if kenny hadnt broke his leg against ipswich in 1978, ranson wouldnt have got a sniff in, ever...fact!!!isab23502 said:For me - the "turn" for that team was when Dennis Tueart left. We were pretty poor for the whole period from end of winter 1977-1978 right through to the summer clear out of 1979 under Big Mal - so for me the thing to note is that even with the "Book players" we were doing as badly as we did with the "Mal players" the following year. In particular - we went months without a win (or was it home win?) under Book in 1978/1979 and seemingly had lost the ability to defend and also to score goals at home. Perhaps then - the previous couple of seasons had been a flash in the pan, what with the young unknown Barnes coming into prominence, and we had been sussed by 1978? If you look at any of the You Tube footage from 1978/1979 even before Mal came back- City look absolutely clueless.
If we had kept Bookie and Bill Taylor - this is the kind of surgery (with benefit of hindsight, big style!) which might have kept us moving forward:
Joe Corrigan - keep
Kenny Clements - flog (not v good), probably Ray Ranson was about as good a young RB as was around at the time so give him a go
Dave Watson - keep longer and pay him wages needed to keep him from abroad
Terry Butcher - offer Ipswich £750k for their young defender instead of buying Robinson for that price
Willie Donachie - flog as past his best; buy Kenny Sansom from Palace for £1 million
Peter Barnes - flog for 750k as too one dimensional - buy someone like Arnold Muhren for 500k
Asa Hartford - keep
Garry Owen - flog for 400k and buy Bryan Robson for 1 million
Paul Power - keep
Strikers - all flog
Buy Rush £300k
Buy Peter Withe for £200k
de niro said:what I find amusing is how important it was back then that we won a game, that we got to a final, stayed up etc. if city lost i'd sulk forever. nowadays as we are a lot older I for one couldn't give a rats arse, I care of course and it would be great to be champions again but really does it matter? does it fuck.
This is so true. People forget how close we were to beating Liverpool that season. At the time they were the best side in Europe. The Book side was a lot better defensively than the Championship-winning team of 68. We were a couple of players away from being a hugely successful side. What killed us was another suicide mission by Peter Swales.djimaldblue said:At the time Liverpool had emerged as the dominant team in England- they would go on to dominate for another 15 years.
The fact that we finished runners up to them by a single point in 76/77 showed just how good we were under Tony Book in that particular season. We had won the League Cup in the previous season and my opinion is that we could have gone on to challenge for the league in the following seasons.
However we seemed to decline rather than progress although not by much. We were by that time giving regular appearances to the likes of Ged Keegan and Kenny Clements who were both Blue through and through but sadly were not up to the standard of playing in a championship winning team.
Given the disappointment of our decline, Peter Swales panicked and brought in Malcolm Allison as manager. Although he tried his best he decimated Book's team and bought very poorly. We gave a lot of money for Steve Daley who was never worth the price, bought Barry Silkman (I hear you saying who?) and Michael Robinson. None of these players proved any good at all.
Allison, it must be said was loyal and tried his best but he was simply not good enough.
His successor, John Bond bough three players and very nearly took us to FA cup glory with more or less the same squad of players.
The rest is history!
I didn't think we were that close Liverpool were by far the best team that season when they got that fluky equalizer against us at Maine Road it was to much for us if memory serves me right when we'd played our 42 they still had Bristol City to play which they lost doubt very much they would have if they needed it to win the league. (losing home and away to a very average Utd team didn't help either)bobbyowenquiff said:This is so true. People forget how close we were to beating Liverpool that season. At the time they were the best side in Europe. The Book side was a lot better defensively than the Championship-winning team of 68. We were a couple of players away from being a hugely successful side. What killed us was another suicide mission by Peter Swales.djimaldblue said:At the time Liverpool had emerged as the dominant team in England- they would go on to dominate for another 15 years.
The fact that we finished runners up to them by a single point in 76/77 showed just how good we were under Tony Book in that particular season. We had won the League Cup in the previous season and my opinion is that we could have gone on to challenge for the league in the following seasons.
However we seemed to decline rather than progress although not by much. We were by that time giving regular appearances to the likes of Ged Keegan and Kenny Clements who were both Blue through and through but sadly were not up to the standard of playing in a championship winning team.
Given the disappointment of our decline, Peter Swales panicked and brought in Malcolm Allison as manager. Although he tried his best he decimated Book's team and bought very poorly. We gave a lot of money for Steve Daley who was never worth the price, bought Barry Silkman (I hear you saying who?) and Michael Robinson. None of these players proved any good at all.
Allison, it must be said was loyal and tried his best but he was simply not good enough.
His successor, John Bond bough three players and very nearly took us to FA cup glory with more or less the same squad of players.
The rest is history!
Blue Streak said:Just a reflection and interested in seeking opinions of the Blues around at the time really? after finishing 2nd and 4th as well as winning the League Cup in 76 what was required to really 'kick' City on?
Obviously the choice was taken to bring back Allison and we all know that didn't work? but what were the options at the time? or would sticking with Skip have resulted in further success?
I know many think the injury to Colin Bell effectively ruined City's chances and I believed they tried in vain to sign Alan Ball but just wondered if any others had any alternative viewpoints?
I'm bored of discussing food ;-)