Alan Ball or Frank Clark era....

[Sky Blue Thinking]

He sent Stoke down too and they hated him. His final game for City was at Stoke (can't recall if Victoria Ground or the Britannia) and at the end of them game both sets of fans were screaming for his head!

Was the Victoria ground, Dickov's debut, must have wondered what he'd signed up for.

 

[jimharri]

Neither, both shite.

 

[Bill]

It was grim up north - but which was grimmer?

silly question .

 

[Big Swifty]

When Ball was appointed, a Stoke-supporting friend of mine rang me up and said "He'll take you down."

I laughed derisively. "No, he's a tough little winner", etc,etc.

Well, one of us was right....

 

[Shaelumstash]

Far too young to remember the Alan Ball era, but I do have a question.

We took 2 points from the first 11 games but then 36 from the remaining 27.

That means from the final 27 games we had a PPG of 1.33, which replicated over a full season would have got us 50/51 points to finish 10th/11th.

In other words, we were in upper-mid table form for more than two thirds of the season.

Our final points total (38) has proved enough to stay up on several occasions, and even this time it was simply goal difference that rendered it not enough.

Therefore, my question is...was Ball really that bad? Or is he remembered unfairly just because of a disastrous start?

Mate, he dropped Keith Curle for Kit Symonds and dropped Tony Coton for Ike Immel.

If you’re too young to remember them, it’s roughly the equivalent of dropping Ederson and Kompany, stripping him of the captaincy and replacing them with Boris Johnson and Dominic Cummings.