Newsletter #759

Another goal fest on Saturday saw us secure 3 points and the Goat a hat-trick, incidentally making him the leading goal scorer in all English and Scottish divisions), in a 4-1 victory over the Gills.

Tonight’s issue contains Ken’s diary, a match report, opinion, requests and another Why Blue.

CITY DIARY: 5th-11th NOVEMBER

5 November:
Howard Kendall left City to return to Everton on this day in 1990. A player named Race (not Roy but “H.”) scored twice in the 5-2 win at Sheffield Utd in 1932.

6 November:
A 3-3 draw with U****d in 1971, City coming back from 2-0 down. Sammy McIlroy on his début and George Best had given them a 2-0 lead before Bell and Lee pulled it back to 2-2, but City were losing again a minute from the end when Summerbee scored after Alex Stepney fielded a corner kick and then dropped the ball.

7 November:
In 1891 City put six without reply past Walsall Town Swifts, one H. Morris scoring their first ever hat-trick. Derek Kevan got a hat-trick against Preston in 1964 (won 5-2). This is the anniversary of the 10-1 over Huddersfield in 1987 when three players (White, Adcock & Stewart) got hat-tricks. White, Sheron, Hill, and Ian Brightwell scored in City’s 4-0 win over Leeds in the Premiership in 1992. In 1993 Niall Quinn scored twice against U****d to give City a half-time 2-0 lead, but the game ended in a 3-2 comeback win for the Rags.

8 November:
City lost 7-3 at Wolves in 1952, and beat Birmingham 2-0 at home in 1975 on two Colin Bell goals, two of the last he’d score.

9 November:
Today is Tommy Booth’s birthday (1949).

10 November:
City 2 U****d 0 in 1979, Henry & Robinson scored, with over 50,000 inside Maine Road. City lost 1-0 at Wycombe Wanderers in 1998, in the Nationwide Division Two. Fifty years ago today Jimmy Meadows and Derek Westcott scored in the 2-1 win at home to Middlesbrough. And in 1956 Bobby Johnstone scored twice, Joe Hayes adding a third, in the 3-1 home win against Birmingham. The evocative report of Johnstone’s subtle skills by “Old International” of The Times was reprinted in Gary James’ tribute to Johnstone in the City vs. Birmingham match programme this September.

11 November:
City lost 6-0 at Derby in 1989, and won by the same score against Peter Shilton’s Leicester in 1967, with Alan Oakes, Neil Young (2), Lee (2), and Mike Doyle getting the goals. The win put them third in the table and they’d go on to win the Championship.

MATCH REPORT ‘LIVE’: MCFC 4 GILLINGHAM 1

I’ve been trying to get my eldest daughter (6 years old) into following City for some time now, but in her 4 previous visits to Maine Road over the last three seasons – Wycombe, Tranmere, Charlton, and Bradford, she has moaned, fidgeted, and generally made me feel like a really mean and selfish parent for subjecting her to such treatment (especially as all but one of these has been in UU uncovered in the rain).

Anyway, after finally persuading her under with the reward of a trip to Pizza Hut on the way home, we arrived a Maine Road and took our seats in UU just as a thick sheet of drizzle descended over the ground. Not a good start.

City lined up Weaver, Dunne, Mettomo, Howey, Pearce, Wright-Philips, Berkovic, Benarbia, Tiatto, Huckerby, and the Goat.

3:00 and city were into Gillingham from the whistle, Wright-Philips and Tiatto both doing good work down the wings, and Huckerby using the full width of the pitch. After about 15 minutes Goater scored after their ‘keeper had blocked Huckerby’s shot. Within a minute of the kick-off the Goat had his second, guiding in a rebound from his initial shot.

Wright-Philips almost made it 3 after roundng the ‘keeper but his shot went across the face of goal. City were well and truly dominating. About ten minutes from half time, Huckerby stroked home the ball after Goater had rounded the ‘keeper and cut it back. At half time City could have been five or six in front, all the midfield were feeding good balls into the area and Huckerby in particular running at people.

