The Blog

A tabloid exclusive that was true (and other historic documents)

2012-01-19T06:22:00.000-08:00

I've created a Documents section at The Mancunian Way, which has images of newspaper cuttings and other items of relating to City's history.

I've written a piece about a few of the more interesting items, which can be viewed here.

June 22nd 1867: The start of the Manchester City story?

2012-01-16T06:38:00.000-08:00

I've just written the first of a series of pieces about City's origins.

It's based on new research and reveals, for the first time, a likely date that St Mark's first played team sport.

And to those misguided folk who believe that City have no history, it should be pointed out that this new evidence suggests that the Manchester City story plays a significant role in the development of sport as a popular pastime in this country.

Read the full story at The Mancunian Way by clicking here.

City v United: the selection options

2012-01-07T07:22:00.000-08:00

Below are couple of tables showing which players are likely to be available for both sides tomorrow, and how much action each player has seen in the last week.

City's options

Mins played

	Sun 1 15.00	Tues 3 20.00
Richards		90
Zabaleta	90
Kompany	90	90
Lescott	90	14
Kolorov	90
Clichy		90
Savic

De Jong	46
Milner		90
Silva	35	76
Johnson	90	19

Aguero	44	71

Doubts about
Dzeko	90	90
Nasri		55
Unlikely
Balotelli
Kolo Toure		90
Yaya Toure	90	90
Fringe
Hargreaves
Razak
Suarez
Onouha
Rekik

The latest training report from Doug Higginbottom reveals that Dzeko appears to be fit, but Hargreaves was "obviously not match fit and needing more work." The Toure brothers didn't feature in training today (Saturday).

A look at United's options makes more interesting reading, and shows a real selection headache for Ferguson in midfield. Nani and Carrick have both played 180 minutes in the last week, while the 38-year-old Giggs played a full game on Wednesday night. I suspect Ferguson might use Wellbeck in midfield, but he's still going to be forced to choose between experienced tired legs or inexperienced fresh ones.

United's options

Mins played

	Sat 31 12.45	Wed 4 20.00	Age
Valencia	90	90
Rafael	85
Jones	90	90
Evra	90	90	(30y 7m)
Ferdinand		90	(33y 2m)

Carrick	90	90	(30y 5m)
Park	90	65	(30y 10m)
Anderson	44	16
Giggs		90	(38y 1m)
Nani	90	90

Rooney		74
Berbatov	90	57	(30y 11m)
Hernandez	46	25
Wellbeck		33

Doubts about
Smalling	5
Fringe
Diouf
Cole
Keane
Pogba

Life and death in West Gorton

2012-01-03T04:43:00.000-08:00

Strange and unexpected deaths on and around the football field - and a look at what life was like in West Gorton in Victorian times.

Click here to read the full story at The Mancunian Way.

The City manager who became a train crash hero

2011-12-06T05:16:00.000-08:00

..And how the FA ruined his career.

Click here to read the story at The Mancunian Way

City uncovered: getting naked in the 1950s

2011-11-23T01:00:00.000-08:00

I discovered a great set of City photos from 1951 recently, which give a wonderful insight into training methods back then.

And provide a little eye candy for the ladies.

Click here to view the story at The Mancunian Way.

Mario Balotelli: the facts & the fiction

2011-11-20T18:19:00.000-08:00

Not since the days of Eric Cantona has a player earned such a reputation for eccentricity and outrageous behaviour. But how much of what we're told about Mario Balotelli is actually true? Using my own experiences working on national newspapers I've taken a careful look through all the stories written about him since his move to City in order to figure out how much of it appears true, and how much is media creation.

But first, it's helpful to take a look at how Balotelli first hit the headlines during his time at Inter.

Balotelli entered the consciousness of the Italian public in April 2009, after he was racially abused by Juventus fans during a match in Turin. Italian football authorities condemned the chants and imposed sanctions on the club, but to little effect. The abuse continued - Balotelli was targeted with chants such as: "There's no such thing as an Italian negro" - questions were asked in the Italian parliament, and by the 2009-10 season the case had become a symbol for Italian race relations.

Although seemingly let down by the lack of support from Inter manager Jose Mourinho, it should be noted that Mario's behaviour during the latter part of the 09-10 season didn't exactly build bridges. On 1st April he was forced to issue an apology to fans after he wore an AC Milan shirt during a television show and admitted he was a boyhood Milan fan. Three weeks later the situation had broken down beyond repair. At the end of a Champions League win against Barcelona, Balotelli threw his shirt away in anger after being jeered by Inter fans, who were unhappy at his performance after coming off the bench. According to Barcalona's Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Balotelli was then physically attacked by Inter's Marco Materazzi.

The following month Balotelli was again at the centre of the race issue. During the Coppa Italia final, Francesco Totti was sent off after he chased Balotelli for about 25 yards before wildly kicking him in the back of the leg (video of the incident here). Balotelli claimed that Totti also called him a "nigger piece of shit", a claim Totti denied.

The origins of "Mad Mario"

Up to this point Balotelli's wider fame was largely based around these race incidents. But the beginnings of his transformation into "Mad Mario" began with a story in Italy's La Repubblica on 27th June 2010, which claimed that Balotelli had been given a police warning after being part of a group who were playing with a toy gun in a Milan piazza. On 30th June Chelsea manager Carlos Ancelotti called him a "crazy talent" (though looking at the quote in context he doesn't appear to be having a dig at the player). In August 2010, shortly after joining City, he crashed his high-performance car, joining the likes of Anderson and Ronaldo in demonstrating that performance cars and young drivers are are not a good mix (Mario later admitted he shouldn't have ignored his parents advice about getting a car with right-hand drive).

Then in October came the story that he had "broken into" a women's prison. The reality though was rather more mundane. According to one of the officers at the prison, Balotelli and his brother had driven through the open front gates of the prison, not realising they needed special permission. After checking the identities of the pair they were allowed to drive away. "At the end they both appeared a bit frightened," the prison officer remarked.

But the media was now rubbing its hands with glee that such a goldmine of entertainment had arrived at what was now the most talked-about club in the country. A sending off during his second game at West Brom, and a few critical comments by Mancini in January soon added to his "bad boy" reputation.

But it was the sending-off on 17th March against Dynamo Kiev that ignited the mass of inflammable material that had been building up around him for months. That moment of hot-headedness was to transform "temperamental" Balotelli into "Mad Mario". And you'll probably not be shocked to discover that the driving force behind it was The Sun newspaper.

On 25th March the paper ran an exclusive, which it headlined He's Ballooney. The story claimed that, whilst dining at a posh restaurant, Balotelli had verbally taunted Jenny Thompson - a prostitute who's only claim to fame is that she had slept with Wayne Rooney - and tried to start a fight with Thompson's male companion.

'Horrified diners heard the £180,000-a-week ace chant "Rooney, Rooney" after spotting Jenny coming back from the ladies...Balotelli then burst out laughing and flicked the finger at Jenny's friends'. Sam Birch, a 20-year-old "property developer", valiently came to Thompson's defence, demanding Balotelli step outside. "He was acting crazy. I think he is unhinged," the Burberry cap-wearing Birch added.

A cock and bull story?

The two sources quoted in the story don't exactly shout "credibility". Jenny Thompson is a person clinging for dear life to the bottom rung of the celebrity ladder, while Sam Birch (pictured left) posts semi-naked pictures of himself on the Netlog social networking site. Birch is certainly a popular guy though. According to his Netlog profile he has 166 friends and all of them appear to be "babes".

How tabloids work

Now at this point I'd like to go into a bit of detail about how the editorial process works on British tabloids.

The "Ballooney" story was written by Sun news reporter Richard Moriarty, who specialises in footballer-related shockers. And you don't need to be a Sherlock Holmes to figure out where this particular Moriarty got his story from. The previous day Moriarty had written another story about Thompson, revealing she was planning to attend Ladies' Day at Ascot, where Coleen Rooney would also be present. "They're not looking for confrontation," a friend told The Sun: "They just love horses" (a few months earlier Coleen Rooney had complained about Thompson repeatedly turning up at the same venues as her). He's also penned the stories Rooney hooker and the Toon star (Nov 2010), Rooney vice girl ‘in OD’ (11th June) and Rooney vice girl rescued from fire (15th June).

Before tabloid journalists write a contentious story about a celebrity they ask one all-important question: "Does the celebrity sue?" Ryan Giggs, for instance, is known to never sue. In fact, he has always refused to have any dealings with the press whatsoever (a search though his stories at Journalisted reveals that Moriarty has written 13 Ryan Giggs-related stories, including eight in eight days between 6th-14th June).

Mario, it appears, does not sue. Nor is he on the books of a big agency that can trade a story like the restaurant one away (you can find details about how this process works in Tabloid tales: how Micah got screwed). Better still, Mario has an unfortunate habit of attracting the limelight at just the wrong time. Indeed, three days after this story appeared came the darts incident.

It's important to note that no firms details have ever emerged about the darts incident, and certainly nothing to suggest that he was endangering anyone at the club. Although the lack of a denial suggests that something did take place it should also be noted that there is no record of Mario being fined over it. However, it did create the appearance of a man spinning out of control, one that the Cup semi-final incident on 17th April did little to dispel.

Then came two stories from The Sun's showbiz column, Bizarre. Although both showed him in a positive light, they also cemented his image as a mad-cap eccentric. Now, there's one thing you need to keep in mind when reading a story in the showbiz section of a tabloid newspaper: it's probably bullshit. The reason I know this is that, for roughly five years, I sat next to the showbiz desk on a British tabloid.

There are many stories I could recall, but I'll pick just one.

A showbiz writer had returned from a film premiere attended by Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman. He'd posed for a quick photo with Cruise and had written up a short piece along the lines of "here's me and my good mate Tom Cruise" (a technique first used by Piers Morgan during his early days as a Sun showbiz reporter which, initially, was very tongue-in-cheek). His boss, though, was unimpressed with his efforts. "Here, I'll show you how to write a story," he said. He then proceeded to write a few hundred words of total fiction, complete with strong hints of an affair between the writer and Kidman - including jealous glances from Cruise - which culminated with an irate Cruise pulling his wife away from his "love-rival". The story became a page lead in the main news section - and both journalists have since gone on to better things.

Mario's first appearance in the Bizarre column came on 20th April, with a story claiming he had given money to a tramp following a casino win. I'll be generous and give them the benefit of the doubt on that one, as it's a story that at least could be true. But the Bizarre story on 10th May claiming he had helped a kid who was being bullied really doesn't stand up to scrutiny. Neither the boy nor the school are named, and questions such as "why did a headmaster completely disregard guidelines to invite a single man into his school who has no connection with any of his pupils?" remain unanswered.

However, by this time Balotelli had been confirmed as Britain's No1 eccentric, buffoon and bad boy. Even the Guardian said so. Indeed, "Mad" Mario was soon to develop Mafia connections though, rather like the prison episode, the incident appears to be born out of mere curiosity.

Either side of the Mario Mafia story came two incidents that probably tell us more about Balotelli's personality and lifestyle than anything else. First came his showboating antics against the LA Galaxy, which rightly earned the scorn of his manager - and the adoration of fans. Then came the infamous fireworks incident. It's important to note Balotelli's explanation of events:

"I didn’t set any fireworks off, it was a friend of mine. I didn’t know anything about it until I heard the shouting coming from the bathroom. 'Luckily, nobody was injured, and my friend apologised to me for the damage to my house. It was a really stupid thing for him to do, someone could have been really hurt, and I was really, really angry with him about it" (those quotes were condensed to "I was really, really angry" in The Sun).

And the stories just kept on coming. Following the derby win rumours circulated on social networking sites, talkboards and even Sky Sports News that Mario was driving around Manchester in a convertible high-fiving City fans. The fact that not a single mobile phone image has emerged to verify this means we can conclude that this too only happened in someone's imagination. The following day came a story claiming that, after being sent out to buy an ironing board, he instead returned with a giant trampoline, scalextric, two vespas and a table tennis set (the story was later refuted by Mario's girlfriend Raffaella Fico).

And do you wanna take a wild stab in the dark about where that story first appeared? Yep, you guessed it - The Sun's Bizarre column, who used that most cast-iron of sources to stand the story up, an anonymous Tweet.

So what exactly are we left with? Most likely a fun-loving prankster who, like most young men nowadays, is a little too immature. Actually, forget the nowadays. At his age I was still walking over parked cars on the way back from the pub, so I can hardly talk. And considering how much spare time footballers have, how rich they've become and how restricted they are in their off-field activities, I'm constantly amazed that young single players aren't doing more mad-cap stuff. In fact, I'm starting to think that the main reason that footballers raise families at a much younger age than average is that it gives them something to do aside from playing video games.

Of course, there is another side to Mario. The young man with a somewhat difficult upbringing, who comes across as thoughtful in this Vanity Fair interview and again in this official interview. Then there's his charitable work on behalf of child soldiers. But again, let's not be swayed too much by the positive press either. In fact, I'd agree with the comments of Mike, on CityMancs:

"These articles are commonplace and if you search you can find one similar for every player out there. Loads of charity work, a gentle soul really who nobody understands, etc. I have trouble seeing them as anything other than propaganda. Furthermore, I couldn´t care less if he is a loose canon and a miserable, selfish twot who never does anything for anybody else. He´s paid to play football and if he does so well for my team, anything on top of that, good and genuine as it may be, or otherwise, is his business. This fashion of demanding that footballers have a duty to do good elsewhere just breeds hypocrisy and all too many just ´play the game´ and pay lip service to one cause or other on the advice of their entourage to make them look good (or at least not bad).

At the end of the day though, all I really care about is that he helps City win something."

So why always you, Mario?

Because media companies need to sell newspapers and attract viewers and listeners. Because you're prodigiously talented. Because you're playing for the most talked-about club in the country. Because you're a show-off and a prankster. Because it has to be someone.

And it sure as hell ain't going to be James Milner.

Coming up on Purely Man City

I'm aiming to run at least one main feature a week from now on. I'll also be running a "Best of the Boards" feature each Friday, bringing you the best comments posted on City's talkboards that week.

