Paul Lake - part 2 of interview P6

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City_Shirts

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NEW EPISODE: Paul Lake – Tales of Blue – Part One -

The former City skipper called in at MCFC MW Shirts HQ to share his City memories of growing up a blue, his first City kit, Peter Barnes, 81 Cup Final, FA Youth Cup, Debut, England 90, Promotion 89 & 5-1 Derby Day.

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Top man. Never forget him playing centre half at maine Road and playing a pass out to a city winger from City's D under pressure from the attacking team. It might have been his last game...under Howard Kendall? Versus Villa? My memory not great but I'd never seen a defender pass a ball with so much accuracy with so little time to think. Absolutely brilliant.
 
Keepingthefaithsince1976 said:
Top man. Never forget him playing centre half at maine Road and playing a pass out to a city winger from City's D under pressure from the attacking team. It might have been his last game...under Howard Kendall? Versus Villa? My memory not great but I'd never seen a defender pass a ball with so much accuracy with so little time to think. Absolutely brilliant.
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Yes he could play anywhere but his ability was best shown in the middle. Could do everything including gliding past an opponent like he wasn’t there.
 
A player ahead of his time. There weren't many players around like him in the 80's before the Premier league. Very classy on the ball and could play in multiple positions.
I suppose we'll never know what his best position would have been but I reckon he would have made a brilliant Rodriesque, number 6.
I was at Villa away in 1990 when we won our first top flight away game in 4 years when Villa were serious title contenders. Lake played full back and took the piss out of Ormondroyd who had been having a really good season.
The way club handled his knee injury was just another sign of how badly run and amateurish they were in those days.
 
Haven't watched the video yet, but will as soon as I have a chance. I always love listening to Lakey speak about City. He's invariably informed and interesting, but at the same time his genuine passion for the club always shines through. He's often truly inspiring.

I remember him being regularly linked in the media, before his injury, with other clubs. The rumoured fee was always well in excess of GBP 2 million, which was really big money in those days. Lakey himself has always said that he wouldn't ever have wished to leave, because playing for City was all he ever wanted. I don't doubt his sincerity, because he certainly loves the club. Nonetheless, such was the way MCFC was run at the time that I think we'd have needed to cash in at some point had he stayed fit.

However, I'm not sure he'd have gone to another English club. Italy was the top league by far back then, and offered salaries of maybe four or five times what the leading PL sides of the time could pay. If he'd fulfilled his potential, it doesn't seem fanciful to me to suggest that he'd have been comfortably good enough for an outfit such as Roma or Inter to have come in with an eyewatering bid.

He'd have been told by the club that he was helping City by generating a huge fee for us, while at the same time making himself financially secure for life and playing in the league where the global superstars of the era turned out. I think it would have been too good to turn down, so that's the fate that I suspect his injury denied him.

Oh, and whenever there used to be a thread on Paul Lake on here, there used to be a contrarian who'd pitch in with an opposing view of his merits as a player. No doubt he'll be along soon to explain how wrong we all are and why Lakey was just vastly overrated.
 
Wonderful player whose career was sadly cut short by mistakes made at board level that wouldn’t happen now. Definitely would have played for England and then be sold by Swales the following season had it not been for the injury. I didn’t think much of him when he played up front in the youth team that won the cup in 1986, but the following year I was at a game when we played Wigan away in the youth cup I believe at Springfield Park. Our centre half got injured (Paul Warhurst) and he was dropped back to play centre back and he looked a different player. From then on he played midfield or defence in the reserves and was head and shoulders better than the lads who were his team mates from the previous years youth team that had already played in the first team like Redmond,Brightwell, white and Hinchcliffe. Maybe it because we were the same age that I thought he was doing what I wanted to do and that was play for City that I could relate to him. In the run up to the final game at Maine Road you could vote who was your best city player of all time and your name was printed in the program. Whereas my older brothers went with Bell & Young mine was Lakey.
 
iggy1966 said:
I didn’t think much of him when he played up front in the youth team that won the cup in 1986, but the following year I was at a game when we played Wigan away in the youth cup I believe at Springfield Park. Our centre half got injured (Paul Warhurst) and he was dropped back to play centre back and he looked a different player.
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Yes, that's how I remember him, too. I watched the youth team in their 1986 Cup run and also playing in the reserves. In the Youth Cup winning side, Lakey was played as a target man, up front with Paul Moulden, and he didn't especially catch the eye. Then I saw him in midfield for the reserves and he was an absolute revelation.