In the second half, City took their foot off the pedal a bit, although they were still dominating the game (we saw precious little play at our end of the pitch). Goater got his hat-trick after what seemed a bit of a scramble in the box after about ten minutes. After that City seemed content to pass it around a bit, and although Gillingham did get a consolation goal towards the end, the offered hardly any threat.

Colisimo, Horlock and Etuhu came on for Dunne, Berkovic and Howey. Pity Dickov couldn’t come on given the opponents, but to be fair, both strikers had done nothing at all wrong.

Ratings:
Weaver – Not much to do, but some good long throws out. Kicking poor as ever though – 7
Dunne – Quite good going forward, putting in some good crosses, but poor in defence and caught out a few times; luckily Gillingham offered little threat, not sorry to see him go off – 6
Pearce – Solid and purposeful – 8
Howey – Little to do but solid and assured all the same, looks a lot more comfortable in a 4-4-2 formation – 7
Mettomo – Looks good on the ball and confident, much better than some of the Keystone Cops defending we saw at the start of the season from Dunne and Howey. Good buy – 8
Tiatto – Worked hard, and some good crosses – 8
Wright-Philips – Loads of effort, pity he didn’t score when he had the open goal, as it might give him more confidence in taking more shots. Nice overhead volley in second half when trying to keep ball from going for a corner – 8
Berkovic – Good passing, nice chip over Gillingham defence in first half (Goater offside), and good free kick in second (tipped over by ‘keeper) – 8
Benarbia – Clever passing, good to see he and Berkovic were not overrun in centre – 7
Huckerby – Not a big Huckerby fan until recently; used to watch him when I lived in Coventry (my second team) and thought he was selfish and overrated, so was not impressed when Royle signed him, but he is quickly winning me over. Looked dangerous whenever he has the ball, Wanchope is going to have a fight on his hands – 9
Goater – Another hat-trick, 20 now and we are just into November; he gets better every season – 8

Subs:
Colisimo – Didn’t really notice him much but made no howlers; Gillingham goal came from our left, so not really anything to do with him – 7
Horlock – Got stuck in well, got involved in attack – 8
Etuhu – Not long on pitch, but gave the ball away a few times – 6

As for my daughter, she really genuinely enjoyed it, joined in singing Blue Moon and Feed the Goat, even tried a few tame jibes at the Gillingham fans (‘shutup you losers it’s 4-1’). We have now got tickets to the Blackburn game in the worthless cup later in the month and she is really excited about it.

OPINION: JUST WHEN YOU THINK…

The weekend can’t get any better along comes Phil Thompson to make it complete!

At last City are showing signs of becoming a “team” and since the lacklustre performance at Preston we appear to be able to, by Christmas, join the top few when the points gap begins to appear.

Thankfully Grimsby and Gillingham came to play football, albeit with their own limitations, and credit to both of them after the dire “spoiling” Blades. Unlike some MCIVTA correspondents, I thought the game at Forest was a good, competitive match with both teams, on the night, evenly matched and played in a good, noisy atmosphere. Did anyone else feel the ‘earth tremor’ before the game? We were in the Casa (formerly I think the Aviary); my wife, Val felt the shudder. At the time I thought Richard Dunne had sprinted in for a pre-match drink and burger.

The first half against the Gills was, to my mind, the best yet this season, but listening to the Barnsley game on the radio that first half also seemed very good. It would be churlish to single out any one player but Ali (brilliant), Huckerby, Eyal and Goater were tops and subject to any injuries the Goat should achieve a 40 goal season. Not bad for a ‘journeyman’.

When will SWP get his first senior goal? 30,000+ people willed him to score and he could and should have done. Never mind it will surely come and when he gets one, the rest will surely flow.

As City always seem to conspire to confuse and annoy I’ll say it quietly “things are looking up” and hope Pompey are not a PNE.

OPINION: GEIST INDEX

Preston, who have been higher in the Index all year than their actual league position, now move to the head of the pack. That being said, Preston, Wolverhampton, Coventry, Norwich and City seem the cream of the crop and they are all tightly bunched. When I’ve run the Index before a couple of teams usually break away early but not this year. Indications are that this will go down to the final week of the season.