Mancini has best points haul in City's history

2011-11-06T18:40:00.000-08:00

Roberto Mancini has the best top-flight points-per game average in City's history.

Click here to view the historic managers tables at MCFChistory.com

The all-time City hardmen XI: part one

2011-10-31T21:58:00.000-07:00

Starting with the back four, the goalkeeper... and the manager.

Click here to read the full story at MCFChistory.com

The Monday Mystery: how much did Tevez cost?

2011-10-30T21:04:00.000-07:00

Few transfer fees have been the subject of such controversy - and so many claims and counter-claims.

But a closer look at City's accounts might now provide the answer.

Click here to read the full story at MCFChistory.com.

Who was the greatest City chairman ever?

2011-10-25T19:41:00.000-07:00

I've just added a new section to MCFChistory which lists the achievements of the 19 chairmen City have had since 1894.
I've also included photos of each of them.

Click here to see how each chairman fared - and what they looked like.

Sex and the City

2011-10-24T19:08:00.000-07:00

From X-rated cine films to visits to Amsterdam brothels. Some saucy snippets from City's past.

Click here to read the full story at MCFChistory.

6-1: Back to the glory days?

2011-10-23T20:57:00.000-07:00

The signs are all pointing to a new era of City dominance over our historic rivals.

But which other eras saw City outshine United, and how long did they last?

Click here to read the full story at MCFChistory.

Why United owe us £3,292,526,639

2011-10-19T18:32:00.000-07:00

How an unfinished piece of business following the bombing of Old Trafford by the Luftwaffe in 1941 has left United forever

in our debt.

Click here to read the full story at MCFChistory.com

Historic gallery of Hyde Road / The birth of City

2011-10-18T18:55:00.000-07:00

A new gallery containing 50 historic photos of City's old Hyde Road ground is available here.

Links to collections of City photos and videos are listed in the Images section at MCFChistory.com.

Also new at MCFChistory.com is the final instalment of Politics, Corruption and the Rise of Manchester City, which covers the death of Ardwick AFC's president Stephen Chesters Thompson, and the birth of Manchester City Football Club.

Click here to read the story.

City's best start to a season ever.. & the worst example of stewarding

2011-10-16T20:37:00.000-07:00

No City team in history has won so many points at this stage in the season.

A table listing City's best starts to a season in the top flight can be found at MCFChistory.com. The piece also contains details of the shocking treatment handed out to a 60-year old City fan during Saturday's match.

Read the story at MCFChistory.com.

City squad photos: 1884 to the present

2011-10-12T06:56:00.000-07:00

My first picture gallery, which contains 111 photos of City squads, is now online.

Click here to view the gallery.

More details about the photos can be found at MCFChistory.com.

I'll be adding a gallery each week for the next couple of months. Next week's will feature the old Hyde Road ground.

Politics, Corruption and the Rise of Manchester City (Part 2)

2011-10-10T18:32:00.000-07:00

He masterminded election wins for future Prime Minister, Arthur Balfour, and bankrolled his football club to secure working-class votes. Stephen Chesters Thompson, the "king of Ardwick" was a man on a seemingly unstoppable rise.

But now his enemies were massing for attack. And very soon his power - and Ardwick AFC's existence - would be hanging by a thread.

Read part two of Politics, Corruption and the Rise of Manchester City by clicking here.

(part one here)

The Monday Mystery: Why did Steve Coppell Resign?

2011-10-09T00:39:00.000-07:00

October 6th 1996. In the wake of the disastrous reign of Alan Ball, City were managerless and in 14th place in the second tier of English football. But the six-week wait for a new manager - which had seen a staggering 35 names linked with the vacancy - had finally come to an end.

"I'm an animal who tends to roost wherever he stays," new manager Steve Coppell told reporters at his first press conference. "I was at United and Palace for nine years apiece, and I hope that City is a long-term rather than a short-term move."

Just 33 days later Coppell quit.

Click here to view the full story behind his departure at MCFChistory.com

Malcolm Allison's most outrageous exploits

2011-10-05T08:45:00.000-07:00

My latest offering at MCFChistory.com is about the roguish antics of our legendary former coach and manager, Malcolm Allison.

The list of exploits includes his part in the doping of Sir Alf Ramsey's greyhound, and the time he pretended to buy a nightclub - just so he could so he could carry on drinking.

Click here to view the story.

Politics, Corruption and the Rise of Manchester City Football Club

2011-10-04T06:50:00.000-07:00

He was a controversial politician who funded City for his political ends. Charged with business and election fraud, his many legal battles resulted in him losing control of the club - and ushered in a new era for Manchester City.

But his name wasn’t Thaksin Shinawatra.

Meet Stephen Chesters Thompson, the force behind City’s sudden rise as Manchester’s biggest football club. Dubbed the “King of Ardwick” in the press, Chesters Thompson was a flamboyant and outspoken political fixer - and the trusted right-hand man of a future British Prime Minister. But when political enemies plotted his downfall, he was left bankrupt and broken - and eventually forgotten.

Read about the extraordinary life of Stephen Chesters Thompson at MCFChistory.com

The Monday Mystery: why did we have a Maltese Cross on our shirts?

2011-10-03T09:30:00.000-07:00

The next installment at The Mancunian Way goes right back to our formative years, to explain the mystery of the Maltese Cross that appeared on our shirts in the 1884-85 season.

Click here to view the story.

Something not about Tevez

2011-09-28T04:33:00.001-07:00

If you're looking for a break from all things Tevez, my latest post on MCFChistory.com is available here.

It's a piece about a great picture I came across from 1976, along with some thoughts about the people who ran the club at the time.

And returning briefly to the unavoidable subject of Mr Tevez, I was talking to someone a few months back who goes to a golf club in Wilmslow that Tevez also uses.

He told me that Tevez once turned up with a big entourage who then followed him round the course as he played a round of golf on his own.

This is a strange man that Mancini and our owner now have to deal with.

Something not about Tevez

2011-09-28T04:31:00.000-07:00

If you're looking for a break from all things Tevez, my latest post on MCFChistory.com is available here.

It's a piece about a great picture I came across from 1976, along with some thoughts about the people who ran the club at the time.

And returning briefly to the unavoidable subject of Mr Tevez, I was talking to someone a few months back who goes to a golf club in Wilmslow that Tevez also uses.

He told me that Tevez once turned up with a big entourage who would follow him round the course as he played a round of golf on his own.

This is a strange man that Mancini and our owner now have to deal with.

So how historic are we?

2011-09-27T04:33:00.000-07:00

My second post on MCFChistory, looking at how City compare to other English clubs in historical terms, is available by clicking here.

New City history site launched

2011-09-26T03:07:00.000-07:00

Okay, I've attached the electrodes to the lifeless corpse that is Purely Man City to tell you about a City site I've launched today called The Mancunian Way.

The site is the product of six years research into City's history, which will see the publication of a book in the next few weeks.

I'll be running stories every day Monday to Friday for the foreseeable future. The first one, about the hitherto unknown earliest written history of City that I found on ebay, can be found here.

The Bernard Halford mystery / boardroom update

2008-10-14T06:27:00.000-07:00

It appears that reports of Bernard Halford's demise are much exaggerated. But I'm still puzzled about what's gone on here.

Here is the document that was posted at Companies House, dated Oct 8th, which clearly states that the 67-year-old had his contract terminated on Sep 23rd:

(click on image to enlarge)

However, an announcement on the official site yesterday evening revealed that Halford is to remain in his role as Club Secretary. I'm still trying to find out what brought about this turnaround, though maybe the club should have known better than to mess with a guy dubbed Darth Vader.

The club's official announcement also revealed that Greek shipping tycoon Victor Restis has joined the board. According to the MEN, Restis is a Thaksin nominee and will represent, along with existing director Taweesuk Jack Srisumrid, the 10% stake Thaksin has retained.

Here then is the new board in full:

Chairman
Khaldoon Al Mubarak

Executive Chairman
Garry Cook

Directors
Martin L. Edelman
Simon Pearce
Victor Restis (Thaksin nominee)
Taweesuk Jack Srisumrid (Thaksin nominee)

Another mystery is the role of property lawyer Martin Edelman. In its original story about the boardroom changes published last night, the MEN stated that 'club officials have stressed he (Edelman) is not providing advice on the acquisition of property in and around the Sportcity complex'. That was removed from a re-write of the story this morning, with the paper stating that Edelman was brought in 'for his high powered legal prowess and for his in-depth knowledge of sporting takeovers, having been part of the team that concluded the £1.1billion sale of NFL franchise the Miami Dolphins in February this year'.

A lot has been made of Edelman's involvement in the Miami Dolphins takeover (he was one of 15 lawyers who worked on the deal) but it is important to stress that Edelman is first and foremost a high-powered property lawyer.

In fact, everything about the City takeover shouts 'property deal'. The original spokesman for the takeover, Sulaiman Al-Fahim, is CEO of real estate firm Hydra Properties, while our new chairman has extensive interests in real estate and is a board member of Aldar Developments. Victor Restis is the founder of the Assos Property Group, and represents a recent trend among Greek shipowners to diversify into property, and Thaksin himself has been eager to become a property developer, announcing plans in May to build a new city in Cambodia.

I suppose only time will tell on this one. But it is worth noting that Dubai International Capital's attempt to buy Liverpool last year was based around plans to redevelop Anfield, with The Telegraph revealing that DIC hoped to make an estimated 25% annual return over seven years from its redevelopment.

New directors appointed / Sportcity redevelopment gathers momentum

2008-10-13T07:10:00.001-07:00

Manchester City Football Club now has a new board, according to documents filed at Companies House on Friday.

Six Thai directors - Thaksin Shinawatra, his daughter Pintongta, son Panthongtae, sister Yingluck, Sasin Monvoisin and Worawi Makudi, president of the Thailand FA - have now quit the board. Bryan Bodek, who joined the board in 2000 after BSkyB bought a 9.95% stake, also leaves.

Khaldoon Al Mubarak has been officially confirmed as Chairman while Simon Pearce, the director of strategic communications for Abu Dhabi's Executive Affairs Authority, becomes a director as had been predicted.

But the most interesting appointment is American property lawyer Martin L. Edelman, who becomes a director. Described by New York property magazine, The Real Deal, as 'one of the top real estate attorneys in the city', Edelman (pictured) specialises in complex multi-million pound property transactions, including institutional and international joint ventures.

The appointment is the strongest indication yet that our new owners have major plans to redevelop the 38-acre Sportcity site. Shortly after the takeover was announced last month, the the MEN revealed that the City Council were looking for developers to bankroll a £300m redevelopment of the site. The Council also issued a prior information notice for the project, which described its plans for a 'visitor destination attraction of national or international significance'. The Council hopes the development 'will be internationally distinctive in content and scale' as well as offering 'a cultural and educational experience that caters for a wide consumer audience.'

It's possible that negotiations between the club and the Council are already at an advanced stage. The prior information notice is a legal requirement under European Union law (rather like a firm having to advertise a job vacancy even if it's going to filled internally), so doesn't necessarily mean the Council are actively looking for other bidders. Meetings have already taken place between City and the Council, and Council chief executive Sir Howard Bernstein recently revealed that another meeting with City's new owner Sheikh Mansour is 'scheduled for the next few weeks'.

According to this weekend's Sunday Mirror, the club are hoping to buy CoMS and the surrounding area, but Edelman's expertise at arranging joint ventures, and the Council's known reluctance to sell the land and stadium, suggests that a deal involving joint ownership is looking more likely at this stage.

City's top bananas: Cook, Mubarak and Pearce at the Portsmouth game

~ For an idea of what a redeveloped Sportcity might look like, this site has some interesting pictures of new developments in the UAE, including the Dubai Sport City.

~ A part of City history came to an end last week when club secretary Bernard Halford left his job after 35 years at the club. So far the news has not been announced on the official site, but hopefully they'll see fit to write some sort of tribute to the man dubbed 'Mr Manchester City'.
His departure also makes me wonder who the longest serving City employee currently is. If anyone knows please drop me a line.

Is this the best squad since the 1970s?

2008-09-18T05:37:00.000-07:00

I've just been updating the squad list (below) and have been trying to figure out the last time we had a squad as strong as this. I reckon you have to go back to the 1978-79 season when the team included the likes of Watson, Donachie, Hartford, Barnes and Channon. You can judge for yourself by looking at historic line-ups at MCFC Stats (click on the Matches section, select a year then click line-ups) or you can see a simplified list of City starting XIs since 1959/60 here.

(click on graphic for bigger image)

When the contracts come up

With Michael Johnson finally signing a four-and-half-year deal yesterday, our only real concern now is getting Sturridge and Hart to sign new contracts (as Petrov will be 31-years-old when his contract ends I imagine we'll be in no rush to tie him into a longer deal).

Below is the full list of when the contracts come up. The dates in brackets refer to the year players are able to leave by buying up their contracts. This recent development is the result of the Webster Ruling, which allows players under 28-years-old to buy out the remainder of a contract three years after it was signed, while a player over 28 can buy out his contract after two years. In the case of Micah Richards, for instance, it means the club will have to negotiate a new deal with him some time in 2010, despite the fact he signed a five-and-a-half year deal in February.

2009
Jan) N Castillo
Michael Ball
Danny Mills
Gláuber Berti
Dietmar Hamann
Darius Vassell
Daniel Sturridge

2010
Joe Hart (2009)
Shaleum Logan (2010)
Martin Petrov (2009)
Benjani (2010)
Kelvin Etuhu (2010)

2011
Kasper Schmeichel (2010)
Nedum Onuoha (2010)
Javier Garrido (2010)
Gelson Fernandes (2010)
Elano (2009)
Valeri Bojinov (2010)
Ched Evans (2011)

2012
Tal Ben Haim (2011)
Richard Dunne (2010)
Stephen Ireland (2011)
Vincent Kompany (2011)
Shaun Wright-Phillips (2010)
Felipe Caicedo (2011)
Jô (2011)
Robinho (2011)

2013
Micah Richards (2011)
Pablo Zabaleta (2011)
Michael Johnson (2011)

Player ratings v Chelsea

A lot more ratings than usual to add up this week (40 in all), and some very contrasting scores. However, when I averaged them up the only one I think was unfair was Ireland's, who I felt deserved at least a 7.

