I used to rate Steve Williams.( at southampton)always looked a bit arrogant,and could get stuck in,and play a ball.think his arsenal debut ended in disaster when a bad pass led to an fa cup giant killing...We were heavily linked with Southampton’s star midfielder Steve Williams for about two years. But we were skint and couldn’t afford him so instead signed his teammate Graham Baker, who was decent but not in the same class as Williams, who ended up going to Arsenal for big money and played for England
I remember one of the best shouts ever standing on the kippax from a bloke standing next to me during a throwing.. c’mon baker use your loaf ‘ .. some great humour on there .We were heavily linked with Southampton’s star midfielder Steve Williams for about two years. But we were skint and couldn’t afford him so instead signed his teammate Graham Baker, who was decent but not in the same class as Williams, who ended up going to Arsenal for big money and played for England
He looked like an old lady. Probably at least partially inspired his nickname ‘Hilda’I remember one of the best shouts ever standing on the kippax from a bloke standing next to me during a throwing.. c’mon baker use your loaf ‘ .. some great humour on there .
Blimey that’s right … I remember Paul power getting called Gladys as well.He looked like an old lady. Probably at least partially inspired his nickname ‘Hilda’
I'm of a similar age as I was 16 in the summer of 81, though my first game was probably later than yours (1st November 1980, City 1 Norwich 0). I loved that first season 80-81 despite not winning the Cup. It was a great journey. Gerry Gow's game was my first. I loved him, Power, Bennett, Reid particularly. Trevor Francis was something else though. What a talent. That 81-82 season was very exciting for a while even though our lofty position was a little false due to having played more matches due to reliable under soil heating. Bond's era had a heavy whiff of short termism about it though and so it proved. Too many signings were ageing players but they were good mostly. It was still mostly papering over the damage that Swales and Allison had done. The dressing room atmosphere was toxic according to Joe Corrigan before that fateful FA Cup thrashing at Brighton in 1982-83. Its still hard to comprehend though how a team that was comfortably mid table in January after beating Norwich 4-1 could lose its way so badly, so drained of confidence and eventually drop into the bottom three at precisely the wrong moment with no way out. I can remember how cynical the atmosphere had become yet the humour was very much there. The first time that I heard "We never win at home and we never win away..." was during a limp 0-1 at home to Ipshit when too many players hid.I thought this might be a good follow up to the excellent 78-79 implosion thread. In 1981, as a 16 year old I was enjoying life, City had just played in 2 of the most memorable cup finals ever, I had been to France and eaten horse for dinner, had sunbathed on a topless beach there and had started taking the occasional excursion to the as yet undiscovered territory called girls.
I rocked up at Maine Rd at the start of the 81-82 season as a Kippax regular and looked upon a squad that included Trevor Francis (after game 2), Tommy Hutch, Reeves, a rejuvenated King Tueart, Gow, Power, O'Neill, Reid, Caton, Bobby Mac, big Joe, Asa came back etc. It was a pretty useful and exciting squad - minus unfortunately Steve MacKenzie and Dave Bennett. we were top of the league for a time in that season before slumping badly in the second half losing 5-zip at home to the scousers, I remember going to watch Bury one day and hearing we were 4-0 down I think it was to Swansea at half time.
We had some terrible injuries that season, Power out for ages, Gerry Gow pretty much finished, Francis often injured, Tueart on a brilliant scoring run then injured for months and then Bond developed a knack of buying useful players like John Ryan and Oggie Hareide so we ended up mid table.
Season 82-83 turned out completely shot starting badly with selling Francis and replacing him with an ageing David Cross and I remember seeing the worst pair of back to back performances I have ever seen, 0-1 home to Notts County followed by 0-4 away to Coventry. Bond had walked by then. I went to Sunderland in the cup to see a boring 0-0 and to see my erstwhile long distance romance called Michaela. That's where the romance ended as I was sitting next to her in the Sunderland main stand and got gobbed on by a Sunderland fan calling me a fat Manchester shite to which Michaela promptly agreed and she then pissed off. Still, I was able to get over that by watching us get as obliterated as if a chemical weapon had been drooped on the team...at Brighton in the next round.
Seriously though, how had we gone from that 81-82 squad to going down. This is surely the time when Swales disasters came home to roost or was it all Kevin Bond's fault? I really couldn't take to him after he ousted Nicky Reid from that great Reid-Caton partnership.
I remember one of the best shouts ever standing on the kippax from a bloke standing next to me during a throwing.. c’mon baker use your loaf ‘ .. some great humour on there .
As much as we can all justifiably point to the madness of the late 70s, the general bewilderment that still surrounds the reckless spending of the Allison era, seems to have diluted any form of rational debate or genuine anger towards the equally baffling decisions to release Steve Mackenzie, Roger Palmer and Dave Bennett for relatively small transfer fees.
John Bond was extremely critical of Clive Wilson in his 81-82 end-of-season review, and Wilson virtually disappeared until 84-85 (as did Paul Simpson)
In the short term nobody was too concerned, but there was definitely a point where the team seemed to age overnight, and with hindsight, it was fairly obvious after selling Trevor Francis that we were skint.
The problem with 82-83 was that the good start camouflaged our lack of quality. The results started to change, and the team was toothless, shapeless, and spineless.
Yeah City were decent that day and Everton bang average. It was so unlike a few weeks before in a terrible hapless 0-4 at Leicester.I was at that one. First time I’d heard “we never win at home and we never win away” sing repeatedly. I can still see the Stewart chance. It was right in front of the City fans (I was in the seats) and it hung in the air for ages yet was still below us. We outplayed them that day.
Yeah, it's a weird one with Roger Palmer, as in a strange way, he became a microcosm of the whole period.I will have to dig out an old programme and read what Bond said of Clive Wilson. The lack of use of him, Simpson and Palmer
I liked all those players. Some might say Palmer wasn't a Division 1 striker
Yeah City were decent that day and Everton bang average. It was so unlike a few weeks before in a terrible hapless 0-4 at Leicester.