How Peter Swales became City chairman

East Level 2 said:
But who would benefit from the deterioration of City's finances? Swales was hardly responsible for asset stripping in his first few years as the only top player to go to a top team was Francis Lee IIRC.
Getting rid of Gary Owen and Peter Barnes has always been blamed on Malcolm Allison. The selling of Trevor Francis, Michael Robinson and one or two others may indicate the dead hand of Swales, but after that the club was in decline so decent players wanted to leave.
The one that always puzzled me was selling Garry Flitcroft near the end of the 95-96 season when his ability could have helped us gain the point we needed for survival. - But that was another chairman wasn't it?
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This one for me was the precise moment I knew we had landed in the proverbial S#&%Show. If you believe that playing Garry could have given us just one more goal or one more point, then why the hell would you countenance a sale? Blind to the fact that we weren't too good to go down.
The powers that be said that the bank were making threats and threatening to pull in the loans (Coop I think). Well if thats the case how about mobilising the fan base across Manchester and ask them to threaten to close every account they have if the bank goes ahead. Watching their customer base fly away would have the bank management see their arses.
As it was we had a very worthy but incredibly slow midfield labour towards relegation and beyond - missing out on an estimated 50M in Premier League income - all for short term cash flow of 3M and a total lack of leadership at any level of our beautiful club. (All these years later and I still can't be calm about it!)
 
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Great read. Did the sports shop Eric Alexander bought off Roy Clarke become Alexander Sports like the one on the corner of Wilbraham and Wilmslow Road?

Also how much shareholding did he have in United and when was that eventually sold?
 
OneTonyHenry said:
This one for me was the precise moment I knew we had landed in the proverbial S#&%Show. If you believe that playing Garry could have given us just one more goal or one more point, then why the hell would you countenance a sale? Blind to the fact that we weren't too good to go down.
The powers that be said that the bank were making threats and threatening to pull in the loans (Coop I think). Well if thats the case how about mobilising the fan base across Manchester and ask them to threaten to close every account they have if the bank goes ahead. Watching their customer base fly away would have the bank management see their arses.
As it was we had a very worthy but incredibly slow midfield labour towards relegation and beyond - missing out on an estimated 50M in Premier League income - all for short term cash flow of 3M and a total lack of leadership at any level of our beautiful club. (All these years later and I still can't be calm about it!)
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That worthy but slow midfield included Gio Kinkladze that season and we should have held our own and kept out of the relegation zone. The one for me that season was selling Phelan, Flitcroft and offloading Paul Walsh for gerry creaney(WTF!)..also didn't we lose Keith Curle for the whole season to an injury in a pre season friendly at Wolves?

Franny Lee was running the show by then but the seeds of failure were firmly planted by Swales in previous seasons.
 
bluebanana83 said:
Great read. Did the sports shop Eric Alexander bought off Roy Clarke become Alexander Sports like the one on the corner of Wilbraham and Wilmslow Road?

Also how much shareholding did he have in United and when was that eventually sold?
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Thanks. Yes, the shop was renamed Alexander Sports a few months after he stepped down as chairman. It closed in 1982, I think. It's a good example of how timing is so important in business. A year earlier, John Wardle and David Makin had opened their first JD Sports store. If Alexander had managed to hold on longer he could have cashed in on the sportswear boom of the 1980s.

I'm not sure how many United shares he owned, but he sold the last of them in 2005 when the Glazers bought the club.
 
Jamshopbridge said:
That worthy but slow midfield included Gio Kinkladze that season and we should have held our own and kept out of the relegation zone. The one for me that season was selling Phelan, Flitcroft and offloading Paul Walsh for gerry creaney(WTF!)..also didn't we lose Keith Curle for the whole season to an injury in a pre season friendly at Wolves?

Franny Lee was running the show by then but the seeds of failure were firmly planted by Swales in previous seasons.
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Quite right we should but you're mistaken re Curle. Nevertheless the sale of Flitcroft was disastrous as was that of Walsh
 
Fascinating thread, this. Born in 1994 so missed the Swales era, thank god. Learned a lot here. Didn't know about them fiddling the gates.
 
Prestwich_Blue said:
Good to see you back Andrew. I'm looking forward to reading this.

However I've been doing my own deep research and my view is that Swalesy was stabbed in the back by Lee, and if he'd been given more time (he only had 17 years at the helm after all, which was barely enough to make his mark) we'd have got to where we are now much sooner.

Sheikh Mansour & Khaldoon really fell lucky and with minimal investment just benefited from the groundwork Swales put in.
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Swales was guilty of being too loyal to his managers. He needed to be more ruthless!!!
 
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