Ratings come from (in order): Blue2, Vhero, Kladze, law74, Niall Quinns Discopants, SirElano, Kuwait, Colin the king, goat_thelegend, cola, OhDannyBoy, Grob, Piccsnumberoneblue, bluemoon (Mancityfans); svennis pennis, robspankthemonkey, bert38, Enty, ello_jo, NQT, BillyShears, ElanJo, Marvin, cfn1963, DontLookBackInAnger, Daniel Sturridge, SUPA SKUNK, Halfpenny, mcigo, scorer, ell, leemcfc30, Neil McNab's Tash, the god Gerry Gow (Bluemoon); MEN, Richard Tucker (Rtfract), The Lonesome Death of Roy Carroll, The Observer, BBC, Sky Your Ratings.

Hart: 5.9

Zabaleta: 5.0

Richards: 5.9

Dunne: 5.3

Ball (Sturridge 84): 5.3

Hamann (Gelson 61): 5.2

Kompany: 6.2

Wright-Phillips: 7.4

Robinho: 7.0

Ireland: 6.4

Jo: 7.4

Subs:

Gelson (Hamann 61): 5.4

Sturridge (Ball 84)

Subs not used:
Schmeichel, Elano, Garrido, Evans, Ben-Haim

Chelsea match details

~ Highlights (9mins 48)
~ Post-match interviews
~ Pictures from Rtfract, Guardian photos, Getty Images
~ Latest Premiership table

So how much would the Premiership title cost?

2008-09-09T13:38:00.000-07:00

I was watching Sky Sports News earlier in the week, which featured a succession of United fans declaring that money is not enough to buy success. After I'd finished chuckling (the clear unease of many United fans really has the potential to become the best long-running joke in football ever) it did make me wonder exactly how much it might cost to create a side capable of winning the title and Champions League.

So below is a table that shows the combined spending on wages and net transfer dealings from the 03-04 season (when Abramovich bought Chelsea) until 06-07. The wage bills for the 05-06 and 06-07 seasons come from the BBC, the 03-04 figures are from here, and I've totally forgotten where I got the 04-05 figures from. The net transfer costs come from a variety of sources listed in this story from last week. The table only lists clubs who have been in the Premiership for all of those four seasons.

Working out how much our prospective new owners would actually be out of pocket should they engage in Chelsea-type spending is a little trickier. Chelsea lost a combined £360m in the first four seasons under Abramovich (details here and here), despite their turnover jumping from £75.1m to £190.5m. Personally, I can't imagine the Abu Dhabi royals would be interested in fleecing fans in the way Abramovich did, so I doubt we'd ever be able to come close to their level of turnover. And given the way wages and transfer fees are currently soaring, my guess is that a title-challenge by City could easily result in a bill of around £500m.

In the next table, I've played around with the figures to see which clubs used their resources the most efficiently. The table divides the amount each club spent on wages and transfers in those four seasons by the number of Premiership points won, while the final column shows how much better or worse each club has performed compared to the average. I've separated the Top 4 clubs from the others, as they've effectively been in their own league during this period.

(Click on table for better quality image)

Of course, a table like this is never going to reveal the full picture. In City's case, our big spending took place before the 03-04 season and ensured we had enough quality, and saleable assets, to survive a major belt-tightening. But one figure that is really telling is Newcastle's, whose current plight might be likened to the hangover that follows a rather extravagant night on the town.

Marketing department raise their game

Looks like they've played a blinder judging by photos posted by berger1985 over at Mancityfans. The stairwell banners contain the names of season ticket holders, which, given recent media coverage, is a nice reminder of who really matters at a football club.

Mind you, I'm not sure what to make of this story from Arabian Business, which reveals that City had drawn up a 83-page document detailing how the club could be re-branded as 'the Virgin of Asia and the world'.
Apparently, City-branded mini-coopers, an entire fashion range, and a chain of food outlets called “City Eating” were part of the grand scheme. My view is that if a branding exercise like this was practicable it probably would have already been tried by United or Chelsea, which leaves me with the distinct impression that this whole scheme was a lot of hopeful nonsense.

Meanwhile, over at Bluemoon, swede140 has posted a pic of what could be our new owner's masterplan:

Actually, I reckon that looks pretty stylish, in a Middle-East-meets-Wembley sort of way. And it does bring me onto a topic which needs addressing. I've noticed that a few fans have been printing up T-shirts to celebrate the Abu Dhabi takeover, while others are planning to attend the Chelsea game in Arab fancy dress.

I mentioned this to my partner, who has studied the Middle East and speaks Arabic, and she sounded out the opinion of a good Arab friend of hers. Their view is the Abu Dhabi royals probably wouldn't see the funny side to the fancy dress as they can be a little sensitive about their humble origins (though Palestinian Arabs would absolutely love it, apparently). However, we all agreed that as they're the ones buying into our club, and our culture, they're just going to have to get used to it.

However, one important thing needs to be said even though, for most people, this will be stating the obvious:

Please, please, don't create anything that includes an image of the Prophet Muhammad. This is considered by Muslims as the very worst insult to their religion and if it were shown on TV would likely result in bloodshed - and might even scupper the whole takeover.

~ In case you missed it, there was a fascinating piece in the Telegraph on Monday, which claims that Sulaiman Al Fahim is going to be sidelined after displeasing Sheikh Mansour with his outspoken comments on player purchases.
~ And finally, there's a great post at Wookie's Lair by a guy named Mick, who describes the fantastic reaction he got walking round Edinburgh in a City shirt last weekend.

I never thought I'd ever say this, but ....

2008-09-04T05:10:00.000-07:00

Now the reality of the proposed takeover has finally sunk in I'm left with this curious thought:

I really hope that City don't spend the sort of money that's currently being talked about.

Don't get me wrong, I love the thought of being able to compete with - and occasionally out-bid - the likes of United, Chelsea, Barcelona and Real. And I certainly don't have a problem with the idea of "buying success". With the odd exception (like Clough's Forest side), I believe that success in football has usually come via the chequebook. When City won their first ever trophy, the 1904 FA Cup, the club were being bank-rolled by newspaper magnate Edward Hulton jnr and were widely regarded as brash, free-spending upstarts. The 1937 title-winners were an expensively assembled side whose only Manchester-born player was signed from United, and it's easy to forget that Mercer's all-conquering team was the product of some pretty expensive purchases for the time (£42,000 for Bell, £35,000 for Summerbee and £60,000 for Lee).

But my concern right now is whether assembling an All-Stars XI side in a short space of time would be the wise thing to do. Even before the deadline-day excitement I was getting a bit giddy about our prospects for this season. Watching the 3-0 win at Sunderland, it wasn't just the way we knocked the ball around and created chances that was making me wonder about of a Top 4 finish. The way we celebrated the goals, and the beaming smile on Shaun Wright-Phillips' face, suggested that this side was really starting to bond.

But what is going to happen to that team spirit if the players believe they're going to be replaced in a few months' time? Will the likes of Dunne, Petrov and Elano now be wondering where exactly their futures lie? And what about the younger players? On Sunday, Hughes announced that Johnson would be signing a new contract "over the next 24 hours", but that's all gone quiet and Hart still hasn't signed a new deal. Evans and Sturridge (whose contract expires next summer) must be wondering if they'll ever play for City again after January, while the kids currently in the academy must now seriously doubt whether they'll ever start a first-team game.

And spare a thought for Shaun Wright-Phillips. After three wretched seasons on the periphery of the Chelsea team, he returns to the club he clearly loves with four seasons of regular first-team football and fan adoration to look forward to. Is he now fearing his Chelsea nightmare is about to repeat itself? I'm also wondering what Vincent Kompany is thinking right now. "Chelsea came in for me a year-and-a-half ago, but I refused, although I could have doubled what I had at Anderlecht," Kompany told Sky Sports in 2006. "But I am not crazy, I saw enough examples of others. "Chelsea are a factory. I do not doubt my qualities to make it at Chelsea, it is possible to still go there later. "But I would rather never go to Chelsea, than go at a bad moment."

Maybe I'm just developing a mild case of City-itis - that unique ability some of us have to look on the gloomy side. Certainly, assistant manager Mark Bowen isn't expecting a sudden flood of players, telling the BBC:

"It will be a natural progression over the next year or so with a number of players coming in. There will be an aspiration for the players but others will fall by the wayside - but that's the way it's been at Chelsea and Manchester United over the years.
"We want to give the players stiff competition for their places and if you have got real quality throughout the club that can only be for the benefit of the team."

But I do wonder what Mark Hughes really thinks about recent events. There was an interesting piece on Guillem Balague's website about the Zabaleta signing, that revealed the thoroughness of Hughes' homework before he signs a player:

"Hughes was taking lots of notes throughout the game and asked me all sorts of questions about the player, wanting to know absolutely everything I knew about him," Balague revealed.

Having to wait a full day before he gets to speak to a new signing will certainly be a new experience for Hughes. Okay, he's a young manager (and seemingly a very smart one) and can no doubt adapt to the new circumstances. But I think my point is that there's a smart way to go about things, and a not-so-smart way. And asking a manager what players he wants then pulling out all the stops is clearly the smart way to operate.

Yesterday Al-Faim insisted that Hughes will be making transfer decisions from now on, though as Al-Faim isn't the one who'll be writing the cheques we'll have to wait and see on that one.

But hey, if Sheikh Mansour decides he want to assemble his FIFA '08 All-Stars XI, so be it. Given a choice between that and a return to the hope-sapping misery of the Pearce era I'll take the Fantasy Football option in a shot.

But in the true spirit of this club, I reserve the right to at least find something to get angst-ridden about.

~ In case you haven't seen it, this YouTube take on events really made me laugh.

City are now the world's biggest transfer spenders

2008-09-02T09:07:00.000-07:00

No doubt we'll get used to headlines like that at some point, but right now yesterday's news still hasn't fully sunk in for me. Anyway, below are the figures for the world's biggest net transfer spenders since summer 2007. Figures for overseas clubs come from transfermarkt.de.

Here's our summer spending in detail:

And here's how our spending compares to other Premiership clubs. Figures come from The Times and The Telegraph and don't include signing-on fees. Profits from transfers are in brackets.

The next table shows how our spending since last summer's takeover compares:

And finally, here's how our transfer spending since the 03-04 season compares:

~ I'm going to be writing something about the Abu Dhabi takeover later in the week, but as an illustration of some of the unexpected difficulties it might throw up, here's a pic of our new trophy room first posted by Goats Tit at Citymancs. Looks like we're going to have problems getting that new trophy cabinet in with all those bundles of paper in the way.

Site update

2008-06-18T05:31:00.000-07:00

In light of the latest dramatic events I've decided to place today's planned feature on City's ownership and management structure on temporary hold.

I'm going to spend the rest of the day trying to make some sense of the latest developments, but it should be noted that a statement on the official site refers to the Abu Dhabi United Group (ADUG) "investing" in the club rather than taking it over.

Personally, I sense there's a lot more going on here than meets the eye, and I'm not yet convinced that Thaksin really intends to sell up. But hopefully we'll get a much clearer picture over the next couple of days.

Tomorrow I'll be publishing an updated Premier League / world transfer spending table (which may contain a surprise or two) and later in the week I'll be detailing how much City have actually spent since the Thaksin takeover.

Player ratings v Sunderland

I don't know if Sky are annoyed at selling their 10% stake in City too cheaply, but this week I've given them the red card for their bizarre ratings for this game.

Ratings come from (in order): MEN (Chris Bailey); xavi6, Vhero, bobadji, LookMumI'mOnMCF.net, Svensational, SvenIsDaMan, goat_thelegend, Niall Quinns Discopants, Grob, (Mancityfans), blue_blue (Wookie's Lair), Sky Your Rating and the BBC.

Hart: 7, 7, 7, 7, 7, 7, 7, 7, 7, 7, 8, 7, 7.6, 6.9 (av: 7.1 )
Precious little to do in terms of shot saving but there was confidence about work. (MEN)
Composed, solid etc etc. Didn't have a lot to do but did the little things well again. (xavi6)
Not a lot to do, but conceded 0 is all that matters. (bobadji)

Corluka: 7, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 7, 9, 9, 8, 7, 6.6, 6.7 (av: 8.2)
Couple of dodgy moments early on but settled well into rhythm. (MEN)
Best game in a loooooong time. Very calm, played lovely football, and defended well. (xavi6)
Brilliant today, hopefully he'll stay and form a decent partnership with SWP. (bobadji)

Richards (Ben-Haim 46): 7, 7, 7, 7, 7, 7, 8, 7, 7, 7, 7, 6, 7.2, 6.5 (av: 7.0)
Took a could of nasty blows to either end of his anatomy and off at break. (MEN)
Kept Cisse quiet while he was on. Hopefully he's ok. (xavi6)
Went off at h/t but looked a lot better at CB than midweek. (bobadji)

Dunne: 7, 7, 6.5, 7, 7, 7, 9, 8, 7, 7, 6, 8, 7.3, 6.7 (av: 7.2)
When he starts well the captain often continues in the same vein and did here. (MEN)
The skipper did well today. Didn't give any of the strikers a sniff. (xavi6)
Didn't have anything to do really, but what he did, he did well. (bobadji)

Ball: 7, 9, 9, 8, 8, 8, 8, ,8 ,8 ,8 7, 8, 7.1, 6.4 (av: 7.8)
Continues to show improved form and was neat, tidy and accomplished.
We all knew he could defend but he actually looks a threat going forward now. Played very, very well again. (xavi6)
Really good, solid at the back, and grabbed himself an assist for SWP's 2nd. (bobadji)

Ireland: 7, 8, 8, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 9, 8, 7, 8.2, 7.5 (av: 8.3)
Survived the axe when Petrov went lame and did himself proud again. (MEN)
Some lovely link play with Jo and a great finish for the goal. Another good game from Superman. (xavi6)
Preferred to Elano. Scored, and looked generally lively. (bobadji)

Hamann: 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 7, 7.6, 6.6 (av: 7.8 )
Never does anything extravagant but it always has a positive purpose. (MEN)
If only he was ten years younger. Can draw a foul in any situation and was a real calming influence in the middle. (xavi6)
He's great to watch, good passer, good tackler, knows when to foul, and knows how to draw the foul. Shame he's slow as fuck really. (bobadji)