And I still think we should have bought Healy rather than Huckerby…

Projected Final Positions results through Sunday November 04. The number in parentheses is their current league position.

01 Preston (07)
02 Wolverhampton (01)
03 Coventry (04)
04 Manchester City (05)
05 Norwich (02)
06 Birmingham (10)
07 Burnley (06)
08 West Brom (08)
09 Wimbledon (14)
10 Bradford (15)
11 Millwall (09)
12 Portsmouth (11)
13 Nottingham Forest (12)
14 Crystal Palace (03)
15 Watford (13)
16 Crewe (16)
17 Gillingham (20)
18 Sheffield Utd (18)
19 Grimsby (19)
20 Sheffield Wednesday (21)
21 Barnsley (23)
22 Walsall (22)
23 Rotherham (17)
24 Stockport (24)

OPINION: ANDY BLACK MK II

As a past player for the Blues (1968-1974) it was bugging me about the recent many articles about the name Andy Black as I was sure that there was a young player of that name around in my time.

Sure enough I found an old match programme (City vs. Everton, 16th August, 1972) which contains a group photo of the whole playing staff of that year.

Andy Black is featured in that photo as probably a sixteen year old apprentice professional. I think from memory he came to the club from Manchester Schoolboys. Unfortunately I believe he was not signed on as full professional and lost track after he moved on and I did likewise.

Maybe there are a few supporters out there who collect programmes and can recall this issue with the group photo?

OPINION: CITY DIARY McV 757

In the City Diary last week, Ken queried SC Carter from 1971. This was Steve Carter who came from the youth team but only played a few first team games.

OPINION: CITY CARS

Living in Altrincham and working in Middleton, I get on the M60 in the morning via the Carrington Spur. As I am driving towards the motorway I often see some City and United players coming in for training. The two I normally spot are Steve Howey, who has a Dark Blue BMW X5 with the reg number HOW 80, and Terry Cooke, who has a Silver BMW 330 Coupe, C8 OKE (hopefully a reference to his surname rather than his alleged hobby!).

The point of this email is, does anyone know of any other cars that City players have been seen in, and who drives the biggest heap, or the best motor?

OPINION: CITY BADGE

Good to hear other City fans wanting to return to the old City badge. I think the current one is just an Italian commercial trick, designed by Kappa to make sure that their merchandise would sell OK.

It is half hearted that I bought City’s merchandise featuring the grotesque eagle and the stars on top of his head (by the way in Italy you are entitled as a club to wear a star above the club’s badge after having won the league title ten times).

I wonder if the fans were consulted in a poll about the change of badge and whether there are enough Manchester based fans willing to start a campaign to return to the English City badge? Recently, we were only overseas fans (Chris in Canada, Jon in the US and myself in Romania) complaining.

Some consolation, though, if you look at Leeds’ new badge (even worse than City’s) which looks like a worm to me. Compared to the nice white rose they used to have, this one is horrible.

OPINION: RESERVES ACTION

Given the two week break before our next game, for those needing a Blue fix, the reserves are in action on 6th (Aston Villa) & 13th (Bradford) November at Ewen Fields, Hyde. Kick-off 7pm and the usual nominal entrance fee, or free to S/T holders.

REQUEST: TALKIN’ CITY

Just a reminder that Talkin’ City http://www.talkincity.com is still out there for any City fans who would like a daily dose of City. Most of the activity surrounds the message board, but a fixture list/results page includes match reports for most games, and we also have some pictures and other downloads. We try to share round the match reports between a few of us, and if no-one does a report a link is included to the City site official match report. We try and keep the fixtures as up to date as possible.

We are also looking for people to contribute some articles that are relevant to the site, so if any budding Blue writers are out there then email us at with any content you would like to see.

There is no need to join the site officially, though you can become a member.

