At the time, I was too young to appreciate what a mess the club was back in 1983. I really thought we'd be like United and Spurs in the mid and late-seventies, each of whom went down, had a fun year in Division Two winning loads of games, rebuilt at the same time, and came back up much stronger. With hindsight, I can see why it was different with us.
Things had seemed genuinely bleak in the autumn of 1980, as we went 12 league games without a win at the outset of that season. There'd been a shambolic 5-1 home defeat to Legia Warsaw in a friendly played as part of the deal for Kaziu Deyna in which the crowd had turned on City to the extent that the Kippax was cheering Legia on and willing them to get a sixth (it's the only time I recall this happening, though there may have been other occasions when I wasn't present). The sense of foreboding from that night was borne out when the season proper began. But the initial rise under John Bond and the two Cup runs then made for a really thrilling campaign.
The combination of Allison's young side supplemented with the left-back Allison curiously neglected to procure, the steel of Gerry Gow and the flair of Tommy Hutchison wasn't perfect, but had a pleasing balance. It was almost a truly epic season: we were robbed in the League Cup semi against Liverpool (I despise Alf Grey to this day, and know I'm among friends on here in that regard) and we should have clinched the FA Cup in the first match against Spurs.
The FA Cup final defeat was heart-wrenching, as I'd allowed myself to believe, despite all that crap in the media about Spurs winning something in every year ending in a '1', that we were fated to prevail. But come August, I was ready to go again, full of naive optimism born of youth. I remember that I'd acquired a magazine devoted to a preview of the new campaign and each top-flight club had a piece commenting on their prospects by a football correspondent from a national or local paper. I forget now exactly who did ours, but it was one of those old-school football writers from the Manchester office of one of the nationals. "John Bond," he boldly asserted, "will dictate whether a good side becomes a great one".
That line struck a chord with me. After the previous campaign, Bond could do no wrong for me, so I was implacable in my belief that we were destined for greatness. I expected perhaps not a league title (not yet, anyway), but to see us in the top four or five and to enjoy another Wembley visit, this time a victorious one, the following May. I was much taken by the fact that in both 1934 and 1956 we'd followed an FA Cup final defeat by bringing the trophy home 12 months later. This made our 1982 Cup triumph more or less a done deal as far as I was concerned.
I took comfort from our transfer business, too. I was sorry to lose Steve MacKenzie, a young player of genuine promise, as well as Dave Bennett and Tony Henry, whom I liked because I'd seen them rise through the club's youth ranks. Tommy Booth, who left early in the new season, was a genuine club stalwart. But this seemed the price of progress, and while I wasn't so sure about the merits of new acquisitions Kevin Bond and Martin O'Neill, no one could deny that Trevor Francis was a genuine thoroughbred.
Indeed, so taken by Francis was I that I decided to forego my school dinner one day and put the money into a new savings account at Cheshire Building Society on Wilbraham Road in Chorlton. Francis was making an appearance there and anyone who opened an account got a photo with him. My mum still has the photo, though I forgot about the money and never reclaimed it.
When I look back at my schoolboy self, I miss that artlessness, such is the jaded, embittered old cynic I've become. However, I'd feel obliged, if I could return to the summer of 1981 to impart some words of wisdom, to warn him that City's inevitable fate didn't lie in title chases and Wembley glory. No, even without the benefit of hindsight, the experienced eye I can now bring to bear would discern serious trouble on the horizon.
First, I overrated the team Bond had taken to the Cup final. I used to think that England under-21 players were more or less certs to go on and become full internationals. We had four, but now I think that only Tommy Caton was really top-drawer. Most of the best players were reaching the point where age, injuries or both would soon be starting to catch up with them (Corrigan, Tueart, Gow and Hutchison). And to be brutally honest, few of the rest would have got any game time had they been at the club when Tony Book's side was finishing second and fourth in successive seasons a few short years previously.
Second, the summer buys in 1981 were a curate's egg. Francis was magnificent, but he was missing with injury around a third of the time (he played in 26 of the 40 matches that took place after he signed) and his absences showed us to be a real one-man team. O'Neill didn't come off, in part because his best days at Forest saw him used on the right but Bond wanted to play him centrally. And Kevin Bond, let's say charitably, took time to settle. He did improve later, but I still maintain we could have landed a better centre-back for our GBP 350K outlay.
Third, I didn't know the desperate financial position that the failed Allison gamble had created at the club. After a last roll of the dice to bring in Kevin Reeves, the reckless spending stopped. Bond's initial buys - the three Scots and Phil Boyer, who got injured almost immediately and was never the same player afterwards - were more or less funded by the GBP 700K we received for Robinson and Daley (though we lost GBP 1.5 million on them in 12 months!) and a smaller fee from Oldham for Roger Palmer. But we were still saddled with vast debts and were in no position to be adding to them by spending over GBP 1 million net in the summer of 1981.
This wasn't something that concerned me back then. I had no understanding of financial strategy and, as far as I was concerned, if the chairman of Manchester City was prepared to spend big again after a year of relative prudence, I assumed that the club must be able to afford it. I was soon to learn not to show such trust in a City chairman and especially not in this one.
