line up: Immel, Edghill, Phelan, Curle, Symons, I.Brightwell, Flitcroft (Lomas), Kinkladze (Summerbee), Creaney, Rösler, Beagrie

A fine début goal for new City striker Gerry Creaney and some heroics from German 'keeper Eike Immel did little to ease manager Alan Ball's worries as they slumped to another defeat.

Peter Beardsley passed a late fitness test and opened the scoring for the League leaders with a penalty on 17 minutes and further goals from Robert Lee and Les Ferdinand put the game beyond City.

The visitors had Richard Edghill sent off and four other players booked just to compound their misery. Edghill, earlier booked for dissent, was sent off for a challenge on frenchman David Ginola in the 25th minute.

OLD TEAM NEWS (NEWCASTLE)

It looks like most of us have got our wish and Summerbee has been dropped to at least the subs' bench for the Newcastle game. That should allow Creaney to make his début partnering Uwe up front, which should allow City to revert to a more usual 4-4-2 formation.

Here's the team details:

Immel, Edghill, Curle, Symons, Phelan, Flitcroft, Kinkladze, Brightwell, Beagrie, Rösler, Creaney
Subs (from) Quinn, Lomas, Summerbee, Foster, Margetson

FANS FORCE SUMMERBEE OUT AND FAN OFF THE BOARD

Granada Teletext reports under the heading "Fans force Summerbee Out" that AB is leaving him out for his own good for the next game or two. Apparently the barracking from sections of the crowd is getting to him. AB says "The wisest thing to do is get him out of the firing line (intentional pun?) for a while."

I know he's been getting some stick but surely it's not been that bad. Anyway, you lot down at the front, please give the team more encouragement!

In MCIVTA 124 a query was raised about the Fan on the Board experiment. It appears that although the board asked for nominations in the last home programme of 94/95, they have now decided to scrap the scheme in favour of one which doesn't place full responsibility on just one fan. They (Colin Barlow) are going to invite a delegate from each branch of the Supporters' Club on a rota basis to a pre-board meeting on the morning of each full board meeting. If any worthy points are raised they will be taken up and acted upon at the full meeting later. Presumably the rest of us will find out the developments via the programme or hopefully MCIVTA will be in there with the news first as usual.

I was in a branch of the Supporters' Club a few years ago but left when things got a little out of hand. How many MCIVTA subscribers are also in a branch of the Supporters' Club?

WWW INTERNET SOCCER MANAGEMENT GAME

I notice you run a series of web pages for Manchester City!

Here at live.media we have recently launched the first WWW internet soccer management game... A cross between Play by Mail and Computer based management games! see for yourself:

http://www.easynet.co.uk/livemedia/net.soccer/

Could you add a link from your pages? If you do then you can have a free half season on net.soccer (email me). Thanks in advance.

CITY DOCUMENTARY

Regarding Martin Reynolds' comments about the TV documentaries round about 1980, I remember the Granada one ("City") which was about an hour long. The first half hour featured City struggling under Malcolm Allison before he was sacked; this was followed by the interviews of prospective managers (part of John Bond's interview was shown) and then there was City's resurgence under Bond, including the 4-0 Cup victory over Palace (Allison's new club) and the 6-0 win over Norwich (Bond's old club). I bet Granada couldn't believe their luck the way it all turned out. I'd really like to see a video of this released - does anybody have one from the original transmission?

NEW SOCCER SITE

Thought you might want to check out the new soccer site called 'In the back of the net', which is sponsored by McEwans Lager. It has a great 'tell the ref' section along with the 'Q&A section'. Also there is a competition running and a weekly review of the England soccer headlines.

The URL is: http://www.mcewans.co.uk/football/

Perhaps you would like to link to it? If you do please let them know and they will put a link back in the general section.

