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He replaced Eddie Large when we sadly lost him.

I disagree. The stadium was a key factor. Khaldoon said that to me in an interview I did with him. If we’d have been at Maine Rd we would not have been bought. The key factors expressed directly to me were: - ‘sleeping’ giant - Stadium - development potential of both surrounding land and of the...

Agreed on all of this. I suppose the biggest contribution made by Thaksin was bringing in Garry Cook who became a key figure in ‘selling’ the club to ADUG and was the man who persuaded Thaksin he had to sell the whole club not a minority stake.

Here’s an interesting article from 1933 in a Chinese newspaper about wealthy City helping Oldham in 1933. Something to think about - it’s 1933 and despite the depression City were the wealthiest club in the north west (United’s crowds were woefully low) so imagine if those who bang on about...

There were earlier ones but we don’t have recordings. There were supposed to be songs connected with Meredith way back but typically crowd sang popular songs of the day.

Yes - front row. 6th from left; 7th from right.

I know Gail. She played with my wife at City and they both still play together now, with quite a few other former City players at Walking Football. I interviewed her and included her story in my book on Manchester City Women. She’s on this photo from the 30th anniversary...

Experience has shown they don’t talk about it but quite a few of our grannies played football. Can everyone ask their older female family members and if they did then ask if they played for Manchester Corinthians, a pioneering team from 1940s to 1980s. We’re unveiling a plaque and other tributes...

Today’s the anniversary of a day when Bert lost his temper somewhat! Story here (free read): https://gjfootballarchive.com/2023/09/08/trautmann-off/ Anyone at that game?

The Stamford Bridge finals didn‘t get more than 73,000 but there were 4 at the Crystal Palace that had crowds higher than our 84,569 including 3 over 100,000. They used to say ‘the highest provincial crowd’ or the ‘highest outside London or Glasgow’ and I guess both those are true from an...

I remember an interview with Swales in 1992 when he said ‘City we’re the last Manchester club to win the Football League and we’ll be the next one too!’ Sadly he was right - 2002 we won the Football League again.

Aargh…. I need a lie down. In the old Peter Sellers Pink Panther films his boss (played by Herbert Lom) started to twitch and his symptoms got worse as the films went on, eventually going crazy. I feel like that with this story. I already have restless legs and sleep apnoea don’t make me any...

Ian Niven was the man who wanted Allison back and it was that obsession with Big Mal that caused crazy decisions to be made. How to ruin a club!

At the time Mal boasted about the deal and told us that he’d done the deal. It was only in later years, when it was obvious that it had all gone wrong that he changed his story. When I interviewed Swales I asked him about that and he said that as chairman he takes full responsibility for any...

Today is a significant anniversary in the perception of City as a spending club… on this day in 1979 City broke the transfer record by signing Steve Daley for over £1.4m - it was an incredible amount. The media focused on City’s spending (as they do today) but there were some articles that...

The photo was by City fan Emma Tamara Taylor and she allowed me to borrow it for one of my books. It was a sit down protest on the Kippax.

Flat caps were certainly the norm: https://gjfootballarchive.com/2021/03/03/a-national-record-84569/

I did an interview with Mike Sweeney about the place: https://gjfootballarchive.com/2023/08/25/maine-road-interview-on-radio-manchester/

Over the last 100 days I’ve been posting a free article/feature on Maine Road with images, stories etc about the old place. This ends today of course. The first post was: https://gjfootballarchive.com/2023/05/18/maine-road-100-day-1/ The last post is...

Lots of factors behind it. As a historian interested in the social history of Manchester one area I’ve looked at is on the slum clearance programme of the 60s in east Manchester which pushed City’s support from Gorton, Bradford etc and pushed it out to new estates in Hattersley, Gamesley and...