Images from City's history / international round-up

There's a fantastic collection of 34 historic video clips at YouTube. Highlights include the 1955, 1956 and 1981 Cup finals, the 1970 and 1976 League Cup finals, the 'ballet on ice' from November 1967 and a 17min clip from the title-winning game at Newcastle in 1968. There's also footage of the team training from the 1930s which shows what Maine Road used to look like.

Staying in the 1930s I received an email from Pamela Haynes, who found this autographed photo of the 1934 Cup-winning team in a pile of old papers:





Pamela wrote to the City museum and received a reply from club historian Gary James, who told her the photo was taken on a piece of land close to Claremont Road & Maine Road a few days before the 1934 Cup final on April 28th (the shirt and badge was worn exclusively for the final).

Pamela believes the picture came to be in her possession through a now-deceased relative called Lesley Hayward, a cloth merchant based in Moseley Street who supplied the material for the team's suits. If anyone has more information about the picture or Pamela's relative please email me at purelymancity@hotmail.co.uk and I'll pass it on.

And finishing off the historic theme, life-long City fan Trevor Boswell has put a history of the 1971-72 season on his new website and plans to add more seasons in the next few months. For a reminder of how damned good that side was here's a clip of the 3-2 win at Everton from 1972, which includes a pretty spectacular Everton own goal.

~ King of the Kippax's Dave Wallace has put together this excellent compilation of the best and worst City goals.

~ You can find team photos from 1880 onwards, as well as historic pictures of Maine Road, in the Images section here.



International round-up

Five out of five clean sheets involving all three of our keepers, five goals, two sendings off and two dead grandmothers. No reports of injuries so far while the other pluses have to be the return of Isakkson and the penalties scored by Elano and Petrov. Actually, when was the last time we had two international penalty takers at City?

Another question that struck me during the England game on Wednesday was whether we were watching McClaren's team or Venables's, because it certainly brought back memories of 1996 for me.

Below are the City players who have been in action for their countries (all played 90mins unless stated). You can find match details for most of the games at Uefa.com.


Friday 7th
Hart (England u-21): clean sheet
Johnson (England u-21): unplayed sub
Onuoha (England u-21): scored
Schmeichel (Denmark u-21): clean sheet

Saturday 8th
Corluka (Croatia)
Dunne (RoI)
Gelson Fernandes (Switzerland u-21): sent off
Ireland (RoI): scored
Isakkson (Sweden): clean sheet
Petrov (Bulgaria)
Richards (England): scored

Sunday 9th
Elano (Brazil): sub 78min, scored pen

Tuesday 11th
Hart (England u21): clean sheet
Onuoha (England u21)

Wednesday 12th
Corluka (Croatia)
Dunne (RoI)
Petrov (Bulgaria): scored pen, subbed 60min
Richards (England)
Samaras (Greece): sub 76
Schmeichel (Denmark u-21): clean sheet

Thursday 13th
Elano (Brazil): sub, sent off 80mins



City's finances

I'm holding over the stories about City's finances, and Premiership finances in general, until next week as I'd like to get my hands on a bit more information first.

In case you missed it, there was a fascinating feature by David Conn in The Guardian recently, which explains Jerome Anderson's connection with City (Harry Harry in the Daily Express claims Anderson has earned £7m in commission from us so far). It also details the role played in the takeover by Philippe Huber, whose company Kentaro signed a media deal with City last week.

~ US-based City fan Simon-Peter Vickers-Buckley has an interesting theory about the role Huber might have played in Thaksin's recent outburst about Swiss banking, which you can read at his mcfctrueblue site.