Johnson: (Gelson 81): 7, 8, 7, 8, 8, 8, 8, 7, 8, 9, 5, 7, 7.8, 6.7 (av: 7.5)
Looked much more influential when he managed to get forward. Made goal. (MEN)
Liked him a lot today. Played more like the West Ham game than the midweek one. Got forward a lot and generally just played well. (xavi6)
Looking much better, like the start of last season. Did well for Ireland's goal. (bobadji)

Kompany: 8, 9, 9, 8, 8, 8, 9, 8, 8, 8, 9, 8, 8.2, 7.5 (av: 8.3)
Another impressive effort and he doesn’t seem to have a weakness. (MEN)
We've got a real star here. Last week clearly was no fluke. Has all the assets to be a top holding midfielder. (xavi6)
Another cool performance from the Prince. He's Hamann but 10 years ago. Brilliant. (bobadji)

Wright-Phillips (Elano 85): 9, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 10, 9, 10, 10, 10, 9.5, 9.1, 9.0 (av: 9.7)
Superb. Never stopped running, tackling, smiling and scoring!
Carlsberg don't do dream returns........!!!! Fantastic to have him back and two goals capped a great day. (xavi6)
What can you say? Superb. (bobadji)

Jo: 7, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 9, 8, 8, 7, 7.5, 7.9, 7.1 (av: 7.8)
Much better. A threat in air but miscued his one real chance to score.
Fully deserved a goal. Ran his bollox off upfront and got involved in some lovely build ups. Couple more weeks playing with the rest and he'll be sorted. (xavi6)
Great touch and movement, did really well for 2 of the goals. Just lacking a goal or his game would've been complete. (bobadji)

Subs:

Ben-Haim (Richards 46): 7, 7, 7, 7, 7, 7, 8, - , 7, 7, 8, - , 6.8, 6.3 (av: 7.1)
Intelligent and sturdy defending. (MEN)
Solid, didn't give their strikers a sniff. (xavi6)
Didn't have lots to do, but was solid. (bobadji)

Gelson (Johnson 81): 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 8, - , - , 6, 6, 5, 6.3, 5.9 (av: 6.1)
Plenty of energy. (MEN)
Buzzing as usual. (bobadji)

Elano( Wright-Phillips 85)
Didn't have a real chance to influence the game. (bobadji)

Subs not used:

Schmeichel, Garrido, Evans, Sturridge

Is it time for a new badge?

There's been plenty of discussion about this on the talkboards over the last few days, fuelled by this highly dubious Sunday Mirror story, which claims that Thaksin is going to give our badge a Thai-makeover, incorporating an elephant / mythical creature / Bangkok ladyboy, or whatever, into the design.

Considering that this is the paper that brought us the classic 'Thaksin Asks Players To Bow' nonsense, and that photos of next season's kit, if genuine, have the current badge on them, I'm guessing the story is largely mischief-making by a disgruntled - and possibly former - employee.

However, the possibility of a change of badge was raised at a Points of Blue meeting earlier in the year, attended by City's head of operations Sara Billington, and the matter appears to be under review. Certainly, with the club under new ownership a change of badge might be appropriate, particularly as there are plenty of fans, myself included, who have never been happy with the current one.

Although the introduction of the new badge in 1997 made good sense (Francis Lee revealed at the time that we weren't getting royalties on the old one), I do think it's a very flawed design. While the overall look of the badge is not bad, it hardly screams either "City" or "Manchester". Here it is close up:

My first gripe is the eagle, which looks too much like the back of US quarter, or worse, a Nazi symbol. The eagle was taken from this creepy-looking City of Manchester badge created in 1957, but doesn't appear on the much more commonly used City of Manchester coat of arms (pictured lower down) which was created in 1842.

The three stars "have no significance and are purely decorative", according to Mcfc.co.uk, and there's even a question mark about the meaning of the Latin motto "Superbia In Proelio". Although it translates as "Pride in battle", "superbia" is best defined as an arrogant or excessive type of pride.

Below are the designs that have been used throughout the club's history, starting with the Ardwick AFC badge dating from 1887:

That design was ditched after Ardwick evolved into Manchester City in 1894, and the official coat of arms of Manchester was adopted as the club crest. United also used this crest until the late 1960s though it appears that, unlike City, they needed permission on each occasion. "Concileo et Labore" loosely translates as "wisdom and effort":

The only other design I've seen used before the 1970s is this odd one that appeared on season tickets in the 1920s. Thankfully, it doesn't appear to have lasted that long:

The 1970s saw a redesign of the official Manchester crest which, for some reason, involved losing a stripe:

Traditionally only worn for Cup finals, the crest was used on shirts from 1977 to 1981:

I love both the look and the idea of using the Manchester coat of arms on shirts, but the fact that the club can't copyright it means it's unlikely to make another appearance. I'm presuming that copyright was also the reason the classic round badge was introduced, with clubs recognising the potential in club merchandising by the 1960s.

According to Gary James' Manchester: The Greatest City, the original version of this badge first started appearing in programmes and club documentation in the mid-1960s, but wasn't used on the shirt until the 1971-72 season:

In January 1972, a modified version of the badge was introduced. Surprisingly, this particular design has only been used on shirts for 19 seasons (compared to 11 seasons for the new badge) though somehow it feels much longer than that. Maybe my feelings about it are largely shaped by nostalgia, but I just think it is a thing a beauty:

Personally, I'm with Sir Ron Manager at Citymancs, who believes we should revert to this design. It's not clear who currently owns the copyright on the badge, but it might still be Eddie Phillips, who ran the old souvenir shop. According to this interview with Francis Lee, Phillips bought the rights to the badge from Peter Swales in the 1980s and also paid an annual flat fee for control of the souvenir shop, worth just £60,000 a year to the club in 1994.

That deal was terminated in 1995 when City took back control of the Maine Road souvenir shop and Phillips moved out (the redeveloped merchandise operation was making an estimated £2.5 million-a-year by 1998). It appears he took his badge with him, although there are still a few items at the City Store with it on.

Considering how much design consultants charge, you do wonder whether it would be just as cheap for the club to buy back the copyright. PR doesn't come cheap either, and reverting to the classic badge would certainly be a great publicity coup for our controversial owner.

Another option is a new badge that's close to the traditional design, such as this one posted by Wheelsy OSC Sydney at Bluemoon.

Or failing that we could just go the whole hog, with this design posted by MaineRoadMemories at Mancityfans:

~ I found an an excellent site called Behind The Badges, which has the history of the club badges for 98 English league teams.
~ You can see a graphic of every City home kit since 1884 at Historical Kits.

Some curious things from City's history

2008-06-09T01:52:00.000-07:00

A section devoted to City's history has been launched over at the main site. It's very much work-in-progress and will have a lot more additions in the coming weeks.

For the last year or so I've been researching City's history at Manchester's Central Library, particularly the scandals that affected the club's early years. I'll be publishing the results of my research soon, but here are a few surprising things I've dug up:

Firstly, here's an advert for season tickets from Aug 1929, which reveals that while men paid £3 / 3s for a season ticket, women were only charged £2 / 2s.

But things were certainly different back then. Here's a job advert from 1923 that you might not get away with nowadays:

Now here's a report I stumbled across from The Guardian from May 1955 which reveals City's failed attempt to buy the Fallowfield Stadium, which hosted the 1893 Cup Final that drew a crowd of 45,000. I haven't come across any references to the club wanting to move out of Maine Road at this time, so I'm presuming we were planning to use the venue for training purposes.

The next item lends support to the idea that the bitter rivalry between us and United was very much a post-war development (something I touched on in this story about the bombing of Old Trafford). The cartoon was published in a United programme in the 1930s, and is one of several that depict the two clubs as regional 'brothers'.

The final items are possibly the most interesting, particularly in light of the criticism aimed at Thaksin over the way he is using our club for political ends. Like most fans, it makes me fairly uneasy too, but I do have to take issue with journalists such as Simon Hattenstone, who claims that being used by a right-wing politician is a betrayal of the club's historic values. In fact, I've discovered that it is actually very much part of City's heritage.

City's first chairman, Tory brewer John Chapman, blatently used his club connections when he stood for council elections in Ardwick in 1905 and 1909. Here's one of his campaign postcards:

John Allison, who became chairman in 1906, also used the club in political campaigns:

But the biggest - and baddest - political wheeler-dealer of all was Stephen Chesters Thompson, who was President of Ardwick AFC when it was created in 1887. He was bankrupted by a series of court cases in which he was accused of defrauding his company and bribing voters. Chesters Thompson was the managing director of Chesters Brewery, which ploughed huge sums of money into Ardwick in its early days, and his bankruptcy almost certainly caused the financial crisis that resulted in the formation of Man City in 1894.

In fact, I'm starting to wonder whether turmoil and intrigue has somehow been written into this club's DNA. I've been researching the backgrounds of some of the people currently involved with City, and found enough there to make me a bit uneasy about the club's future. I'm not saying there's enough to be alarmed, though it is making me fairly cautious about recent announcements.

But I'll be writing more about that soon.

A detailed look at Hughes' record

2008-06-04T03:05:00.000-07:00

Now that it's official, let's take a good look at what sort of manager we've got.

When Hughes took charge at Blackburn on 15th Sep 2004, the club were second to bottom of the Premiership with two points from five games. The previous season, under Graeme Souness, they had finished 15th, compared to 6th the season before that. Here's how they performed under Hughes:

When placed in the context of the financial resources Hughes had available, his record at Blackburn looks more impressive. The table (below) shows the net transfer spending for each Premiership club over the last four seasons, and reveals that Hughes has spent less than any other manager except Wenger.

(Profits from transfers are in brackets. The Blackburn figures include the £1.5m fee for Morten Pedersen, who signed a month before Hughes became manager).

And here are his signings in full:

The signings of Santa Cruz (fourth top Premiership scorer last season with 19 goals), Benni McCarthy (26 goals in 59 appearances) and Bentley clearly show he has a good eye for a player.

More importantly, his ability to spot of bargain is also striking. Yesterday The Sun claimed that Santa Cruz could be the subject of a £15m bid from Man United, while The Times estimates Bentley to be worth in excess of £12m - making a combined potential profit of £23m. That's in addition to the £2m he's made from his signings so far, with a £2.5m profit on the sale of Kuqi, £1m on Bellamy, and a £1.5m loss on Savage.

The final table, I believe, is one of the best indicators of a manager's ability. It shows how much each Premiership club paid in wages in the 05-06 and 06-07 seasons, then divides that by the number of league points won (£ per point). I've separated the Top 4 clubs from the others as they're pretty much in a different economic league.

The figures for wages are from accountants Deloitte (listed by the BBC here) and unfortunately are only available for those two seasons.

Of course, Sam Allardyce's position at the top of the table shows that brilliant management of resources can count for little when stepping up to a bigger club with higher expectations. The fact that Hughes has only had four years as a club manager also leaves a question mark (I've excluded his time as Wales boss from this feature as I just don't think it's that relevant to club football).

As to whether we're better off with Hughes than Sven, that's a question that may never be answered. But my gut feeling is that, in the shape of this combative and successful former international, we've got ourselves the thinking man's Stuart Pearce. And that has to signal progress from where we were just a year ago.

Whether he'll do enough to satisfy an impatient billionaire owner, or be in agreement with his advisors about potential signings, only time will tell.

Hart tops 2007-08 player ratings

2008-05-20T01:03:00.000-07:00

A run of form that earned him eight Man of the Match awards in his last ten games has resulted in Hart leapfrogging Micah Richards at the top of the 2007-08 player ratings (below).

Hopefully the reports that Spurs are interested in our new No.1 is nothing more than space filler, but if it's true that that we're only offering him £10,000-a-week then that is slightly concerning. Although Hart's contract doesn't expire until 2010, it's pretty clear his market value has increased dramatically this season and perfectly understandable that he'd want a much better deal than that.

Below are the final player ratings for the 2007-08 season. The scores are complied from the average of the ratings taken from talkboards and the media after each game. The ratings for individual games can be found in the Stats & Squad section over at the main site.

(click on image to view full size)

And here's how much each player cost and who brought them to the club. As well as showing that Pearce wasn't quite as bad a judge of players as many of us thought, it's worth noting that if Sun Jihai doesn't get a new contract this summer it will mean that none of Keegan's signings will be at the club next season.

And finally, here's a comparison with last season's ratings. I'm curious about the dramatic fall in Sun Jihai's rating as I wouldn't say he is that much worse a player than last season. I'm guessing that with City now playing a passing game the limitations of players such as Jihai, as well as Vassell, are clearer to see and those players have been marked down accordingly.

~ Other season stats can be found at Daily Telegraph and Statbunker.

~ I came across this interesting snippet about Sun Jihai recently. Apparently he is a third child - a very rare thing in China which currently has a one-child policy. The story claims that after his older brother was born handicapped, Sun's mother was given a special dispensation to try for a third baby.

So... anything been happening?

Apologies for the lack of activity in the last few weeks. I traveled to the US towards the end of the season and a planned short break from the site turned into a much longer one.

But now that the whirlwind of speculative media stories is petering out (at least until the next one) I'm going to be adding my thoughts on recent events later in the week.

I'll also be running some extracts from the upcoming book, Purely Man City: Writings, Reference & Miscellany over the next few weeks, starting with some tales of scandal from the club's early years.

Reaction, ratings & stats: City 2 Fulham 3

2008-04-27T10:09:00.000-07:00

A performance that will no doubt intensify the media speculation about Sven's future, but my guess is our chairman won't be too unhappy at us handing Fulham the win.

Thaksin is a long-standing business buddy of Fulham owner Mohamed Al Fayed, and granted Al Fayed's Harrods Energy lucrative drilling rights to oil fields in Thailand back in the 1990s. According to this report, Thaksin also lived in a Park Lane apartment owned by Al Fayed after he was ousted in the coup, so maybe the gift of three precious Premiership points on Saturday will be taken in lieu of back rent.