The first half of 1981/2 was largely successful and we looked as though we could challenge for a UEFA Cup spot at least. People might remember us going top, albeit having played more games than other teams around us, at Christmas 1981. Trevor Francis's blistering winner at home to Wolves came 48 hours after a first win at Anfield in decades. Life as a Blue seemed good, but the financial chickens were about to come home to roost.
The slide to mid-table in the second half of the campaign was a real disappointment. My memory is that we were hard hit by injuries, and for financial reasons had set about pruning the squad drastically in the New Year. As a result, we ended up on occasion fielding youth teamers who were destined never to make it in the game, such as Andy Elliott and Gary Jackson. The only incoming move we made was for John Ryan, a veteran who'd been at Norwich with Bond but had most recently been turning out in the Fourth Division.
Meanwhile, O'Neill and Gow were sold, while Boyer and Hutchison (to Hong Kong) as well as Nicky Reid (to Seattle Sounders) were loaned out. Now, most of these players were past their best and I'm not saying that they should have been the bedrock of our team. Nonetheless, they were all experienced performers capable to stepping into the side to do a job, and our desperation to get rid of players like these when we badly lacked quality backups told its own story.
It should have been no surprise, then, that Francis was sold in the summer, yet so naive was I that I believed Swales's promises that the star man would be kept. Older readers may remember that the player went off to Spain to play in the World Cup with England and the club put out adverts for season tickets on Piccadilly Radio, featuring Francis and stressing the opportunity to watch him in the new campaign. Needless to say, he was then sold (at a substantial loss by our financial wizard in the chair).
The cynicism of the episode appalled my younger self and I also wondered what the post-Francis era might bring. The last home game as the previous season had limped pitifully to a conclusion had been a 3-1 loss to a dreadfully mediocre Coventry side and Francis looked that day the only bright spot. I wouldn't have contemplated a relegation battle without him, but his departure seemed then - as it does now in retrospect - to be an indication that we were no longer a big-time club that would be seeking to challenge at the top of the English game.
I evidently wasn't the only one who was becoming disillusioned. Crowds dropped by more than 7,000 per match when Francis was moved on. This was an era of falling gates across the board given that it was a period of severe economic deprivation, especially in the northern heartlands of many traditional big clubs. Nonetheless, no other top-flight club came close in 1982/3 to shedding 20% of its match-going support compared with the previous season.
I wasn't one of the stay-aways and, as people have said, there were points at which things seemed to be going smoothly. We led the table after three games, were second in November after beating Southampton, and were in 8th spot in mid-January after beating a dismal Norwich side 4-1 at Maine Road. If anyone had told you then that we'd eventually go down and the Canaries would stay up, it would have been impossible to believe.
I agree with what seems the prevailing view on here that the wheels came off when Bond quit after the Cup thrashing at Brighton. Benson was out of his depth as manager, but I felt sorry for him when I read years later that he hadn't wanted the job yet had to take it because he couldn't afford to be out of work. Eleven points from his 17 games is a sorry statistic that amply illustrates that the appointment was yet another wretched boardroom cock-up.
Yet Swales and his cronies weren't finished when it came to blowing holes in our survival hopes. Instead, they decided to weaken the squad by letting two high-earning players leave. The first was Joe Corrigan, in March. Now, the Corrigan of March 1983 was certainly a far more fallible goalkeeper than he'd been in previous years, and in the promising Alex Williams, his natural successor was already in place. But ditching the experienced man in the midst of a relegation battle for a player with a dozen senior appearances to his name, rather than wait until the close season? Not for me, Clive.
At least, though, we had someone capable of attempting to fill Corrigan's boots. When David Cross was sold shortly afterwards, we ditched our top scorer in the campaign, with 12 league goals in 31 appearances. That left Tueart, never the same player after his achilles injury the previous season and by now a much better bet in midfield, to partner Kevin Reeves, who bagged seven goals all season despite only missing one game.
It was truly pathetic. Again, as with Corrigan, I'd have had no issue with Cross being moved on in the summer. He was another whose best days were behind him. But on that awful afternoon against Luton as dangerous balls flew around the away side's penalty area more than once with no one on the spot to convert the opportunities, as Williams flailed at a cross he could only palm weakly to the edge of the box whence it was smashed straight back past him, and as the forlorn, clueless Benson watched on, I had to conclude that the board had let us down badly. Again.
So there we have it. I read a quote today from someone who went bankrupt and was asked to explain how it had happened. "Gradually," he said, "but suddenly." And that was the case with City as well. The way we nosedived over the last few months of the 1982/3 season seemed shockingly abrupt. Yet the causes are easily traced back to Mal's second spell and, viewed in hindsight, the crash seems inevitable from that point onwards.
Inevitable, that is, if we bear in mind two premises. That his own self-aggrandisement was the most important thing by a mile for the **** in the chair, so he was never willingly going to do what he should have and step aside to facilitate serious investment. And that the arse-licking toadies surrounding him lacked the decency and the bottle to try and make him do it. Really, it was a football tragedy but teenage me can be consoled. It'll get better when you reach your forties, kid!
