The Breaking up of great City teams?

[Blue Streak]

Now this is obviously a topic for the older fans we have. I was born in 1975 so missed the two 70's teams but I'm really interested to hear the thoughts of those who saw all of this?

Firstly! was the Mercer/Allison team broken up to early? I know the politics at Maine Road at the time with Joe and Mal falling out and the influence of Swales didn't help and many people felt Francis Lee was sold before he should have been. Also the Marsh signing meant we missed out on the title in 71/72 when we should have won it. But what do people think?

The more interesting one for me actually is the breaking up of the late 70's team. Bringing Mal back and selling all the star players we did and replacing them with unknown quantities. How did people feel? did you/they believe in Swales and Mal selling off the crown jewels and replacing them or did people feel it was the wrong thing to do? I know a lot of people felt proud City could afford the million pound fees they were paying (although we ultimately suffered for it in the long run) but it was to the sacrifice of a lot of good international players. Had City reached a crossroads at the time and extensive surgery required or was it drastic action?

Basically was it too much to soon?

 

[Citizen of Legoland]

I remember joy at seeing Allison back at the club, quickly followed by dread at what he and Swales started doing to the squad. Even in those pre-forum, pre-multi-channel times it was plain to see that losing so many loyal regular players in a short amount of time was going to cause trouble. Spending money like it was going out of fashion was funny though.

 

[gordondaviesmoustache]

Malcolm Allison embarked on a reckless, ill-considered and ultimately utterly selfish ego trip when he broke up that team in the manner he did.

A team full of internationals that had finished 2nd and 4th in 1977 & 78 it should be remembered. This wasn't a particularly old squad and these were the days when large changes in personnel had an even more profound effect on the squad than today with the size of squads that now prevail. Change was required but not to anything like the extent that occurred.

To replace Barnes, Owen and Watson with the likes of Silkman, Daley and Stepanovic was utter lunacy.

Of his big buys possibly Mackenzie and Robinson offered him some form of limited vindication- only the former when he was still at City.

We were still feeling the effects of this power fueled gamble with the club's future nearly 30 years later when Sheikh Mansour decided to take a punt on a perennially underachieving football club that had become a byword for epic failure.

Paradoxically Swales, as much of an egomaniac as Allison, was equally culpable - but not because he exercised too much control over the club at that time, but in actual fact , far too little. He allowed the man he'd decided to bring back to mortgage the future of the club and thus cripple it for a generation, without any apparent consideration for the consequences.

Still, all's well that ends well, I guess!

 

[the blue panther]

I remember joy at seeing Allison back at the club, quickly followed by dread at what he and Swales started doing to the squad. Even in those pre-forum, pre-multi-channel times it was plain to see that losing so many loyal regular players in a short amount of time was going to cause trouble. Spending money like it was going out of fashion was funny though.

Spot on - we could all see it, and to some extent, we could all see what Alison was trying to do. It just didn't work! We'd been at or near the top for the best part of 10/12 years and recklessly just threw it all away.

 

[jimmygrimblesboots]

Big Mal came back and broke up a very good top 4 side , he put our club back 10 years in a matter of months , loved his '68 side , but what he did on his return was scandalous , and swales was stupid enough to let him , Malcolm was a brilliant coach but without a Mercer type figure , to reign him in , he was a liability.

 

[Paul Lake's Left Knee]

The way Joe and Kevin went about breaking up this team was a joy to be hold. Sorry if these names bring any cold sweats or nightmares for anyone.

GK Wales Martyn Margetson
GK Northern Ireland Tommy Wright
DF England Paul Beesley
DF England Ian Brightwell
DF England Lee Briscoe
DF England Lee Crooks
DF England Richard Edghill
DF England Richard Jobson
DF England Alan Kernaghan
DF England Dave Morley
DF Georgia (country) Murtaz Shelia
DF Wales Kit Symons
DF Georgia (country) Kakhaber Tskhadadze
DF Australia Jason van Blerk
DF England Tony Vaughan
DF/MF Netherlands Gerard Wiekens
MF England Peter Beardsley
MF England Ian Bishop
MF England Ged Brannan
MF England Michael Brown
MF England Neil Heaney
MF Northern Ireland Kevin Horlock
MF Georgia (country) Georgi Kinkladze
MF Republic of Ireland Eddie McGoldrick
MF Scotland Jamie Pollock
MF Republic of Ireland Tony Scully
MF England Nicky Summerbee
MF Northern Ireland Jeff Whitley
MF Northern Ireland Jim Whitley
FW England Lee Bradbury
FW Scotland Gerry Creaney
FW Republic of Ireland Barry Conlon
FW Scotland Paul Dickov
FW Bermuda Shaun Goater
FW England Chris Greenacre
FW Republic of Ireland Ray Kelly
FW Germany Uwe Rösler
FW England Craig Russell