Plenty of complaints after the game about the way the match programme was turned into a tribute to our Great Leader (not to mention the shambolic 'Lap of Embarrassment'), but my view is that this was always part of the deal. I loved the surreal nature of last summer's Thai curry party in Albert Square, and have so far felt a bit let down that Thaksin hasn't brought more off-field absurdity to Eastlands.

Not sure what to make of his comments in the programme that we will 'not be spending huge amounts of money this summer', but it's worth pointing out that, with payments for overseas players usually spread over the length of the contract, it is possible to bring in big signings without making a huge initial outlay.

And thankfully, it looks as though Thaksin has finally given his public backing to Sven, in this interview in Thai which has been translated by Krieng at Citymancs.

~ There's an interesting account of today's game at FulhamUSA.com, which was orignally posted by BadlyDrawnBlue at Wookies Lair.

~ Highlights
~ Telegraph stats graphic, Sky stats, BBC stats
~ Sven's post-match interview
~ Pictures from rtfract
~ Latest Premiership table

Player ratings

Ratings come from (in order): MEN; xavi6, Fidel Castro, Niall Quinns Discopants, SirElano, LookMumI'mOnMCF.net, irblinx, King Kev, Piccsnumberoneblue (Mancityfans), Richard, mcigo (Bluemoon), Richard Tucker (rtfract.com), Sunday Times, Sky, Sky Your Rating and the BBC.

Hart: 8.0
(7, 8, 10, 10, 10, 8, 7, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 7.5, 7, 7, 7.0, 7.4)

Elano: 6.3
(6, 6, 7, 7, 7, 7, 6, 7, 7, 7, 6, 6, 6.5, 6, 5, 4.9, 6.3)

Corluka: 6.3
(5, 6, 7, 7, 7, 7, 6, 8, 8, 5, 6, 6, 5.5, 5, 6, 5.6, 6.8)

Ball: 6.1
(5, 6, 6, 6, 6, 7, 7, 7, 7, 6, 7, 7, 5.5, 5, 6, 4.2, 5.7)

Jihai: 4.4
(5, 3, 3, 3, 4, 6, 2, 5, 7, 6, 4, 4, 4.5, 5, 5, 3.2, 4.3)

Vassell (Caicedo 80): 7.2
(7, 7, 9, 9, 9, 7, 7, 7, 7.5, 8, 7, 7, 7, 6, 7, 5.4, 6.3)

Gelson: 5.4
(6, 6, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 6, 5, 6, 6, 5, 6.5, 6, 5, 4.4, 5.7)

Johnson: 5.1
(6, 5, 4, 4, 5, 4, 5, 5, 6, 5, 4, 4, 6, 7, 6, 5.4, 5.6)

Petrov: 7.7
(7, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 7.5, 9, 7, 8, 8, 7, 7.5, 8, 8, 7.0, 7.0)

Ireland (Geovanni 56): 7.5
(7, 7, 8, 8, 8.5, 8, 8, 9, 8, 9, 7, 8, 7, 7, 6, 5.4, 6.8)

Benjani: 6.6
(7, 6, 6, 6, 6.5, 7, 8, 7, 7, - , 6, 7, 7, 7, 6, 5.5, 6.5)

Subs:

Geovanni (Ireland 56): 5.9
(6, 5, 6, 6, 6, - , 6, 7, - , 6, - , - , 6, 6, 6, 5.2, 5.4)

Caicedo (Vassell 80): 3.9
(6, 4, 1, 1, 1, - , 3, 6, - , 4, - , - , 6, - , 6, 4.2, 5.0)

Subs not used:
Isaksson, Castillo, Logan.

Fulham: Keller, Stalteri, Hangeland, Hughes, Konchesky, Davies, Bullard, Murphy, Dempsey, Healy (Kamara 64), McBride (Nevland 71). Subs not used: Warner, Bocanegra, Andreasen.

Match reports

City 2 Fulham 3

Kamara's late double gives Fulham hope of survival (Guy Hodgson)
City's manager Sven Goran Eriksson was as close to angry as the placid Swede ever gets. "We stopped playing and you can't do that against anyone in the Premier League," he said. "We have no one to blame but ourselves. We gave it away."

Fulham get kiss of life from Diomansy Kamara (Derick Allsop)
Joe Hart's athleticism did indeed frustrate Fulham, although they were palpably outplayed in the crucial areas for more than half the match. Stephen Ireland curled in a glorious opener from the edge of the area and Fulham's defenders stood and admired the second. Elano's ball down the wing and Darius Vassell's drag back set up the opportunity that Benjani despatched.
No one could begrudge Fulham their lifeline, but Eriksson acknowledged his team had only themselves to blame for their capitulation in the final 20 minutes and almost certainly throwing away any prospect of Uefa Cup qualification.
Eriksson said: "The moment you think it is over and don't defend, anything is possible in football and it was one of those days. We stopped playing and you can't afford to do that. It should be a lesson. We have no one to blame, only ourselves."

Kamara's heroics give Fulham lifeline (Ian Whittell)
City still cling to that hope of European football via an invitation to the Intertoto Cup but the expression on Shinawatra's face in the tunnel after the game suggested he would view failure to reach that competition as more than 'a pity'.
All of which is unfortunate. As a former politician - albeit a controversial one - Shinawatra will presumably appreciate the vox populi and, for 70 minutes at least, Eriksson's name was sung often and approvingly by fans appreciative of his season's work.

Diomansy Kamara stuns Sven and keeps Fulham alive (Pete Oliver)
Eriksson admitted afterwards that a club wanting to qualify for the Champions League, Shinawatra’s target within two years, would never implode as his side did but suggested that the result would not colour his talks with the chairman when they got together last night for a gala dinner and again today.
“Twenty minutes in almost one season can’t affect anything,” said the City manager. “If you are looking at the bigger picture for the future, for next season and the seasons to come, 20 minutes can’t mean anything, but if those three points mean we lose out on Europe it’s a big, big pity.”

Roy Hodgson still harbours hope of great escape (James Ducker)
City were coasting when Kamara entered the fray in the 64th minute. Joe Hart, the City goalkeeper, had denied Clint Dempsey and David Healy with good saves, but the home team were worth their lead, secured courtesy of goals from Stephen Ireland and Benjani Mwaruwari in the first 21 minutes.
Whether it was through complacency or a lack of concentration, City began to unravel. Kamara sowed the seeds of doubt when he capitalised on Vedran Corluka’s indecision and then, when Danny Murphy converted his penalty on the rebound after Sun Jihai had pulled down Nevland, Fulham dared to believe in victory.

Kamara's injection gives Fulham the glimpse of a future (Jeremy Alexander)
A match which had passed the hour in cruise command for City, producing sweet goals for Stephen Ireland and Benjani that left Fulham's backs red-faced, had culminated in end-to-end frenzy, including a moment when Benjani, running through on Kasey Keller, passed to Darius Vassell, who was offside and, for good measure, off target. Such lunacy it is that attracts and maddens City's infatuees.

Is it time for a new badge?

2008-04-26T06:10:00.000-07:00

There's been plenty of discussion about this on the talkboards over the last few days, fuelled by this highly dubious Sunday Mirror story, which claims that Thaksin is going to give our badge a Thai-makeover, incorporating an elephant / mythical creature / Bangkok ladyboy, or whatever, into the design.

Considering that this is the paper that brought us the classic 'Thaksin Asks Players To Bow' nonsense, and that photos of next season's kit, if genuine, have the current badge on them, I'm guessing the story is largely mischief-making by a disgruntled - and possibly former - employee.

However, the possibility of a change of badge was raised at a Points of Blue meeting earlier in the year, attended by City's head of operations Sara Billington, and the matter appears to be under review. Certainly, with the club under new ownership a change of badge might be appropriate, particularly as there are plenty of fans, myself included, who have never been happy with the current one.

Although the introduction of the new badge in 1997 made good sense (Francis Lee revealed at the time that we weren't getting royalties on the old one), I do think it's a very flawed design. While the overall look of the badge is not bad, it hardly screams either "City" or "Manchester". Here it is close up:

My first gripe is that the eagle looks too much like the back of US quarter, or worse, a Nazi symbol. According to the original press release, the eagle was "taken from the Badge of the City of Manchester, dating from 1957". I'm not sure which badge this refers to, as Manchester has been using the same coat of arms since 1842 (pictured lower down) and that certainly doesn't contain an eagle.

The three stars "have no significance and are purely decorative", according to Mcfc.co.uk, and there's even doubts about the meaning, and spelling, of the Latin motto. The original press release claimed the motto was "Superbia In Proelio", but on the badge it is clearly spelt "Praelia", while I've also seen "Praelia" used. And to cap it off, "superbia" best translates as arrogance, according to this item from the McVittee archive.

Below are the designs that have been used throughout the club's history, starting with the Ardwick AFC badge dating from 1887:

That design was ditched after Ardwick evolved into Manchester City in 1894, and the official coat of arms of Manchester was adopted as the club crest. United also used this crest until the late 1960s though it appears that, unlike City, they needed permission on each occasion. "Concileo et Labore" loosely translates as "wisdom and effort":

The only other design I've seen used before the 1970s is this odd one that appeared on season tickets in the 1920s. Thankfully, it doesn't appear to have lasted that long:

The 1970s saw a redesign of the official Manchester crest which, for some reason, involved losing a stripe:

Traditionally only worn for Cup finals, the crest was used on shirts from 1977 to 1981:

I love both the look and the idea of using the Manchester coat of arms on shirts, but the fact that the club can't copyright it means it's unlikely to make another appearance. I'm presuming that copyright was also the reason the classic round badge was introduced, with clubs recognising the potential in club merchandising by the 1960s.

According to Gary James' Manchester: The Greatest City, the original version of this badge first started appearing in programmes and club documentation in the mid-1960s, but wasn't used on the shirt until the 1971-72 season:

In January 1972, a modified version of the badge was introduced. Surprisingly, this particular design has only been used on shirts for 19 seasons (compared to 11 seasons for the new badge) though somehow it feels much longer than that. Maybe my feelings about it are largely shaped by nostalgia, but I just think it is a thing a beauty:

Personally, I'm with Sir Ron Manager at Citymancs, who believes we should revert to this design. It's not clear who currently owns the copyright on the badge, but it might still be Eddie Phillips, who ran the old souvenir shop. According to this interview with Francis Lee, Phillips bought the rights to the badge from Peter Swales in the 1980s and also paid an annual flat fee for control of the souvenir shop, worth just £60,000 a year to the club in 1994.

That deal was terminated in 1995 when City took back control of the Maine Road souvenir shop and Phillips moved out (the redeveloped merchandise operation was making an estimated £2.5 million-a-year by 1998). It appears he took his badge with him, although there are still a few items at the City Store with it on.

Considering how much design consultants charge, you do wonder whether it would be just as cheap for the club to buy back the copyright. PR doesn't come cheap either, and reverting to the classic badge would certainly be a great publicity coup for our controversial owner.

Another option is a new badge that's close to the traditional design, such as this one posted by Wheelsy OSC Sydney at Bluemoon.

Or failing that we could just go the whole hog, with this design posted by MaineRoadMemories at Mancityfans:

~ I found an an excellent site called Behind The Badges, which has the history of the club badges for 98 English league teams.
~ You can see a graphic of every City home kit since 1884 at Historical Kits.

City's all-time record signings / useful City history links

2008-04-22T13:19:00.000-07:00

I've just completed two chapters on City's early history for the upcoming book, Purely Man City: Writings, Reference and Miscellany, so thought I'd share some useful City history links with you.

Over the next few weeks I'll be running abbreviated extracts from the book, which will be published later next month. I'm starting with the tale of Stephen Chesters Thompson, the man who funded City in our early days when the club was known as Ardwick. Chesters Thompson was a colourful local politician who had an uncanny knack of creating enemies, and in the course of my research I couldn't help being struck by the similarities between him and Thaksin.

I'll also be publishing the story of a City scandal that lasted from 1904-1906, when a series of FA investigations resulted in two City boards being banned and 17 of our players suspended. The FA penalties, which looked very much like a vendetta, played a critical role in Man United first league title win and may even have been an important factor in the building of Old Trafford in 1909.

Anyway, here are a few links I found useful:

City stats:

Roll of Honour

Season by season: 1891 to present
Full league records and Cup finishes.

Mcfcstats.co.uk
All-time line-ups and results, and records for each manager.

Historic league tables
Select any game from City's history and see what the table looked like at the time.

Attendances from 1947 to 2007

Past seasons:

McVittee archive
A unique record of news, views and features from the oldest City website. Also includes a Maine Road Diary of events between Summer 1994 and Autumn 1997.

City Til I Die
Has histories of the 1971-72, 1973-74, 1974-75 and 1975-76 season, with more to follow soon.

Times feature on 1976 side

1893 match reports
A couple of reports of games against Middlesbrough for that season.

I've also just finished a record of nearly 800 City transfer deals, from the 1890s to the present, for the book. With our transfer record looking likely to be broken in the summer, here's a list of the players who, at the time, were City's most expensive signings:

Reaction, stats & ratings: City 3 Portsmouth 1

2008-04-20T12:29:00.000-07:00

Not sure what to make of this performance, as Portsmouth were clearly playing with the Cup final in mind, but it at least shows that we can play some very entertaining football given the chance.

In fact, this was probably the entertaining game since the season's opener at West Ham, which makes me wonder whether those early performances resulted in some unfair expectations on our part. Certainly, watching Elano do a decent job at right-back (after reportedly volunteering for the role shortly before the game), suggests that we may have overlooked some of the qualities he can bring to the team.

Earlier in the season his former team-mate Rafael gave this assessment of Elano's abilities:

"He can play at right back, can mark or create in midfield and can operate as a striker. It could be that he’s suffered in his career as a result of his versatility, that at times he’s been moved around without having a fixed place in the side," Rafael said, while also revealing that Elano's nickname was ET.

It's probably a bit unfair to call him a Brazilian John O'Shea, as he's a much better player than that, but he does appear to be from a similar mould. Elano recently told mcfc.co.uk that a muscle injury had been affecting his form, and combined with the special attention he's been singled out for (predicted in this profile back in October), it's still possible he'll turn out to be a terrific buy after all. My guess is that we'll only see Elano's true worth when the team is strengthened and really begins to gel.