RED HUMOUR

/---------------------------\
|		            |   DO YOU COME FROM MANCHESTER ?
|              ****	    |   DO YOU HAVE RELATIVES IN MANCHESTER ?
|         *  **  *          |   DO YOU LIVE NEAR MANCHESTER ?
|        *   *  ****   	    |
|        *  *     *         |   If you say NO to these three
|          **    *  	    |   questions, you are an ideal person to
|         * *    **	    |   become a fan of
|         *  *     * 	    |
|           *       *	    |               MANCHESTER UNITED
| ****     ***       *      |
|*    *       *      *      | 	Yes, this is your big chance to join
|     *       *      * ***  | 	the ever-growing army of glory hunters
|     *   ****        **  * | 	who can be seen around the country in
|     *  *                * | 	the colours of The Shit. To join the
|    *   *                * | 	newly-formed club, simply place a cross
| ***     ****           *  | 	where you think the city of Manchester
|         ***          ***  | 	is on the map (left). In the unlikely
|      ***               ***| 	event of there being two correct entries
|    *        * *********   | 	and thus a tie, fill in the tie-break
\---------------------------/ 	question at the bottom of the page.


                            * YOU COULD WIN *

FIRST PRIZE: Brand new, 'N' registration Ford Bandwagon for you and
             the others to jump on. This prestige vehicle comes with
             many features, including stereo radio ( pre-set to come
             on at 4:45pm every Saturday as you, of course, won't be
             at the game ).

SECOND PRIZE: One years supply of new design Manchester United shirts.
              These will be despatched to you weekly.

THIRD PRIZE: A complete supply of Manchester United programmes from
             the games that you have attended. Both will be sent in
             the same envelope.

Tie Breaker ( in no more than 12 words )
I feel it necessary to follow a football team that I have absolutely
no connection with because:

......................................................................

......................................................................

Name:  ...........................

Address:  ........................

          ........................

          ........................

Age:....... 	Mental Age:.......

BLUE HUMOUR

What have Alan Ball and the Titanic got in common?

They both left Southampton and went down shortly after!

News

Apparently fundamental flaws have already been discovered in the new Kippax stand.

The seats are facing the pitch!

On a more serious note hats off to Ashley at what is sort of the end of an era. Also to Paul, Martin, Svenn and the other regulars. I would have offered to help out while Ashley relocates, but wouldn't know where to start. So thanks for now Ashley, the cheque is in the post and I shall gladly buy you a pint before the Boro' game, when I shall be sporting my wonderful MCIVTA t-shirt.

DIVINE ASSISTANCE...

In the latest edition of Loaded (UK "lads" magazine), there's a small piece about celebrity supporters of footie clubs. They run through various clubs and celebs, but finish with the amazing fact that City are followed by none other than the Pope! Evidentally he took a shine to the Blues when they signed a Polish international in 1970.

So come on John-Paul, don't you think it's about time you fixed it with the boss for a results to go our way.....?

RESULTS

Arsenal - West Ham        1-0 (0-0)
Aston Villa - Wimbledon   2-0 (1-0)
Chelsea - Southampton     3-0 (0-0)
Leeds - Queen's P.R.      1-3 (0-2)
Liverpool - Blackburn     3-0 (3-0)
Manchester U. - Bolton    3-0 (2-0)
Middlesbrough - Coventry  2-1 (0-0)
Newcastle - Manchester C. 3-1 (2-0)
Nottingham - Everton      3-2 (2-0)
Sheffield W. - Tottenham  1-3 (1-1)

Total Sep 17, 1995

 1. Newcastle        6     5   0   1    12  -   3    15
 2. Manchester_U     6     5   0   1    14  -   8    15
 3. Aston_Villa      6     4   1   1     8  -   4    13
 4. Liverpool        6     4   0   2     8  -   3    12
 5. Arsenal          6     3   3   0     6  -   2    12
 6. Nottingham       6     2   4   0    10  -   8    10
 7. Wimbledon        6     3   1   2    10  -   9    10
 8. Leeds            6     3   1   2     8  -   7    10
 9. Chelsea          6     2   3   1     8  -   5     9
10. Middlesbrough    6     2   3   1     6  -   4     9
11. Tottenham        6     2   2   2     8  -   8     8
12. Everton          6     2   1   3     8  -   8     7
13. Sheffield_W      6     2   1   3     8  -   9     7
14. Coventry         6     1   3   2     6  -   9     6
15. Queen's_PR       6     2   0   4     4  -   9     6
16. Southampton      6     1   2   3     5  -  10     5
17. Blackburn        6     1   1   4     5  -  10     4
-------------------------------------------------------
18. Bolton           6     1   1   4     6  -  12     4
19. West_Ham         6     0   2   4     5  -  10     2
20. Manchester_C     6     0   1   5     3  -  10     1