REQUEST: DENTON BLUES

Denton branch of the OSC will have Keith Hackett, top FIFA referee and ref of our 1981 cup final(s) at their next meeting on Monday 12 November at Denton Conservative Club. If you’re interested in attending, please contact me for further details.

WHY BLUE?

I actually need some help with the reason why I follow the Citizens, and maybe some of you out there could help me with my timing? I am the youngest of 5 football supporting – or at least they used to – boys. From the top down the teams they supported were Arsenal, Spurs (plenty of rivalry there!), United, Arsenal again, and Me (City – which had even more rivalry than the eldest two).

My best mate supported Liverpool, so I really didn’t know which team to follow. So I braved a decision and decided to plump for Chopper Harris’ Chelsea. I’m actually not sure what year this all took place (1971-2?) but I didn’t follow Chelsea for long. I was under huge pressure from my mate – both of whose brothers followed the Red Scum, and so one day Liverpool hit Chelsea for three or four at Stamford Bridge, and that was it – I was to be a scouser!

However, that didn’t fit very well either, and not long after a team called Manchester City came to Anfield and hit Liverpool for four (or maybe 3, or even 5?!). Now nobody I knew followed this team, that’s for sure, so I became a True Blue – in a sort of round about way! But it must be something to think that about 30 years later I’m still with them – Oh the foibles of childhood – we were so fickle!

P.S. could some of you out there help me get the facts straight – it would be nice to know when exactly it all happened!

RESULTS

Recent results from 1st November 2001 to 4th November 2001 inclusive.

4 November 2001

Burnley               2 - 0  Sheffield United      13,166
West Bromwich Albion  1 - 0  Nottingham Forest     18,281
Birmingham City       2 - 2  Rotherham United      28,436

3 November 2001

Manchester City       4 - 1  Gillingham            33,067
Millwall              3 - 2  Coventry City         15,748
Norwich City          2 - 0  Wolverhampton Wndrs   20,335
Preston North End     6 - 0  Stockport County      13,776
Sheffield Wednesday   2 - 3  Portsmouth            18,212
Walsall               2 - 2  Crystal Palace         6,795
Watford               3 - 0  Barnsley              13,964
Wimbledon             2 - 1  Grimsby Town           6,189

2 November 2001

Crewe Alexandra       2 - 2  Bradford City          6,597

League table to 04 November 2001 inclusive.

                             HOME          AWAY        OVERALL
                    P  W  D  L  F  A  W  D  L  F  A  W  D  L  F  A  GD Pts
 1 Wolves          17  4  2  2 10  6  6  2  1 18  8 10  4  3 28 14  14  34
 2 Norwich City    17  7  1  0 14  2  3  1  5  9 16 10  2  5 23 18   5  32
 3 Crystal Palace  16  7  0  2 24  8  3  1  3 13 14 10  1  5 37 22  15  31
 4 Coventry City   17  4  2  2 11  7  5  2  2 11  7  9  4  4 22 14   8  31
 5 Manchester City 17  6  2  1 24  9  3  1  4 18 17  9  3  5 42 26  16  30
 6 Burnley         17  5  2  1 22 14  4  1  4 13 13  9  3  5 35 27   8  30
 7 Preston N.E.    17  5  2  1 19  5  3  3  3 10 15  8  5  4 29 20   9  29
 8 West Brom A.    17  5  1  3 10  5  4  1  3 11 11  9  2  6 21 16   5  29
 9 Millwall        16  5  1  1 18  9  3  2  4 11 10  8  3  5 29 19  10  27
10 Birmingham City 17  5  1  2 18  8  2  4  3 11 15  7  5  5 29 23   6  26
11 Portsmouth      17  4  1  3 13 10  3  4  2 14 12  7  5  5 27 22   5  26
12 Nottm Forest    17  5  3  1 12  6  1  3  4  6  9  6  6  5 18 15   3  24
13 Watford         16  5  2  2 20 12  2  0  5  9 12  7  2  7 29 24   5  23
14 Wimbledon       17  3  3  2 14 11  3  2  4 17 17  6  5  6 31 28   3  23
15 Bradford City   17  5  1  3 25 20  1  3  4  7 15  6  4  7 32 35  -3  22
16 Crewe Alex.     17  4  3  2  8 10  1  2  5  8 15  5  5  7 16 25  -9  20
17 Rotherham Utd.  18  2  5  2 12 14  2  2  5 11 16  4  7  7 23 30  -7  19
18 Sheff. United   18  3  3  3 11 12  1  4  4  4 11  4  7  7 15 23  -8  19
19 Grimsby Town    18  3  2  4  8 12  2  1  6 11 24  5  3 10 19 36 -17  18
20 Gillingham      16  4  1  3 17 10  1  1  6  7 18  5  2  9 24 28  -4  17
21 Sheff. Wed.     18  2  3  4 12 17  2  2  5  7 15  4  5  9 19 32 -13  17
22 Walsall         17  3  3  3 10 11  1  1  6  8 17  4  4  9 18 28 -10  16
23 Barnsley        17  3  3  3 13 17  0  1  7  5 21  3  4 10 18 38 -20  13
24 Stockport C.    17  0  1  7  5 17  1  4  4 13 22  1  5 11 18 39 -21   8