Which brings us to the comments made on Saturday by Taweesuk Jack Srisumrid, the Harvard-educated businessman who became a City director in August. In an interview with Reuters, Taweesuk provided the most detailed insight yet into Thaksin's plans.

Claiming that 'the finance for an initial investment period' is already in place, Taweesuk revealed that the objective was to make City the 'Asian Premier League club'.

"What we will look to do in the summer is to further boost the squad, bring in top quality, internationally-recognised players. Superstars would help fill the stadium and help our global branding. Primarily, we must win on the pitch - it can't be a gimmick," he said

"We've had discussions (with Ronaldinho) but we'll see how that pans out. We've looked at a host of players".

Curiously, Taweesuk also revealed that Thaksin was 'aiming for a top eight finish this year', which is two places higher than the target our owner set last month.

It's impossible to say whether the recent speculation about Sven's future has any real foundation, or whether it is little more than a motivational technique by an impatient Thaksin, but hopefully these back-to-back wins will be enough to kill the speculation for now.

~ Match highlights
~ Interactive stats; BBC stats, Sky stats,
~ Photos from rtfract; Sven's post-match interview
~ Getty Images
~ Latest Premiership table

Coming up on Purely Man City

I'm going to be launching a History section on the main site this week, which will be expanded over the summer.

With today's Guardian claiming we've agreed to buy Brazilian forward Jô for £20m, I'll be publishing the complete table of City's record transfer signings this week.

I'll also be running a feature on the ownership of Premiership clubs, with a table of shareholders for each club, and a breakdown of their nationalities.

~ Jô YouTube clip, Jô at Corinthians
~ Jô's Wikipedia page

Player ratings

Ratings come from (in order): MEN; xavi6, bobadji, LookMumI'mOnMCF.net, Geo123, Niall Quinns Discopants, Grob, teenage time killer, irblinx, SirElano, Svensational (Mancityfans), blue_job (Blue Vibe), Richard Tucker (rtfract), The Times, Sky, Sky Your Rating and the BBC.

Hart: 7.3 average
(6, 8, 7, 8, 7, 7, 8, 7, 8, 8, 8, 7, 6.5, 7, 7, 7.1, 7.1)

Elano (Caicedo 90): 7.0
(6, 7, 7, 7, 7, 7, 8, 7, 9, 7, 7, 7, 7, 7, 6, 6.7, 6.8)

Corluka: 7.2
(7, 7, 8, 7, 8, 8, 7, 7, 7, 8, 8, 7, 7, 6, 7, 7.2, 6.6)

Dunne (Williamson 54): 6.9
(6, 7, 7, 7, 7, 8, 7, 7, 7, 7, 7, 7, 7, 6, 7, 6.8, 6.3)

Ball: 6.9
(7, 8, 7, 8, 7, 7, 7, 6, 7, 7, 8, 7, 7, 6, 6, 6.6, 6.3)

Vassell: 7.9
(6, 9, 9, 8, 9, 9, 8, 8, 8, 8, 9, 8, 7, 7, 7, 7.5, 7.3)

Ireland (Geovanni 75): 7.7
(7, 9, 8, 8, 8.5, 9, 8, 7, 8, 9, 8, 7, 7, 7, 7, 6.8, 6.7)

Gelson: 7.1
(7, 8, 8, 8, 7, 6, 7, 7, 7, 7, 7, 8, 7, 7, 7, 6.7, 6.4)

Johnson: 6.3
(6, 6, 7, 7, 6, 5, 7, 6, 7, 5, 6, 7, 6.5, 6, 7, 6.6, 6.4)

Petrov: 8.0 (MOTM)
(8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 9, 8, 7, 8, 8, 8, 8, 7.5, 8, 8, 8.5, 8.0)

Benjani: 7.9
(8, 8, 9, 8, 8, 8, 8, 6, 7, 9, 8, 8, 8, 7, 9, 8.2, 7.8)

Subs:

Williamson (Dunne 54): 7.0
(6, 8, 7, 7, - , 8, 7, 6, 8, 7, 8, - , 6.5, 6, 6, 7.0, 6.8)

Geovanni (Ireland 75): 6.3
(6, 6, - , -, - , 6, 7, 6, 7, - , - , - , 6.5, - 6, 6.2, 6.1

Caicedo(Elano 90)

Subs not used:
Isaksson, Castillo.

Portsmouth: James, Lauren, Campbell, Distin, Hreidarsson (sent off 41), Utaka (Baros 75), Muntari, Diarra, Diop (Aubey 75), Kranjcar (Davis 83), Defoe. Subs not used: Begovic, Nugent.

Match reports

Man City 3 Portsmouth 1

Eriksson sees vindication in a convincing victory (John Culley)
Although they were given a generous start in the form of two gift goals in the opening 14 minutes – plus the added bonus of playing against 10 men for more than half the game – City produced football reminiscent of their vibrant early-season form.
Moreover it lifted their points tally for Eriksson's first season to 55, the club's highest yet for a 38-match Premier League season. City could have won by a greater margin, creating numerous chances even before Benjani wrapped things up with their third goal 16 minutes from time.

Manchester City win relieves pressure on Sven (Phil Shaw)
Judging by the warm ovation they gave Eriksson, City's fans don't think it is a record that merits the sack. Asked whether he was confident the current situation could be resolved, the Swede replied: "Do you mean will I still have a job? I'm not worried at all. You can't go around in life worrying about things like that. I think I will be sitting here next season as well."

Players and fans present strong case for Sven-Goran Eriksson
If this is the kind of response Thaksin Shinawatra gets when he raises questions about the manager’s future, perhaps the Manchester City owner should cast doubt over Sven-Göran Eriksson’s job prospects every week.
Thaksin was not present at the City of Manchester Stadium yesterday, but the reports he will receive will doubtless be glowing. Whether such a marked improvement in City’s performance is enough to keep Eriksson in employment remains to be seen, but on this evidence, the former Prime Minister of Thailand would be unwise to dispense with the former England head coach.

City rediscover their slicker side (Daniel Taylor)
It is difficult to know what will have been more pleasing for Sven-Goran Eriksson: the voluble demonstration of support he received from Manchester City's fans or the togetherness his players displayed in proving a point or two to the club's owner, Thaksin Shinawatra. Whichever way to look at it, Eriksson can reflect on a hugely satisfying day as he attempts to show his trigger-happy employer that he deserves better than to be paid off in the summer.

From disarray to the Double: the fall and rise of City's youth policy

2008-04-15T09:26:00.000-07:00

Following last night’s historic double (academy league table here) it's probably a good time to remind ourselves how different things once were.

I’ve just been reading My Name Is Len Davies, I'm a Football Scout, the autobiography of a former youth team scout, who joined City in 1974. In the book, which was published in 2000, Davies correctly predicted great things for our youth teams by the middle of the decade, but he also details the shocking neglect of our youth system under the chairmanship of Peter Swales.

According to Davies, the decline began in 1980, when new manager John Bond brought in Tony Scott to replace youth team boss Steve Fleet.

Fleet had taken City's juniors to the Youth Cup final in the previous two seasons and his youth system had produced players such as Peter Barnes, Kenny Clements, Gary Owen, Paul Power and Tommy Caton, and was at that time nurturing the 1986 Youth Cup-winning side that included Andy Hinchcliffe, David White and Paul Lake. Scott, on the other hand, was working as a butcher at the time of his appointment.

Scott resigned as City’s youth team boss soon after taking charge, in order to take up church work in Australia. His replacement was the 'ruthless and very dogmatic' Ted Davies, and the ill-feeling amongst colleagues that followed his appointment, combined with the lack of funds from the board, soon took its toll.

New managers came and went over the next decade - Billy McNeil, Jimmy Frizzell, Mel Machin and Howard Kendall – but according to Len Davies, they all failed to adequately address the neglect of the youth set-up.

One manager who did begin to tackle the problem was Peter Reid, who brought in veteran scout Jack Chapman to oversee the youth team. Chapman quickly won his colleagues' respect at the club, but lost his job after Brian Horton was appointed.

By the time Francis Lee became chairman in February 1994, the years of underinvestment had made the situation critical.

'The ranks were not now producing to the extent they had done in the past. Luck alone wasn't enough. There were frictions that were very apparent and there was no-one with the foresight to save the sinking ship. The youth policy was very low, as was the first team, they were on a slide and no one from the chairman, Peter Swales downwards, came forth with any direction or purpose to combat this downward trend,' Davies wrote.

Recruiting young talent had also became a problem. In the 1990/91 season, an 11-year-old Wes Brown came for a trial at City, but his father was so incensed at the 'lack of civility' he received that he immediately left, vowing that he would never to allow any of his children to have a trial at City again.

It was a couple of years before the problem was properly addressed (Davies reveals that between 1993 and 1996 there had never been a single get-together of scouts, as there had been in the past, to discuss youth development) but things changed following the appointment of Frank Clark in December 1996. Clark, and his assistant Alan Hill, saw the need for a major overhaul of the youth system. Lee agreed, and promised the necessary finance would be available, but the brutal way the changes were implemented left a bitter aftertaste.

At that time Colin Bell and Terry Farrell were joint Youth Development Officers, reporting to senior youth team coach Neil McNab. The three had been doing a decent job on a shoestring budget, with the youth team finishing top, joint top and third in the previous three seasons, but a personality clash between Bell and McNab, and a conflict between their roles, was causing problems.

Clark solution was to call Bell and Farrell into the Platt Lane complex in May 1997 and give them the sack. McNab was also dismissed.

Bell described the events in his autobiography Reluctant Hero (Clark doesn’t mention the sackings in his autobiography): 'I’d barely sat down when, in a clinical and cold way, Clark simply said, ‘We’re dispensing with your services.’ The only explanation I was given was that they wanted to ‘sort out the department’.'

Davies, although unhappy with the youth set-up at that time, called the sackings 'too drastic a measure'. For Bell, who did the job for little money and who didn’t even ask for a pay rise when he went from working one day a week to four, it was a shocking way to be treated. After successfully taking the case to an industrial tribunal, Bell refused to attend City games for several seasons afterwards.

But Clark’s next decision was to sow the seeds of City's future youth successes. I was always under the impression that Joe Royle was responsible for bringing Jim Cassell to City, particularly as he was Royle's chief scout at Oldham. But according to Davies, it was Alan Hill who first approached Cassell, who agreed to take charge of City’s youth system after a meeting with Clark and Lee.

Cassell is a former book-keeper and local government officer, whose playing career lasted only two games at Bury in the mid-1960s. In Blue Moon: Down Among the Dead Men, Mark Hodkinson describes him as ‘thoughtful and shrewd, candid and friendly, immaculate in a suit and tie and wire-framed glasses, the original Gentleman Jim’.

'Gentleman' Jim immediately brought his 'fastidiously methodical' approach to the job. "There was no one picking up the bits of paper off the floor, no one taking care of the detail," Cassell said.

In the summer of 1998, he presented a 51-page dossier to new chairman David Bernstein and the board. According to Hodkinson, it revealed 'a club run by people without real job specifications, where the hierarchical structure was muddled and essential facilities had to be borrowed, or were missing altogether'.

Bernstein authorised £500,000 to implement the reforms, which is probably the shrewdest investment the club have ever made.

Cassell's first coup was picking up a 15-year-old Shaun Wright Phillips, who had been released by Forest, and he is responsible for signing Micah Richards from Oldham's youth academy aged 14.

Other academy staff have also played a vital role. Joey Barton was signed by head of recruitment Barry Poynton after he was released by Everton. Before joining City, Poynton was Everton’s youth recruitment chief. He heads up a team of more than 40 scouts, the vast majority of whom are part-time.

In Sunday's Observer, Cassell for the first time revealed just how profitable City's academy has been.

The academy has cost City £10.5million since 1998, while last year the running costs were £1.6m - £400,000 less than the current salary of Chelsea’s youth team boss. But Cassell reveals that the club has banked £32.5m from the sale of academy players.

Here’s a list of the academy players who have moved to other clubs:

On top of that £22m profit, the academy players still at the club (listed below) must now be worth at least £40m, while the future value of our current kids is anybody’s guess.

In Blue Moon, the author claims that a fair amount of hostility was aimed towards Cassell in the late 1990s, with the academy boss portrayed by some at the club as 'the school-teacher twit caught blinking in the hurly-burly of football', whose decency was mistaken for meekness.

After last night’s triumph, no-one can doubt the debt this club owes to 'Gentleman Jim'. Maybe a fitting tribute would be a song in his honour at the Portsmouth game.

Anyone got any suggestions?

Reaction, stats & ratings: Sunderland 1 City 2

2008-04-12T10:32:00.000-07:00

Another game overshadowed by events off the pitch, following Joe Lovejoy's story in The Times which claims that Thaksin has threatened Sven with the sack if results don't improve.

Lovejoy is a seasoned journalist, who has written a decent biography of Sven, but the fact that the story doesn't cite any sources is unusual. Two hours after it was published, The Observer ran a similar story that made these claims:

According to a source familiar with City's politics, Thaksin upbraided Eriksson over his part in an internal club dispute. The source said: 'Thaksin rang Sven to reprimand him, telling him he would be sacked at the end of the season if results did not improve.'
It is further understood that agents attempting to negotiate deals with City in recent weeks have been told not to factor Eriksson into their equations because the club does not necessarily expect the manager they appointed last summer to be present for a second season at there.

The club quickly moved to quash the rumours, with denials published in the MEN and Independent, but what is most noticable is that none of the four stories contained any new quotes from Thaksin or any of his representatives.

The fact is, the only person who would know whether Sven has a long-term future at City is Thaksin himself, and being the politician he is, I imagine he's keeping all his options open right now.

But I like this take on events by Tommy Gun at BlueVibe:

'A higher profile & more money will in future allow us to make a complete arse of ourselves on a global rather than a regional level'.

Considering that last summer we were looking at the relative merits of Chris Coleman and Gary Megson, the fact that we're now discussing Sven v Scolari does at least represent significant progress.

