1st April 1990 - City win at Villa / Strangeways goes up in flames!

dennishasdoneit said:
Fantastic day out.still one of the best away days ive ever had with City
A real sense of manic disorder was in the air with the riots kicking off....Villa were top
We were bottom...we never ever won away...and then we just decided to that day. Brilliant. I was on the terrace behind the goal.absolute bedlam,and i swear even as we entered the away end we sensed we were gonna do something.
Cracking day out.i do miss that old terrace at Villa Park.
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This. 100%. Travelled up from London as a 17 year old and got a ticket off a fellow blue. First visit to Villa Park and was shitting myself getting back to New Street station as most Villa fans were up for trying to murder us after the match. Fortunately came across a bunch of "sympathetic" Birmingham fans who gave me an escort to the station and a massive cheer after they were informed of the score by myself!!

The match itself - we were brilliant and I include us as supporters that day as even when we went one down and hadn't won away all season we just knew we were going to win. Mark Ward and David White running the game and will never know how Clive Allen did not score in that match. Happy days and we would definitely have ended our long wait for a trophy had Judas Kendall not pissed off back down the M62 to Everton.
 
bluesking said:
This. 100%. Travelled up from London as a 17 year old and got a ticket off a fellow blue. First visit to Villa Park and was shitting myself getting back to New Street station as most Villa fans were up for trying to murder us after the match. Fortunately came across a bunch of "sympathetic" Birmingham fans who gave me an escort to the station and a massive cheer after they were informed of the score by myself!!

The match itself - we were brilliant and I include us as supporters that day as even when we went one down and hadn't won away all season we just knew we were going to win. Mark Ward and David White running the game and will never know how Clive Allen did not score in that match. Happy days and we would definitely have ended our long wait for a trophy had Judas Kendall not pissed off back down the M62 to Everton.
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Happy days indeed.And your right about Mark Ward.he was brilliant that day.playing left midfield/wing his aggressive running and dilligent tracking back was everything about what Howard Kendall brought to that team.A real sense of discipline and teamwork,the like of which id never seen before from City ,having started to watch them under Machin.
We began the season with some really talented younger players who just didnt have the nous to cope with first division football.So many times earlier that season we,d go away from home with absolutely banging travelling support,start the match really well,cheered on by the hoardes of away fans ,even take the lead ie Southampton away that season..then collapse and end up losing.we had talent skillfull young home grown players but we were naive and brittle.
Kendall sorted all that out,upset a few folk by replacing some of the kids with hardened veterans like Megson and Harper as sweeper...Big Niall up front became a focal point and away we went.i learned an awful lot about football in general watching Kendall transform City into a hard tough savvy unit...and as you say,if he had stayed trophies galore would have arrived.
That day at Villa Park was one of the best ever watching City.Brilliant day.
 
we never lost a game while the lads were on the roof at strangeways, they came down on a Wednesday I think and we got beat 1-0 by derby at home on the Saturday, get back up til the season ends !!!!
 
dennishasdoneit said:
Happy days indeed.And your right about Mark Ward.he was brilliant that day.playing left midfield/wing his aggressive running and dilligent tracking back was everything about what Howard Kendall brought to that team.A real sense of discipline and teamwork,the like of which id never seen before from City ,having started to watch them under Machin.
We began the season with some really talented younger players who just didnt have the nous to cope with first division football.So many times earlier that season we,d go away from home with absolutely banging travelling support,start the match really well,cheered on by the hoardes of away fans ,even take the lead ie Southampton away that season..then collapse and end up losing.we had talent skillfull young home grown players but we were naive and brittle.
Kendall sorted all that out,upset a few folk by replacing some of the kids with hardened veterans like Megson and Harper as sweeper...Big Niall up front became a focal point and away we went.i learned an awful lot about football in general watching Kendall transform City into a hard tough savvy unit...and as you say,if he had stayed trophies galore would have arrived.
That day at Villa Park was one of the best ever watching City.Brilliant day.
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Great post. Though it wasn't the young en's being replaced by hardened veterans that ''annoyed'' us, it was the fact they were all ex Evertonians!
One game there was 6 of them! Reid, Harper, Clark, Heath, Ward and Megson (although he had been signed by Machin)
But as Steve Redmond once said ''they were a bunch of winners, they had league, FA cup and ECWC medals, how could we not benefit from being around them''.

Ward suffered from the crowd because he had been a straight swap for ''crowd favourites'' Bishop and Morley and this was the game when we all stopped and thought ''maybe here we have a decent player'' and we all got behind him at that point.
 
Fantastic day ! We drove past Strangeways on the way and saw the 1st few blokes on the roof - no idea what they were doing at the time though !

Younger football fans just don't realise how good it was to have stood on the packed away-end terraces like that - proper celebrations for every goal ! Proper passion, none of the "we've scored so I'll stand up and clap" bollocks !
 
clp1000 said:
Fantastic day ! We drove past Strangeways on the way and saw the 1st few blokes on the roof - no idea what they were doing at the time though !

Younger football fans just don't realise how good it was to have stood on the packed away-end terraces like that - proper celebrations for every goal ! Proper passion, none of the "we've scored so I'll stand up and clap" bollocks !
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Or just standing there filming it....
 
Although I wasn't there, that remains one of my favourite City games. Kendall had made us hard to beat but I felt we were drawing too many games and sooner or later we had to turn those draws into wins. With Villa going for the title, I didn't think we had much chance of drawing the game, let alone winning it. However, we turned in a tremendous performance that day and played Villa off the park with some great football. You could watch that game and genuinely think it was City going for the title rather than Villa. I think Emlyn Hughes was the ITV pundit that day and at half-time he said "There's no way Howard Kendall's boys are going down playing like that", and another quote that stands out was Brian Moore in the 2nd half: "Manchester City are playing like a breath of spring fresh air this afternoon!"

That result was the catalyst for us and suddenly we started winning games left, right, and centre. It often gets forgotten that United had a shocker of a season in the league that year and weren't far off getting relegated themselves - although they were above us on the day of that Villa game, I think we ended up sealing our safety before they did.

A couple of mates went to the game on a mini-bus. They went in the Yew Tree pub beforehand which would become a favourite boozer of ours for future Villa away games for years to come. Trouble is, the driver of the mini-bus got arrested for merely standing on a seat in the stadium and they had to wait ages for him to get released so they went back to the Yew Tree and got wasted while waiting for him.
 
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