1978-79 | The self-implosion of Manchester City

Gary James said:
I don’t know if you saw the Boys In Blue film show I did at both the Cornerhouse and Dancehouse over the years but we show part of a TV profile/interview of him. I think you’d have seen your view totally backed up by his own words/ego. Lots of great quotes ‘I’m the top man’ etc. He certainly loved the spotlight. Even if he did love City it wouldn’t make him a great chairman so anyone saying ‘ah but he loved City’ does need to think ‘does that overrule everything else?’ Eddie Large and Bernard Manning loved City but imagine them as chairman… We can all try but that’s why Khaldoon is a great chairman. He’s a businessman first and foremost.
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Whether by design or happy accident, the Salford University students who interviewed him as he sat there in front of a framed portrait of himself absolutely nailed his rampant ego

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LongsightM13 said:
Whether by design or happy accident, the Salford University students who interviewed him as he sat there in front of a framed portrait of himself absolutely nailed his rampant ego

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That fuckin hair do

as an aside to all this, ive a customer who worked for him during the 90s, i presume for another business (did he still have his tv company then? ) , who said he was a fantastic boss and a lovely man with a great family
 
Psychedelic Casual said:
I went to school from the mid 80s to the late 90s, and there were a fair few United fans at school where their Dad or even both parents were City fans; “my old man said be a City fan, and I said bollocks you’re a ****” doesn’t come from nowhere!

Other kids of City supporting parents had no interest in football, whereäs, had we not become the club we did, they might have had an interest. And the kids whose parents had little interest in football were mostly United fans.

We lost a generation of fans. We have a proper lack of 30-40 year old supporters… we have bloody loads of older fans, a good number of younger fans, but there’s a noticeable gap when it comes to that 30-40 year old bracket.
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I come under the er…bloody loads of older fans.
 
blue b4 the moon said:
Just reading through the thread it's reminded me that when Malc returned with Palace after the sacking I think a cup game the Kippax where I was gave him a fantastic round of applause & he 'ran over' to us...what the response was in other parts of MR I don't know as I was too busy clapping.

In retrospect what he was doing seemed to be almost there but he was too sweeping in getting rid of our established players maybe he was concerned about dressing room harmony and decided to do a quick change?
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I was in the Kippax that day and the ovation and chanting for Allison was very loud but then followed by the same for Bond. Bit like out with the old and in with the new
 
gordondaviesmoustache said:
That's the thing thst often gets overlooked (including by myself) when jokes are made about the Charlton game and many, many others. He was doing that to skim money off the club, and ultimately us as supporters, to line his own pockets. These were times when losing cash was much more straightforward, both domestically and internationally, than it is today. Cars, artwork, houses, villas abroad could be bought, or significantly contributed towards, with large sums of cash - back then, my dad used to pay mine and my brother’s school fees in cash ffs - can you imagine that happening today?!

Who knows where the money went, but I’m sure there will have been plenty of it and it will have acquired assets whose provenance will now be impossible to establish with any certainty.

So you are correct: he stole off the club and I’m happy to add ‘embezzler‘ to to the previous post!
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Yep. For sure but you're also right about his sheer incompetence - e.g the tiny club shop , Daley fee etc
 
Didsbury Dave said:
51 year old here too. Just like you...when I started we were seen as one of the biggest 4 or 5 teams in the country and trophies were always within reach. Oyur generation have seen it all. I'd say the majority of the people in Porto were from our generation: kids wwhen we were good, men staying defiantly loyal when we were shit, drinking it in when we became great. It felt like the end of that journey out there but wasn't to be, which in itself was king of fitting.

No Man United fan could ever understand how it felt when we won the FA Cup in 11, the league in 12 and how it will feel when we finally reach the pinnacle and with the Champions league.
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Sums it up for me too......except I didn't go to Porto but really glad for those blues who got to experience our club in the CL final. I know the result was shit but for most of our City life it's been an unattainable fantasy
 
Moorland Blue said:
Great thread everyone! Thanks to CitizenGreen for kicking it off. Given that my first match was the 1956 cup final where my mum said my dad blagged me in if I sat on her knee (aged5!) and Bobby and Heather Johnstone were my regular babysitters, I am definitely of the vintage that remembers all this stuff. Truth is Malcolm was a great coach and a crap manager. His ego needed someone above him to filter out the crazy stuff (eg Steppy Stefanovic , Peter and Gary etc.). Joe Mercer was perfect for that. Swales' ego was as big as Malcolm's so together in control they were a complete disaster. Had it been thought of at the time, Tony Book might have been a great Director of Football (discuss?).
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I've never been able to work out whether Tony was a good manager or just had good players. I was a bit young for tactics (more interested in Tic Tacs!!) but his signings were a bit hit and miss. For every Kiddo there was a Michael Docherty
 
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