~ The wait for the updated Official Fair Play Table continues, though Wednesday's Daily Mirror claims we've increased our lead over the rivals, while the latest Uefa Fair Play Table shows that Norway have just overtaken England at the top. The country that finishes top of the Fair Play league gains an automatic Uefa Cup spot, while any country that finishes on 8pts or higher will go into a draw, from which two Uefa Cup places will be awarded.
~ I came across a new site called Journalisted which is worth a visit. It allows you to type in a journalist's name into a search box and see what stories they've written on any given subject since Oct 2007.

~ Match highlights
~ Sven's post-match interview
~ Getty Images photos
~ Latest Premiership table

Is this the best rant of the season?

This was posted by Puskas at BlueVibe over the weekend:

"I despair at City fans after yesterday, I really ****ing do. We are, without doubt, the mongiest bunch of whining ****s in the league (all four divisions). The fact that players of the calibre of Elano get the boo boy treatment just proves it.

We played away with an injury-ravaged team against a bunch of long ball cloggers with a five man defence whose mission from the start was to hospitalise our midfield, and our response was to play attractive passing football throughout.

I read the match thread on the Blue Moon forum after the game and the vitriol of some of the City 'fans' on there for our team would shame a Rag. They want us to fail because that's the only thing that makes them happy. Every one of them, to a man, showering Elano with ****, then once he scored and set up the winner refusing to admit he's any good and going on about how **** Ireland is.

I wish they'd all **** off and support Rochdale, the bitter little depressing small time MONGS."

Coming up on Purely Man City

I've just been reading a fascinating autobiography by Len Davies, a former scout at City, which charts the decline and rise of our youth set-up.

The book has plenty of surprises (including the fact that we passed up the chance of signing a 20-year-old Kevin Reeves for £50,000), so in light of the game on Wednesday I'm going to be running a piece on the history of City's youth policy.

Player ratings

Ratings come from (in order): Manchester Evening News; Fidel Castro, pears12, bluemoon, The Original Special One, xavi6, Svensational, LookMumI'mOnMCF.net, teenage time killer, Green & Blue, King Kev, (Mancityfans); The Oracle, Benarbia, svennis pennis, goat boy, quiet_riot, leighton, zandvoort blue, Father Dougal MaGuire, Corky (Bluemoon); Kevin Cummins (in Observer); Sky, Sky Your Rating and the BBC.

Hart: av: 7.8 (MOTM)
(7, 8, 9, 8, 8, 9, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 8, 9, 8, 8, 8, 7, 8, 7, 6, 8, 7, 7, 6.6, 7.2)

Sun Jihai: 6.4
(6, 6, 6, 6, 7, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 7, 7, 6, 8, 7, 7, 5, 7, 7, 7, 8, 6, 6, 6.1, 5.8)

Corluka: 6.0
(6, 7, 7, 6, 6, 6, 7, 7, 5, 7, 7, 6, 6, 7, 7, 7, 7, 6, 7, 6, 8, 4, 6, 5.9, 6.3)

Dunne: 7.2
(8, 7, 7, 6, 9, 7, 7, 8, 6, 7.5, 6, 9, 8, 6, 8, 8, 7, 7, 7, 4, 7, 7, 8, 7.2, 7.1)

Ball: 6.6
(7, 8, 8, 6, 7, 7, 8, 7, 5, 6.5, 7, 7, 6, 7, 7, 7, 5, 6, - , 6, 7, 6, 6, 5.5, 5.8)

Gelson Fernandes: 6.1
(6, 6, 7, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 7, 6, 6, 7, 7, 7, 6, 6, 7, 5, 7, 5, 5, 5.6, 6.0)

Ireland (Sturridge 58 - Vassell 82): 4.8
(6, 6, 5, 4, 5, 6, 6, 5, 4, 3, 3, 5, 3, 6, 5, 4, 4, 4, 5, 5, 6, 4, 5, 4.9, 5.2)

Johnson: 6.0
(6, 5, 6, 5, 6, 6, 7, 6, 5, 6, 7, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 7, 5, 7, 5.9, 6.3)

Elano (Hamann 89): 6.9
(7, 8, 7.5, 7, 7, 8, 9, 8, 6, 7, 8, 7, 6, 7, 7, 7, 7, 6, 7, 6, 7, 5, 6, 5.6, 6.8)

Petrov: 6.1
(6, 4, 6, 6, 5, 7, 6, 7, 6, 6.5, 6, 5, 7, 7, 6, 7, 7, 7, 6, 5, 6, 6, 6, 6.4, 6.7)

Benjani: 5.2
(6, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, - , 5, 4, 6, 7, 5, 4, 6, 4.5, 4.5, 5, 6, 5, 5, 5, 6, 5, 5, 5.2, 5.7)

Subs:

Sturridge (Ireland 58): 6.0
(6, - , - , 6, - , 6, 6, 6, 5, 6, 7, - , - , - , - , - , 6, - , - , 6, 8, 5, 5, 5.3, 6.4)

Vassell (Sturridge 82): 6.6
(6, 7, 7, 6, 7, - , 7, 7, 6, - , 7, 7, - , - , 6, - , 6, 6, - , 7, 7, - , - , - , 6.4)

Hamann(Elano 89)

Subs not used:
Isaksson, Geovanni

Match stats

I'm going to discontinue the table of match stats as I really don't think it adds much to what's available elsewhere. However, if enough people think it's worth keeping (which I doubt) I will bring it back.

For a detailed interactive graphic, including a breakdown of each player’s passes and tackles click here (and trawl to the bottom of the page), while you can also find match details at the BBC and Sky.

Match reports

Sunderland 1 City 2

Darius Vassell foils Sunderland (John Aizlewood)
And if the infectious joy that characterised Benjani Mwaruwari’s game at Fratton Park has been mysteriously extinguished since his move north, it was not hard to see why. Ploughing an unhappy lone furrow against Nyron Nosworthy and Jonny Evans, he repeatedly looked for support. He invariably found none.
Worse still, City’s aesthetically pleasing passing game had lost its rhythm. Stephen Ireland, Michael Johnson and Elano, hitherto exemplary practitioners of the incisive through ball, found their radar malfunctioning and their aim skew-whiff. No wonder Mwaruwari looked so disconsolate.

Keane stays calm as fortune favours City (John Wardle)
Nothing that had gone before prepared the crowd for what occurred in the final 11 minutes of this match. Indeed, many of them had already departed the ground after witnessing a featureless encounter between two teams who seemed to assume they can coast through the final weeks of the season.

Vassell gives Keane cause for concern (Michael Walker)
A dreadful first half had been followed by a slightly improved second – due to Sunderland's increased urgency – but an afternoon that was high on expectation was petering out towards what seemed like an inevitable goalless draw.
Then on 79 minutes the teenage City substitute Daniel Sturridge surged into the Sunderland area from the left. Sturridge had come on 20 minutes earlier and this was his first contribution. He cut inside Evans and was running away from Nyron Nosworthy when he went down as if he had been clipped from behind.
Referee Mike Riley clearly thought so and pointed to the spot but the naked eye was confused. Nosworthy did not look close enough to make contact with Sturridge and television replays appeared to show the teenager tripping over his own feet. Sturridge needed treatment and Nosworthy did not complain when booked by Riley, to add to the confusion.

Vassell's late winner frustrates Sunderland (Martin Hardy)
Darius Vassell amassed 22 caps when Sven-Goran Eriksson was England manager; now he cannot get a game under him at Manchester City. Yesterday, however, Vassell turned into an unlikely saviour, affording some sort of payback with an even more unlikely winner.
The round-shouldered forward, an 82nd-minute substitute, rarely inspires confidence in front of goal, thus when the Brazilian Elano slipped him through with three minutes left, his weak shot struggled for power and accuracy.
Somehow, perhaps unknown to either the player or his manager, the shot apologetically limped into the bottom corner of Craig Gordon's goal and City had their first victory in four, and maintain faint hopes of European qualification.

Roy Keane still sensitive to dip in standards
City have been sleepwalking, but a fourth win in 17 matches allowed Sven-Göran Eriksson to “keep dreaming about Europe next season”, albeit via the Intertoto Cup. They, like this match, were mediocre, but having forced his squad to squirm through videos of recent matches, the Swede was given a response. “We had to get the fighting spirit back,” he said.
Sunderland were sympathetic opponents. A dreadful first half gave City impetus, further assisted by an awful penalty decision in the 78th minute, allowing Elano to grasp the lead. Dean Whitehead’s superb volley restored parity briefly before Darius Vassell’s ugly finish. “It was the luckiest goal of my career,” he said.

City back Eriksson as Scolari haunts him again (David Hopps)
Vassell, curiously, was a regular in Eriksson's England, with six goals in 22 games, but his move to City has done little to reignite his career. His winning goal with three minutes of normal time remaining had nothing to commend it other than the outcome, a scuffed shot which dribbled in at Gordon's right-hand post.
City's bench celebrated some tactical triumph which to the casual observer passed unnoticed, Eriksson not as much punching the air as moving his fist through it with infinite politeness. Elano should have added a third but thumped a volley high from seven yards. City's win maintains their hopes of European qualification, as well as their first top-10 finish in the Premier League, but it was no renaissance. Eriksson has achieved about as much as one could have expected.

Tabloid Tales: how Micah got 'Screwed'

2008-04-08T13:59:00.001-07:00

I suppose the full headline should read: ‘how Micah got Screwed by a 77-year-old Australian man', as that seems the most appropriate way of describing the player’s recent dealings with Rupert Murdoch's News of the World.

For those of you that don't subscribe to Britain's most popular newspaper, Micah recently poured his heart out to the Screws, in a bid to salvage his reputation following the paper's Micah 'sex roast shame' story on December 23.

That story branded Micah a 'vile animal', describing his behaviour as 'sick', 'depraved', 'vile' and 'debauched'. It's worth noting that, on the NOTW website, the story nestled among a video of Paris Hilton getting 'wet and wild', a story about actress Lindsay Lohan's 'manic addiction to sex', news that glamour model Beyonce has stripped for a new jeans ad, pictures of Gary Lineker's new girlfriend in her bikini, a video of Girls Aloud dressed as schoolgirls, a video of glamour model Jodie Marsh and the 'topless top 10' slideshow, which features 'Beck's lover' Rebecca Loos and others.

But more noteworthy was the timing of the story, which was published just three days after Micah split with his agents, SEM.

Now I’m not suggesting that SEM had anything to do with its publication, but I do believe Micah’s decision to part company with them is likely to have shaped subsequent events.

According to The Times, SEM's role was then taken over by Micah's father, Lincoln Richards. And having a family member as your agent can land you in deep water with this paper. Nicolas Anelka for instance, who is represented by his brother Claude, was recently accused of being a 'text cheat' by the NOTW, in a story that has now disappeared from its website.

To understand why certain players get exposed in papers like the NOTW, it helps to examine the economic forces at work. Celebrity stories are essentially commodities, and the big agencies commodity brokers, trading their assets for financial gain. Not only do agents and publicists push to get positive coverage for their clients, but the financial influence they have over papers is often enough to get negative stories pulled. SEM, for instance, regularly supply stories to the NOTW, with features even marked 'courtesy' of SEM' (examples here and here).

According to Micah, the original ‘sex roast’ incident took place in early 2007, and it's likely that the NOTW had been in possession of the video for some time. However, with such big money at stake for SEM (as well as the fee for renegotiating his contract and the millions in potential sponsorship deals, SEM chairman Jerome Anderson made an estimated £8m from City in the summer) a few story trades would have been enough to keep Micah’s private life out of the paper. But as soon as SEM parted company with Micah (and City according to this Daily Mail story ) all obstacles to running the story would have immediately vanished.

Micah is now represented by Chris Nathaniel's NVA Entertainment Group, whose clients include Rio Ferdinand and John Terry as well as glamour model Jordan and pop group Mist-Teeq.

Nathaniel is probably a sensible choice for a player in need of image repair (see how Drunken Terry urinates on floor can quickly become Terry honours war heroes) and his 'confession' to the NOTW represented an important part of his tabloid rehabilitation. That story had the feel of a press release, with Micah revealing that his new role models were, coincidentally, fellow NVA clients Rio Ferdinand and John Terry.

It’s a shame because Micah has an interesting story to tell. In December he talked to the The Times about his upbringing in Leeds and how he was affected by the the suicide of a boyhood friend, but I suspect we'll be hearing little more of that from now on.

Instead, we now only have the bland offerings of his BBC column, where he recently stressed his respect for referees and praised the return of David Beckham.

And frankly, who can blame him? No doubt it made a lot of sense to use his father as his advisor, particularly as it would have saved him a hefty agent's fee on his new contract. But with the damage to his image caused by the NOTW revelations likely to have cost him millions in potential advertising and sponsorship deals, this has been a hard lesson learned.

And the most important lesson appears to be this: if you’re going to film yourself having sex in a bathroom, make sure you’ve got protection.

~ Back in December The Times's Janice Turner wrote an interesting article on the economic forces at work in the tabloid glamour industry, which she termed 'boobonomics', while the Guardian published this piece about footballers and sex.

Taking it to the Max

If agents and publicists are commodity brokers then Britain's most famous spin-meister, Max Clifford, is a one-man Wall Street.

I only had one encounter with Clifford, back in the 1990s when I was working for a national daily newspaper, but I think it offers a good insight into the forces at work.

My feature editor called me over one morning and asked me to write a piece on an 'economic guru' who had just published a book about the housing market. "Oh, and treat this one carefully. He's one of Max Clifford's and Max is calling in a couple of favours," I was advised.

So off I went to Clifford's headquarters, an anonymous office above a hairdressers in London's West End. Clifford arrived shortly after I got there, gleefully announcing to his staff that he had just had lunch with a director of Talk Radio (which later became TalkSport), who told him that more than 40% of the station's audience were either prison inmates or people in mental institutions. I introduced myself and shook his hand, while he looked at me as though I was something he had trodden in.

I took my 'guru' for a spot of lunch at a nearby restaurant, where I listened to some of his thoughts. I’d discovered from the cuttings library that the guy had published two previous books. His first had predicted a crash in the housing market shortly before it boomed, while his second predicted a property boom – just before the crash that left the developers of Canary Wharf, and many others, facing bankruptcy.

