Paul Whelan

Why Blue?

I’m a life-long Blue, born and raised in the shadow of the Kippax. I attended the primary school facing the ground on Claremont Road. As a kid, I spent every Saturday of home games chasing after cars: “Can I mind y’car m’sta?” Quite a lucrative business at 10-20p a car when crowds averaged 37,000. After collecting the 50p to pay entrance into the game, I spent until 2:30pm making a few pounds extra to spend on football cards and stickers. Do you remember those stickers, 10p for 5? Why was it in every third packet was a Greenoff brother and every United fan at school had the City badge and wouldn’t swap?

I grew up watching the likes of Barnes, Kidd, Watson and Big Joe. Those were the days when Helen was just a snip of a young girl who’d kiss “Big Joe” before every game. She would ring her bell to encourage the team and not to sound out another “please hold on for dear life to a slender lead with twenty minutes to go”. City were contenders and not just making the numbers up.

My view on the trouble at City stems from the inability of our coaching staff to nurture the talent our scouts provide. Why do we sell the good’uns and keep the duffers? Who apart from Barnes, Bennett, Lake and Hughes have had skill or class? Sure we can find wonderful athletes who have great potential but we expose them too early, demand too much and don’t sufficiently develop their technique to allow them to blossom and fulfil their potential whilst at our club. Take David White; speed, power and a fair ability but no idea of how to do anything but run and shoot. He had little heading ability, limited dribbling skills and his movement left a lot to be desired. Why didn’t the staff try to address these shortcomings? He was on the books for over ten years! Yet I saw little improvement in his technique. I trust he will be a valued addition to Leeds’ push for Europe and cause us no end of problems at Maine Road this season.

I’m sure that everyone is aware of the list of quality we have let go. Consider the potential of a team that might have been. We are left with a team of patchwork players with no spirit and little prospect of success. The policy of buying to keep us up for one more season has to stop! We have to start to build a team that will once again make us contenders. The purchase of players should be of players who will be part of the team for five or more seasons, not just a stop gap to keep the millions from Sky coming in. If we go down, so be it. The argument that we may not come straight back up may be true but if we are not good enough to gain promotion from the First then we hardly deserve to be in the Premiership at the moment.

I had hoped that my first offering would be on a positive note; after a shocking start to the season it’s only old wounds that have opened up and I am once again dismayed at the goings on at the Moss Side Academy. Here’s to a pint on our first victory soon coming and a reversal of fortunes before a bleak winter sets in.

First printed in: MCIVTA Newsletter #121 on