conn having a dig again

[salfordpaul]

I were a lad long before David Conn was thought of. I was celebrating the 20th anniversary of seeing my first City match when the league cup final of 1976 took place. These were the real "good old days" before Conn's good old days, and what rotten old days they could be. Fortunately I didn't watch City thinking that I was watching 11 local lads battling for the pride of Manchester against 11 other "lads" battling for the pride of somewhere else. It's just as well because that was never what I was watching. My favourite player was Bert Trautmann (who actually did become Manchester's favourite son and remained so) and I also liked Bobby Johnstone (Scottish) and later Dennis Law. Tom Finney was a Preston lad playing for Preston, but only because the retain and transfer system meant that his club could stop him going anywhere else. The Italians offered him thousands, but Preston kept him - for £10 pw. Finney packed them in anywhere he played in the 50s - that golden age - but it did him no good. It didn't do the "working men" of the "working man's game" any good either; club shareholders (Conn is right, there were few owners in those days. Clubs tended to be in the hands of local worthies, and local butchers, bakers and even candlestick makers, before the dodgy TV sellers moved in) pocketed the loot and left them with open sewers to p*** in, dangerous "stands" to stand in and didn't bat an eyelid when fans died in crushes and accidents. Then, I never dreamed that all these benefits were made possible by healthy club balance sheets, sensible wages and English owners.

I remember very well the abolition of the maximum wage. It really did shock me to find that my heroes could earn no more than £20 pw, and that many didn't earn anywhere near that. Fulham, it turned out, thought Johnny Haynes was actually worth £100 and announced that that was what they would pay him every week. Some foreign club had actually offered £100000 to buy him but Fulham refused - just like Finney and Preston, but Fulham at least paid up. Two years later George Eastham won the case against Newcastle United he had launched in 1960. He wanted to leave Newcastle, his contract was up and they weren't paying him - but they "retained" his registration, wouldn't let him go elsewhere and he'd had to take work outside football. All this was necessary to keep football competitive. Without the maximum wage and the retain part of the transfer system the richer clubs would get all the best players. I did begin to wonder, David, whether showing a contemptuous lack of concern for the fans and screwing the players were actually the ways to protect competition.

These were the changes that ushered in David's world, when football was admirably competitive and the pompous excuse that "we'd rather be crap than be like City" was never heard - because most teams were crap and just like City! We'd got a true blue in charge, ripping out any memorabilia of City's quite glorious recent past in a one man struggle to show that money doesn't have to buy success. Used carefully money could actually ruin your club. Here was one shareholder/chairman everyone had heard of. When Lancashire played Derbyshire sometime in 1983 (?) every Lacashire wicket to fall was greeted by cries of "Swales out!" No, David, I do remember "it being part of anyone's dream that City needed a rich man to buy the club and pour fortunes in, that revival could not be attained by effort, determination, a youth policy." We didn't get the rich owner and we had the youth cup winners sacrificed in a relegation dog fight. At the national level England didn't qualify for a world cup in the 1970s, were humiliated by the West Germans in the Euros of 1972" at Wembley, were eliminated in the qualifiers by Czechoslovakia in 1976 and in one season managed to lose to Ireland, Scotland and Wales in the home championships. Liverpool had success with a largely English team, but the spine had a distinctly Scottish character, and they rose to dominance with fewer and fewer Englishmen; in 1986 they completed the double at Wembley without a single Englishman in the team. The brave old world of the 70s didn't seem to do English football much good. "Englishman free zone" teams did not come courtesy of the PL.

By 1986 Liverpool and the rest couldn't compete in Europe. This brings us to the aspects of football in the 70s which Conn doesn't mention. At Heysel in 1985 we saw that "the working man's game" had already been hijacked by a species of scum whose most fluent mode of expression was via the flick knife, the knuckle duster and worse. These swine put the curled lip scowl back on the face of football. Not just Liverpool, I remember going to City as usual with my two lads, then aged 9 and 7, to watch us play Leeds. We were accustomed to games littered with a procession of visiting fans being ushered out as they attempted to embrace our other "boys in blue". This time though they had congregated outside the ground to confront City supporters on the way home. I, and my two little lads -proudly sporting their City scarves and hats- were greeted by a hail of abuse first, then missiles. The police stood by, apparently ruminating on who was the real threat to life and limb, the yobos from Leeds or the little boys from Manchester. We got home - and didn't go again for a good few years. "City till I die" was a more immediate sentiment in those "good old days".

Then we found out the real cost of all those years of keeping football competitive by good old English shareholders under-investing in their clubs. I'm referring, of course, to the hideously tragic events at Bradford, when genuine football fans paid with their lives for their love of the game and the failure of English football to make even the most basic provision for them. And then Hillsborough, another decrepit ground without a safety certificate, no concern for how many tickets were sold as long as the money rolled in and a police force who honoured the long held English tradition of contempt for the English football fan.

That's my not-so-rosy view of our game's past. So, when you read banners which say that Manchester thanks you, Sheikh Mansour, David, you have no idea how much Manchester has to thank him for. But we do. He respects the history and traditions of the club more than any owner of the club ever has. He's doing more for the discovery and development of young talent than any owner of any club has ever done. He's doing more for Manchester than any owner has ever dreamed of. He's given us better players, playing better football than we've ever had. Manchester certainly thanks you, Sheikh Mansour. You're infinitely better than the rich owner I dreamed of back in 1983. And, thank God you're not English.

what a post ! best ever i have read on blue moon......brilliant

 

[Kompany is King]

BluessinceHydeRoad ...informative, insightful and right. Well done.