Also, his wife revealed on Twitter recently a fact that shows how badly let down he was by Swales:



Truly shameful.
 
One of our most gifted ever players, at a time when the team and club weren’t, mainly due to my namesake, who I am sure would have sold him. As well as being a wonderful player, he is a great bloke, really intelligent and articulate too, along with Nedum the sort of guy who BT and Sly should be using as pundits, but then again he was never a rag or a dipper. Look forward to watching the video later, thanks City Shirts
 
Reading Lackey’s book helped me confirm why I hated Swales so fucking much, utter **** of a man, put no money into City, had an ego which his lack of business acumen didn’t merit, and treated players like Paul and our fan base with utter contempt. Paul Lake is a proper Blue, peter swales wasn’t even a Blue
 
petrusha said:
Yes, that's how I remember him, too. I watched the youth team in their 1986 Cup run and also playing in the reserves. In the Youth Cup winning side, Lakey was played as a target man, up front with Paul Moulden, and he didn't especially catch the eye. Then I saw him in midfield for the reserves and he was an absolute revelation.

Also, his wife revealed on Twitter recently a fact that shows how badly let down he was by Swales:



Truly shameful.
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All the Youth team lads that came through were insured for the same amount at that time which is truly shocking looking back now but Swales ran the club like struggling chip shop.
 
City_Shirts said:
All the Youth team lads that came through were insured for the same amount at that time which is truly shocking looking back now but Swales ran the club like struggling chip shop.
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Yes, I fully agree. It's appalling, really, as exemplified by Paul Moulden having been the subject of a large bid from Spurs before he even played in the first team.

The MEN reported it as a 'name your price' offer but a few years later I was told by a very good source when doing legal work for the club that it was a six figures guaranteed rising to a couple of hundred thousand with bonuses. In the light of that, only a truly incompetent cheapskate operation would have insured Moulden for GBP 10K, even when still a 17-year-old youth-teamer.

For Lakey, having long since made the senior side and having attracted GBP 2 million offers, to still be insured for that sum defies belief. The club should have been looking at a seven figure pay-out when he was unable to carry on, so it's negligent management for us to have received such a derisory sum. That's shocking enough.

But then there's the fact that Lakey himself was shafted by such parsimony given that the pay-out to him was pitiful, depending as it did on the sum he was insured for. But it gets worse. I think he's aware now that, after doing his cruciate for the second time at Boro in 1992, he carried on for years trying to get fit again when, in retrospect, there was never any chance of him returning to the first team. No one within the club had any incentive to try and stop him.

You can bet your life that if MCFC had a potential GBP 1.5 million pay-out resting on him retiring, someone would have had a quiet word with him and explained that he'd never make it back. And that would have been a great service to him. If you've read his book, you'll know that his mental health really suffered throughout his futile battle to return and he should have been spared that.

It's really quite remarkable that he still loves the club today in the way he does. He'd be perfectly justified in having nothing but untrammelled and rancorous hatred towards the institution that is Manchester City Football Club.
 
petrusha said:
Yes, that's how I remember him, too. I watched the youth team in their 1986 Cup run and also playing in the reserves. In the Youth Cup winning side, Lakey was played as a target man, up front with Paul Moulden, and he didn't especially catch the eye. Then I saw him in midfield for the reserves and he was an absolute revelation.

Also, his wife revealed on Twitter recently a fact that shows how badly let down he was by Swales:



Truly shameful.
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Good old PJS.
 
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