 

[jimharri]

Allison was a fantastic coach working with Joe, but as a manager he was an unmitigated disaster. He broke up a fantastic team that had (under Tony Book) come within a point of pipping an immense Liverpool team to the title. Barnes, Owen, Hartford, Donachie, Kidd, Royle, Tueart, Watson, Doyle, Corrigan etc etc. And he shipped out just about everyone of them in a very short period of time and, in the process, damn near killing the club off at the same time with his financial cluelessness. Ably assisted by Swales. We were still suffering for that period pretty much up until HRH came in.

 

[Wilf Wild 1937]

The big difference between what happened to the Mercer/Allison team and the Tony Book team was that one changed slowly over time where as
the other was vandalised. Tony Book's team still contained some of the 1968 players like Oakes & Doyle (Bell as well prior to his injury) as well as
Corrigan who was first choice as a lad in 1970. Francis Lee probably did need a move when we sold him. I doubt he would have recreated his
form at Derby County if he had stayed at Maine Road. He seemed to be slowly fading when we sold him. Peter Barnes came through the ranks
and Summerbee was slowly phased out. We were a well run club in those days, I think the feeling from about 1973 onwards was that a rebuild
was required but it was done slowly with a mixture of successful big money buys like Dave Watson, Asa Hartford and Dennis Tueart as well as
home grown talent like Gary Owen. Allison's return would have finished City as a genuine big club forever if Sheikh Mansour hadn't taken over.
In the end we got lucky and it only cost us 30 years. At the time he was doing it the fans and the pundits all thought he was mad.

 

[petrusha]

When Mal came back midway through the 1978/9 season, Book's team was showing signs of decline. We weren't in a relegation fight, but we were two thirds of the way down the table, out of the League Cup and had lost as many home games by Christmas as in the previous two and a half seasons put together, IIRC. We'd had a two or three great nights in the UEFA Cup that autumn, especially the tie against Milan, but displays like that were the exception and the team did look in need of a bit of a shake up.

Book's two big signings as he looked to build on the excellent season in 1976/7 had both disappointed - Mick Channon got a goal every 3 games for us so hadn't proved a disaster but he wasn't worth the big fee we paid for him, while Paul Futcher looked out of his depth even though we paid big money for him by the standards of the time and Kazi Deyna was finding the English game hard to adapt to. Colin Bell had come back but was manifestly not the same player and we badly needed another top-class midfielder rather than stop-gaps along the lines of Conway and Viljoen. (Dennis Tueart said in his autobiography that we should have gone for Graeme Souness in 1977 rather than buying Channon, which I think is an excellent call, actually).

However, while I do think that some surgery was needed, I mean a couple of buys and maybe giving the odd kid or two a game, not ripping the team apart as Allison did. We let a lot of players go who could have continued to play an important part at City into the 1980s - not just young players like Barnes and Owen (whose departures gave the lie to the idea that Mal's main aim was to rejuvenate the side) but the likes of Watson and Hartford.

It does need to be pointed out, though, that the reason the episode was so catastrophic was that we made a vast loss on the transfer dealings. If we'd replaced one set of players with another inferior group but made a profit or broken even, that would have been one thing. However, we spent a fortune on the new players, sold the old ones cheap and thus saddled ourselves with a huge debt that hamstrung the club for years. Daley and Robinson cost more than GBP 2.15 for the pair, while Barnes, Owen, Hartford, Watson and Brian Kidd were sold for just under GBP 2 million combined. It's enough to make you weep.

Swales and Allison each blamed one another for this. Tony Book, though, in his autobiography backs Allison up and claims that it was Peter Swales who negotiated the fees for Daley and Robinson - and I'm inclined to believe Book, who I think is a very honest guy. Allison deserves roundly castigating for what happened at City in his second spell, but we have to remember that Swales was just as culpable, if not more so, for the way it had a catastrophic impact on our club for years to come.

 

[gordondaviesmoustache]

When Mal came back midway through the 1978/9 season, Book's team was showing signs of decline. We weren't in a relegation fight, but we were two thirds of the way down the table, out of the League Cup and had lost as many home games by Christmas as in the previous two and a half seasons put together, IIRC. We'd had a two or three great nights in the UEFA Cup that autumn, especially the tie against Milan, but displays like that were the exception and the team did look in need of a bit of a shake up.

I do recall our poor league form in 1978/9 was widely attributed to the distraction that our positive run in Europe provided that season.