The future is blue

 

[bluwes]

I were a lad long before David Conn was thought of. .

Bloody brilliant.

 

[Prestwich_Blue]

I still fail to see how Conn's having a dig.

OK - he's used that £1bn figure that gets everyone so het up but when you add up the cost of the club, the players bought and the losses he's covered, not even counting the spending on infrastructure that's going on, that's about right and possibly a bit conservative.

All he's done is contrast football now with football in 1976 and asking how modern day (2014) football will be seen in 38 years.

BlueSinceHydeRoad is an excellent poster but, like most of the rest of the people posting in this thread, he's thrown up a complete red-herring. Conn's not claiming it was better then but different. The intervening years have seen some of the biggest changes and the most signifcant re-alignment in the game since the early days of football. It's a very valid question to ask what the game's future might hold for today's 11 year old, in the same way it changed for him.

 

[ManCitizens.]

I still fail to see how Conn's having a dig.

OK - he's used that £1bn figure that gets everyone so het up but when you add up the cost of the club, the players bought and the losses he's covered, not even counting the spending on infrastructure that's going on, that's about right and possibly a bit conservative.

All he's done is contrast football now with football in 1976 and asking how modern day (2014) football will be seen in 38 years. I certainly don't always agree with him but what is wrong with asking that particular question?

Using your logic I suppose we could compare it to kicking a cat to death. Have you apologised yet?

 

[Prestwich_Blue]

I still fail to see how Conn's having a dig.

OK - he's used that £1bn figure that gets everyone so het up but when you add up the cost of the club, the players bought and the losses he's covered, not even counting the spending on infrastructure that's going on, that's about right and possibly a bit conservative.

All he's done is contrast football now with football in 1976 and asking how modern day (2014) football will be seen in 38 years. I certainly don't always agree with him but what is wrong with asking that particular question?

Using your logic I suppose we could compare it to kicking a cat to death. Have you apologised yet?

No and I have no intention of doing. In fact you've demonstrated my point beautifully as you clearly had no idea what I was trying to say as, like so many on here, your powers of comprehension are severely limited.

Why don't you use your own remorseless logic to convince me how Conn is having a dig?

 

[ManCitizens.]

I still fail to see how Conn's having a dig.

OK - he's used that £1bn figure that gets everyone so het up but when you add up the cost of the club, the players bought and the losses he's covered, not even counting the spending on infrastructure that's going on, that's about right and possibly a bit conservative.

All he's done is contrast football now with football in 1976 and asking how modern day (2014) football will be seen in 38 years. I certainly don't always agree with him but what is wrong with asking that particular question?

Using your logic I suppose we could compare it to kicking a cat to death. Have you apologised yet?

No and I have no intention of doing. In fact you've demonstrated my point beautifully as you clearly had no idea what I was trying to say as, like so many on here, your powers of comprehension are severely limited.

Why don't you use your own remorseless logic to convince me how Conn is having a dig?

This is your problem, you think you're above people.

 

[Prestwich_Blue]

Using your logic I suppose we could compare it to kicking a cat to death. Have you apologised yet?

No and I have no intention of doing. In fact you've demonstrated my point beautifully as you clearly had no idea what I was trying to say as, like so many on here, your powers of comprehension are severely limited.

Why don't you use your own remorseless logic to convince me how Conn is having a dig?

This is your problem, you think you're above people.

If being "above people" means I can read something & understand what the author is trying to say properly without jumping to ill-judged or completely inaccurate conclusions then I'm guilty as charged.

 

[fbloke]

I still fail to see how Conn's having a dig.

OK - he's used that £1bn figure that gets everyone so het up but when you add up the cost of the club, the players bought and the losses he's covered, not even counting the spending on infrastructure that's going on, that's about right and possibly a bit conservative.

All he's done is contrast football now with football in 1976 and asking how modern day (2014) football will be seen in 38 years. I certainly don't always agree with him but what is wrong with asking that particular question?

Using your logic I suppose we could compare it to kicking a cat to death. Have you apologised yet?

No and I have no intention of doing. In fact you've demonstrated my point beautifully as you clearly had no idea what I was trying to say as, like so many on here, your powers of comprehension are severely limited.

Why don't you use your own remorseless logic to convince me how Conn is having a dig?

You seem to have a bee in your bonnet with this one Col'?

All I will say is that the thread started with a piece that I didnt find at all upsetting but it has a similar theme to a lot of David Conn's rather polemic stuff.

If you take his opinion pieces in the round its clear that he does think football was better back then and that he fell out of love with modern football. He doesnt hide that fact, which is fair enough. But he does get rather repetitive and its becoming somewhat tiresome and I think thats where some of the posts come from.

 

[ManCitizens.]

No and I have no intention of doing. In fact you've demonstrated my point beautifully as you clearly had no idea what I was trying to say as, like so many on here, your powers of comprehension are severely limited.

Why don't you use your own remorseless logic to convince me how Conn is having a dig?

This is your problem, you think you're above people.

If being "above people" means I can read something & understand what the author is trying to say properly without jumping to ill-judged or completely inaccurate conclusions then I'm guilty as charged.

I sentence you to a scumbag kicking you in the chest all over the street. In all fairness I do appreciate your FFP opinion and general input I just disagreed with your analogy regarding the cat.