Kazimierz Deyna

[dennishasdoneit]

Telling none of them made it as top players. I know Caton moved to Arsenal, but he struggled a bit and was moved on after a few years and dropped down a level, to Oxford iirc. Caton was highly rated when he first broke into the first team.

Still remember Tommy Catons debut for City as a 16 year old home to Palace ,playing centre back against Big Mals old club. O-0 draw,and the highlights were on MOTD.I also recall Caton being featured in the footy magazine " Match Weekly" where it was reported that following his successful transition to the 1st team from the youth team his weekly wage had shot up from the old YTS scheme pay to.....£400 a week !
I was a paperboy at the time earning £3 a week, I just thought Wow!!
I was only a couple of years younger than Caton and felt an affinity with home grown players ,which I've never lost,over the years, with Paul Power probably my favourite. What a name!

I just loved the fact that,rightly or wrongly, Big Mal put home grown youngsters into City s 1st team, and Caton ,Dave Bennett and Nicky Reid were all favourites of mine at a time I was completely City daft and watching the Blues play on MOTD in that fantastic all blue Umbro (?) kit was what it was all about.

Happy Days.

 

[Vienna_70]

The first WC that England had qualified for since 1962

In their own right.

 

[Vienna_70]

I bet he wishes he had - he’d then have only managed one team to be relegated that season!

Or maybe even none.

 

[gordondaviesmoustache]

Or maybe even none.

Possibly, but that squad was probably the worst we’ve had that were relegated from 1983 onwards. Think the 1983 squad was the best, followed by the 1996 one. I’d say the 2001 squad were third.

 

[philiph20]

Maybe someone else can post it as YouTube has been made inaccessible where I live, but the Bristol City game was on Match of the Day and the goals from the 3-1 win are on YT. As I recall, we tore them apart in the first half and were 3-0 up at the break before coasting in the second period on a bright, sunny afternoon. As it was the game that mathematically made us safe that season, there was something of a party atmosphere.

According to the BM history section on this site, the crowd that day was 32,745, which was another particularly mendacious Swales special* - you could add almost another third on top of that and it would still be believable. As I recall, Deyna's goal came after the 'keeper dived full length to save a shot by Nicky Reid after a barnstoming run by the full-back, with the Pole tapping in the rebound.

It was a season of constant drama at City. First, there was Allison ripping apart Book's fine late-seventies side, followed by an uncertain start, then optimism in the run-up to Christmas (especially the wins against European Champions Forest and in the derby, with United flying high that season), a dispiriting winless run between the Saturday before Christmnas and well after Easter including the huimiliation at Halifax, before the positivity at the end of the campaign.

And after all that came the even more dramatic 1980/81 season, which is still one of my favourites as a Blue. But that's another story, and Deyna never got a look in once John Bond had arrived, not featuring at all in the first team under Bond before being transferred to the NASL.

* - The former physio Roy Bailey is on Twitter and wrote a while back that there were many suspicious attendance figures in this period of just below 33,000, since that was a figure at which the players started to receive a crowd bonus and they were certain that old PJS fixed the numbers to avoid paying it. I suppose that we can't be 100% sure, but, well, you wouldn't put it pas him, would you?!

That crowds above 33,000 and the bonuses now makes perfect sense in hindsight, i first started going end of 70s and even as a kid i thought these very similar attendances officially listed seemed to be way off to the naked eye and it would not suprise me in the slightest that the figures given were to stop having to pay bonuses, good old PJS an absolute wrong 'un.