MCIVTA FAQ [v1.5]

[0] MCIVTA Addresses

 Articles (Heidi Pickup)        : editor@mcivta.city-fan.org

 News/rumour (Michael Leafield) : mplctid@aol.com

 Subscriptions (Geoff Donkin)   : subscriptions@mcivta.city-fan.org

 Technical problems (Paul)      : paul@city-fan.org

Comments concerning this FAQ should be sent to David Warburton using the address: mcivtafaq@warburton.org

[1] MCIVTA Deadlines

Deadlines for issues are nominally Monday and Thursday evenings.

[2] MCIVTA Back Issues and Manchester City Supporters’ home page

http://www.uit.no/mancity/ is the unofficial Manchester City Supporters’ home page. Created in 1994, it is the longest running of the Manchester City related web sites. Back issues of MCIVTA are also hosted on the site.

[3] Club Web Site

The official club web site can be found at http://www.mcfc.co.uk/

[4] Supporters’ Clubs

Manchester City FC recognises three supporters’ clubs: The “Official Supporters Club” (http://www.mancity.net/osc/index.html); the “Centenary Supporters’ Association” (http://www.callnetuk.com/home/sef/) and “The International Supporters’ Club” (http://www.mcfc.co.uk/extra/fanzone/isc.asp)

[5] Fans’ Committee

The Fans’ Committee operates as an interface between supporters and the club. It has its own website, http://www.mcfc-fans.com/ containing info about forthcoming meetings as well as minutes from previous gatherings.

[6] City of Manchester Stadium Progress/Web Cam

The latest information regarding the progress of our new home can be found at http://www.commonwealthgames.com/

[7] Match Day Broadcasts

Live match commentaries and archives of games, reports and interviews can be found here: http://www.mcfc.co.uk/comment.asp. An alternate live commentary service, hosted by Yahoo, is located at: http://uk.sports.yahoo.com/foot/audio/live/schedule/index.html. GMR Saturday Sport is also available live online between 1-3pm, and 4.45-6pm at http://www.bbc.co.uk/manchester/sport/index.shtml

[8] 01/02 Season Match Day Theme Tune

The music the teams run out to at Maine Road this season is “Nightmare”, by Brainbug, and is available on the Positiva label.

[9] Acknowledgements

Thanks go to John Arnold for providing the information regarding match day music and to Ian Bell for pointing out the alternate live match commentary service.

DISCLAIMER
The views expressed in MCIVTA are entirely those of the subscribersand there is no intention to represent these opinions as being thoseof Manchester City Football Club, nor of any of the companies anduniversities by whom the subscribers are employed. It is not inany way whatsoever connected to the club or any other relatedorganisation and is simply a group of supporters using this mediumas a means of disseminating news and exchanging opinions.

Heidi Pickup, heidi@mcivta.freeserve.co.uk

Editor: