Dyed Petya
Well-Known Member
- Joined
- 2 May 2007
- Messages
- 1,490
I was a kid when Deyna arrived. Remember he made his debut against Ipswich on the day Kenny Clements broke his leg. There'd been a load of hype about the signing - it was when foreign players were first coming here and he was our answer to Ardiles (who originally was going to sign for us, reportedly) and Villa at Spurs. Anyway, we lost his first game, and my biggest memory is of the crowd bursting into huge applause when he first got the ball only for him to pass it straight to an opposing player.
Swales always said that the problem with Deyna was that he came from Communist Poland, where there'd been no nightlife (there really wasn't in the Eastern bloc back then), and developed too much of a liking for teh pubs and clubs in Manchester. I think he was also slightly past his best when we got him (he was around 30, IIRC), and he found the English game a bit physical for his liking. For that reason, games tended to pass him by when we played him in midfield, where he played for Legia and Poland, and his biggest impact for us was as a striker after Big Mal switched his position. Had a fairly decent goalscoring record and one or two of those were crackers.
His biggest problem under Mal, though, was that we were a team in transition - and not a very good team, either. No direction and full of kids and dodgy over-priced signings. I remember my dad, on several occasions, saying that Deyna would be superb in a better team but was wasted in our struggling mess of 1979/80 because he was too quick in thought for the other players, who couldn't read what he was trying to do. In that, my old man compared him to Denis Law in his first spell at City.
Swales always said that the problem with Deyna was that he came from Communist Poland, where there'd been no nightlife (there really wasn't in the Eastern bloc back then), and developed too much of a liking for teh pubs and clubs in Manchester. I think he was also slightly past his best when we got him (he was around 30, IIRC), and he found the English game a bit physical for his liking. For that reason, games tended to pass him by when we played him in midfield, where he played for Legia and Poland, and his biggest impact for us was as a striker after Big Mal switched his position. Had a fairly decent goalscoring record and one or two of those were crackers.
His biggest problem under Mal, though, was that we were a team in transition - and not a very good team, either. No direction and full of kids and dodgy over-priced signings. I remember my dad, on several occasions, saying that Deyna would be superb in a better team but was wasted in our struggling mess of 1979/80 because he was too quick in thought for the other players, who couldn't read what he was trying to do. In that, my old man compared him to Denis Law in his first spell at City.