RIP Tony Book

RIP Skip. Captain when I first became a fan of the club in the late 60's. A true club legend and a gentleman.
 
I met Tiny outside the Aldwych Hotel the day before the 1981 Cup final. Just a chance meeting, I didn't know the team were staying there.
He was very charming and promised me that they would win the next day. I was there to see it. RIP Skip.
 
People don't understand how incredible Tony Book's story in football is, people always talk about Jamie Vardy's incredible meteoric rise from non-league football.

When most impressively Tony Book played a massive chunk of his career in non-league, his first taste of the English Football League was at 30 for Plymouth.
When Malcolm Allison signed him he lied to Plymouth Argyle's board and somehow got away told them he was 28, as many know Allison then got Book to doctor his own birth certificate to say 28 too... as Malcolm Allison didn't think Plymouth's board, would actually pay the £1,500 transfer fee for the services of a 30 year old Skip.

He then joined City at very nearly 32 years of age for a bargain £17,000 before going on to achieve great things for us, he went from never ever playing in the English Football League until 30 to winning the English top flight as captain aged 33 a few months shy of 34.
Following that incredible achievement Skip was highly influential again captaining an FA Cup winning team aged 34 a year later, for his efforts he jointly won (the Football Writer's Award) FWA player of the year along with Dave Mackay.
Before then going on to unbelievably win the first UEFA and domestic double by any English football team, when he captained City to glory in the League Cup and UEFA Cup Winners Cup at the age of 35.
I'm not sure somebody starting his football league career so late, has ever been as influential on any club as Skip has his story is fairytale stuff.

Following his retirement after the end of his playing days he had pretty much every conceivable role at the club, which shows how important he is to us even managing us to a League Cup win and being extremely unlucky to not win us another top flight league title during his reign, finishing just behind the Liverpool minus our most important player Colin Bell and had Bell been fit that season it's very likely we'd have won that too.

You listen to the way the lads from the youth teams of the1980s and 90's talk about him too, it's always with the utmost respect in many ways Skip truly was Mr Manchester City and loved our great club.

The word legend gets thrown about a lot nowadays way too much but I believe Tony Book is one of the very biggest legends ever for us, in my opinion he's been an absolute stalwart of our great club over his many years of service, he also should've in my opinion had a statue just like the holy trinity with his massive contribution to the club.

An absolute legend and not just Manchester City either, an English football legend too he deserves that label in every sense of the word.

Tony "Skip" Book 1934-2025.

R.I.P.

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Bumped into him a few times in Sale and always had time for a chat.
A true legend of our great club and he will be sorely missed by all.
RIP Skip.
 
I was lucky to able to sit and have a chat with Tony during the train journey down to London on the way to the 1981 cup final.
I was just a 9 year old kid at the time and Tony was travelling in same carriage as us.

He was a really nice guy.

I recall him saying that he’d been invited to the 100th FA Cup Final as a previous winning captain … from before I was born.
 
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