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He’d have bumped into Tommy a lot from what his son told me years ago. Tommy liked to pop into the Plough.

Yes it was. 1926 for City. 1933 for Everton. He lived in Gorton and occasionally brought Dixie Dean to Gorton to have a few beers in the Plough. Wish he’d done that onthe morning of the 33 final then City might’ve stood a chance!

Playing for City? None of those. Against City, yes one of those.

Definitely not a trick question. It’s the men’s team and this player was idolised by City fans and they were extremely angry when he was sold. Crowds dropped following his departure.

There‘s also at least one City player who appeared in a FA Cup final for City and then appeared in one against City.

Live as in in a public building/theatre? I’d love to but financials are a bit of an issue. As with the last few books I’ve done it’s difficult to persuade publishers/venues etc and so I have to self fund them and it’s a nightmare to be frank. I don’t have sponsors or anything and fund my own...

I make all my History Talks available to subscribers to my website afterwards such as: https://gjfootballarchive.com/2023/03/09/history-video-joshua-parlby-and-the-launch-of-mcfc/ When I can I usually try to make them free to download for a few days after first being performed. Due to other...

I know a few on Bluemoon have attended my City history talks over the last few months and so I thought I’d let everyone know about the next one. It’s on Wednesday 29 March at 6pm and focuses on the period 2005 to 2009. It‘s now just about the right time to properly reflect on that period and...

Occasionally for cup semi finals and other games allocated seats would be needed. There were also some seats with Season Ticket painted on so that someone who had bought that space would have their seat saved.

I did an interview with Ron for the MCFC match programme a few years back. A lovely man and he gave me some of the spices when I left too.

I‘ve mentioned it before on here so I’m happy to do so again. It was Ian Niven. The significant thing when people talk about Mercer and Allison both before and after City is that they both found success elsewhere. Mercer achieved promotion and the League Cup at Villa before his health issues...

Blanchflower was definitely a Blue. There are a few articles where he talks of being obsessed by Doherty and learning that he played for City so he fell in love with City. He talked about how wonderful our shade of Blue was in one article too. Before Joe Mercer there were a few big names in the...

I think I’d have preferred a fridge magnet to Swales! I will back up the story of Peter Donaghue (spelt Donoghue in the MEN and so that’s how it appears in my books). He set up a group that wanted changes in the boardroom and his determination to change things increased when it was revealed...

We’ll never know how many but quite a few did travel for this.

Most of the Ardwick people had backed MCFC by the time the 1894-95 season started. It didn’t take long for the vast majority to get behind MCFC. Although I’m keen to ensure people do not see this as simply a name change, because it wasn’t, I am keen for everyone to recognise the continuity of...

I’m not certain they’d be that popular. I will be doing another talk soon. The next one is on the 2005-2009 period. Lots to say on that!

Today’s the last day of this being free to view. Tomorrow it is only available to subscribers to my site. Here‘s the link to watch it. If nothing else fans may be interested in the stats that appear from about the 37th minute which show attendances for City and Utd in the early days. Evidence...

‘On a club ground’ is the way I like to describe it.

99 years ago today (8 March) in Maine Rd’s first season the capacity was tested and the largest attendance for any footballing fixture (including three FA Cup Finals) in Manchester gathered to watch the Blues. This was also, at the time, the record crowd for any game played on an English club...

This was before the stadium was built or plans finalised. The idea was to create a larger athletics stadium that would be converted. Even after Fergie said no the plans initially were to build a stadium that could hold 60,000 for City - that got scaled back as Lee’s City dropped. The eventual...