Steering the conversation away from financial matters I remarked that he looked a lot younger than his years. "Do you know what the secret of staying young is?” he asked, leaning towards me as he delivered his secret: "Regular onanism".

Sensing it was a good time to take the conversation elsewhere I asked him about Clifford. "It’s amazing," he said. "I never really had any publicity before, but as soon as Max became my publicist the phone never stopped ringing."

Returning to the office, I set a about the task of navigating political waters. I should point out that the story I ended up writing was 100% factually accurate, but by selecting certain facts and omitting others (I’ll show you how this is done in a later Tabloid Tales) it wasn't exactly the most rigorous book review ever written.

I’m not sure what happened to our 'guru'. Needless to say his book predicted a property crash, and uncannily, was followed by almost a decade of boom.

But somehow I have a hunch he ended up a big stockholder in Northern Rock.

~ One man who didn’t grasp the workings of tabloid newspapers was former FA press officer Colin Gibson, when he attempted to dish the dirt on Sven to the NOTW back in 2004.

Gibson was previously the Daily Mail's sports editor, and in an attempt to keep a damaging story about the then FA chief executive, Mark Palios, out of the paper, followed what was common practice by offering a better story in exchange. Unfortunately for him, not only was that the only story he had to bargain with, but he had unwittingly created a third, and even juicer story.

For the paper it was a simple choice. They opted for the much more sensational story No.3, and published this transcript of the damning phone conversation.

Reaction, stats & ratings: City 0 Chelsea 2

2008-04-07T06:41:00.000-07:00

So much for my pre-match optimism, but then this is a different club from last year and at least now we're one that does United no favours whatsoever.

Right now matters off the pitch are holding more interest than those on, but at least it's for all the right reasons.

News that Thaksin's men are after Ronaldinho, if true, shows that Thaksin is more ambitious than previously thought. Sven's reaction was also interesting, telling The Times:

"I will phone the owners. It was a surprise, but if they want to package Ronaldinho for me I would accept him and be very happy." Eriksson joked about signing another high-profile Brazilian, adding: "I would be happy to take Kaka at the same time!"

This all raises a couple of interesting questions. Firstly,
should Thaksin's advisors be focusing their attentions on players that are highly unlikely to sign? In December the Daily Star reported that 'a close associate' of Thaksin was in talks with one of Javier Mascherano's representatives over a £17m move. Clearly there's a danger that we're just being used by agents to get better deals for their players elsewhere, but I suppose right now we're just going to have to wait and see.

The other question is how long Thaksin would stick with Sven if results don't improve. If our owner is following advice on transfer targets from people outside the club and not informing Sven, and given the apparent level of his ambitions, you do wonder at what point he would consider bringing in a bigger 'name' as manager.

~ The wait for the updated Fair Play table continues (the current one claims to include matches up to Apr 5 but is actually the same table as last month), but after looking at the number of cards handed out since March I'm expecting us to have risen up the table when it is finally published.

~ Plenty of discussion about Dunne's own-goal record after the match. I can't find any site that lists own-goals, but after looking through Soccerbase I've found that Dunne has now conceded five own-goals at City in league and Cup games, compared to the six he's scored at the right end. For the record, his own-goals before Saturday are: v Bradford (16-12-01), v United (13-2-15), v W Brom (28-12-04)and v Wigan (21-10-06.

~ Highlights
~ Sven's post-match interview
~ Pictures from rtfract, Getty Images
~ Latest Premiership table.

Player ratings

Ratings come from (in order): Manchester Evening News; King Kev, Blue2, irblinx, MaineRoadMemories, Grob, xavi6, Piccsnumberoneblue, SirElano, sandman (Mancityfans), Richard Tucker (rtfract.com), Sunday Times, Sunday Telegraph Opta, Sky, Sky Your Rating and the BBC.

Hart: 7.2 average (MOTM)
(7, 6,7,8, 8, 6, 8, 8, 8, 8, 7.5,8, 5, 8, 6.0, 7.0)

Corluka: 5.9
(6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 7, 6, 6, 7, 4, 6, 6, 6, 6, 5.0,5.9)

Dunne: 5.3
(6, 5, 4, 6, 5, 5, 5, 6, 5, 5, 6, 5, 5, 7, 5.0, 5.3)

Onuoha (Jihai 59): 6.7
(7, 5, 6, 7, 8, 7, 7, 7, 8, 7, 7, 7, 5, 7, 5.4, 6.3)

Ball: 6.1
(6, 6, 7, 6, 6, 8, 6, 6, 7, 7, 6, 5, 5, 6, 4.7, 5.4)

Ireland (Caicedo 75): 5.4
(6, 3, 4, 3, 4, 5, 5, 5, 7, 7, 6, 7, 6, 7, 5.5, 5.8)

Gelson Fernandes: 6.5
(5, 6, 7, 7, 7, 6, 7, 7, 6, 7, 7, 6, 7, 7, 5.3, 6.1)

Johnson: 6.9
(6, 8, 8, 8, 7, 6, 8, 6, 7, 8, 7, 7, 6, 7, 5.6, 6.2)

Petrov: 6.9
(7, 6, 7, 7, 5, 8, 8, 5, 8, 7, 7, 7, 7, 8, 6.3, 6.8)

Elano (Vassell 65): 5.1
(5, 5, 4, 6, 4, 4, 5, 4, 6, 6, 6, 5, 4,6, 5.4, 5.6)

Benjani: 5.8
(5, 6, 6, 6, 5, 6, 6, 6, 6, 5, 6.5, 5, 6, 7, 4.9, 5.9)

Subs:

Sun Jihai (Onuoha 59): 5.4
(5, - , - , 6, - , 6, 6, 5, - , 6, 5, 5, 5, 6, 4.4, 4.8)

Vassell (Elano 65): 5.0
(5, - , - , 5, - , 5, 6, 5, - , 5, 5, 4, 6, 4.4, 4.9)

Caicedo(Ireland 75): 4.7
(5, - , - , 3, - , 5, 5, 4, - , 6, - , 4, 6, 4.1, 5.1)

Subs not used:
Isaksson, Hamann

Chelsea: Cudicini, Belletti (Ferreira 86), Alex, Terry, A Cole, Essien, Obi, Lampard, Wright-Phillips (J Cole 52), Anelka, Kalou. Subs not used: Hilario, Shevchenko, Ballack

Match stats

The usual match stats have been cancelled this week due to lack of interest, so I'll again direct you to the Daily Telegraph (the interactive graphic is located at the bottom of the page). You can also find match details at the BBC, Sky and Setanta.

Also worth a view is the excellent Nerdic Indicator over at Wookies Lair.

Match reports

City 0 Chelsea 2

City Dunne and dusted by Chelsea (Guy Hodgson)
This was a stroll on a cool but sunny afternoon for Avram Grant's team against a City side who have won one match in their last seven and who, apart from a 15-minute spell before half-time, looked like they cannot wait for the season to end. Slow, sloppy and dull, just about the only imagination anyone with Sky Blue affiliation showed came from the announcer on the public address system, who billed the start of the second half as "the push for Europe". Push for mid-table mediocrity more like.

Unloved, unremarked, Grant assembles title form (Daniel Taylor)
Strange clubs, Manchester City and Chelsea. Since the turn of the year City have been in near-relegation form, yet their fans were still belting out Sven-Goran Eriksson's name on Saturday. And then there is Chelsea, perhaps the only club on the planet where the team win 80% of matches and the supporters refuse to sing the manager's name as a point of principle.
Perhaps a cry of "there's only one Avram Grant" will carry through the air at Stamford Bridge on April 26 if Chelsea beat Manchester United when the Premier League's top two clubs renew acquaintances. Or maybe it will not. Grant, after all, could never be described as debonair. He does not wear Prada suits or suede loafers. His press conferences can be fist-eatingly boring and he is not dedicated to the idea of being permanently extraordinary. He is not, in other words, Jose Mourinho.

Chelsea refuse to give up on Premier League (Derick Allsop)
Richard Dunne, City's generally dependable captain and central defender, contributed to Chelsea's title mission with an own-goal and inadvertent collaboration in the creation of the second, scored by Salomon Kalou.
City had their moments, particularly during a 15-minute period of the first half, yet ultimately had their goalkeeper, Joe Hart, to thank for averting a more substantial defeat.

Chelsea stay in hunt as Kalou hits target (Jamie Jackson)
By the 75th minute, the atmosphere in the City of Manchester Stadium - hardly lively at the best of times - had become soporific. Eriksson had also used up his attacking options by introducing Felipe Caicedo for Ireland, having earlier switched Darius Vassell for Elano.
It all made little difference, though. Eriksson's next programme notes should contain more despair at a season now dying, while Grant and his team might still snatch the title.

Winning is Avram Grant’s way to fight his critics (James Ducker)
Eriksson’s misery was compounded after Nedum Onuoha, the defender, was ruled out for the rest of the season with a dislocated shoulder and possible fractured wrist.
City’s hope of a route into Europe would appear to be through the Inter-toto Cup or the Uefa Fair Play League, but a top-ten finish would be an achievement, given that Eriksson has fashioned a team out of a group of strangers in such a short space of time

In pictures: City's chairmen from 1894 to the present (& other history)

2008-04-03T07:06:00.000-07:00

I'm going to be creating a City history section for this site over the weekend so thought I'd preview a couple of sections for you.

Further down the page is a revised board and shareholding timeline, while below are the pictures of City chairman from 1894 onwards that I've found online. I've managed to identify 17 chairmen so far, but can't find out who held the position between 1916 and 1923. There's no reference for this period in any of the histories I've read so far, so if anyone knows who the person or people might be please get in touch.

Staying on the history theme, I've been looking at the section of my site stats which tells me what search terms people have used, and it appears this site is helping educate United fans in historical matters. Earlier today someone typed 'what was the greatest achievement of Adolf Hitler?' into Google and my story about the bombing of Old Trafford was third on the list. Another visitor came through a Spanish search engine called Zymboo. If you type 'Old Trafford' into that site, the tale of how United became known as the 'Rags' is listed, while the story I published last year about electricans rearranging the lettering to form this message was ranked third.

City's chairmen: 1894 to the present

You'll notice that City had four chairmen in 1906, which was the result of an FA investigation into match fixing. I'm going to be writing about this in a few weeks time, and will also be publishing an extract from the upcoming book, Purely Man City: Writings, Reference & Miscellany, about a political and financial scandal that resulted in the club changing their name from Ardwick to Manchester City in 1894.

(click on a thumbnail for the full-size picture)

John Chapman (1894 to 1903)

Edward Hulton jnr (1903 to c1906)

John Allison (1906)

William Forrest (1906)

W A Wilkinson (1906 to c1916)

Lawrence Furniss (1916 & 1921 to 1928)

Albert Hughes (1929 to c1937)

Robert Smith (c1937 to 1940s)

Walter Smith (c1956 to c1960)

Alan Douglas (c1960 to 1965)

Albert Alexander jnr (1965 to 1971)

Eric Alexander (Dec 1971 to Oct 1972)

Peter Swales (Oct 1972 to Feb 1994)

Francis Lee (Feb 1994 to Mar 1998)

David Bernstein (Mar 1998 to Mar 2003)

John Wardle (Mar 2003 to Jul 2007)

Thaksin Shinawatra (Jul 2007 to present)

Directors and shareholding timeline

Following the death this week of former vice-chairman Freddie Pye, I thought it would be a good time to show his place in City's history.

A few more details have been added since I first published the timeline, but with financial information about City hard to come by, there are still plenty of gaps to be filled.

1894
April 13: Manchester City Football Club formed as limited company. 2,000 ordinary £1 shares are issued.
May 18: Chesters Brewery takes 100 shares (5%).
Publican John Edward Chapman becomes first chairman.

Founding shareholders include:
John Edward Chapman (publican) - one share
Samuel Barnett (schoolmaster) - one share
Robert Hayes (telegraphist) - one share
Frederick William Skinner (slate manufacturer) - one share
(pencil inventor)
John Robert Connelly? (schoolmaster) - one share
Alfred Jones (brewer) - one share
Edwin Hudson - one share
Charles McCouglan? (agent) - one share
William Raymond? (publican) - one share
Alexander (illegible) (signwriter & decorator) - one share
Robert Heath - one share

1902
Feb: 'Several’ directors resign.
Jun: New directorate elected at AGM. Chapman replaced as chairman by newspaper magnate Edward Hulton Jr.

1903
April board includes:
Chairman: Edward Hulton jnr
President: Alderman C H Waterhouse
Directors: John Chapman and John Allison.

1904
Allison resigns as director towards end of 1903-04 season.
May?: Molyneux and Jones appointed directors.
Oct: Directors Joshua Parlby, John Chapman and Lawrence Furniss banned for three years and finance director G Madders suspended for life.

1906
Feb:
Chairman: John Allison
Apr: W A Wilkinson replaces John Chapman as director.
William Forrest , former president of the Lancashire FA, becomes chairman.
May 31: All directors suspended except Wilkinson.
Directors John Allison and vice-chairman Davies suspended until Jan 1st 1907.
Directors Molyneux and Jones suspended.
Dec 31:
Chairman: W A Wilkinson

1908
Directors: S Anderson and J Royle

1910
May:
Chairman: W A Wilkinson.

1912
Aug 31:
Director: J Ayrton

1921-1928
Chairman: Lawrence Furniss (& also in 1916)

1929
Chairman: Albert Hughes

1933
Chairman: Albert Hughes

1937
Oct 26 board:
Chairman: Robert Smith
Vice-chairman: Albert EB Alexander (Snr)
Directors: Dr J Bowling Holmes, William Menzies Shaw, F R Jolly and H Wood.

1951
Director: Walter Smith

1953
Oct board:
President: Albert Alexander (Snr) JP
Chairman: Robert Smith
Directors: Alan Douglas, E Gill, F R Jolly, Walter Smith

1956
Apr:
Chairman: Walter Smith

1959
Jul 9:
Vice-chairman: Alan Douglas

1960
Mar:
Chairman: Alan Douglas
Director: Doug Hamer

1963
May:
Chairman: Alan Douglas

1965
Apr: Albert Alexander (jnr) becomes chairman.

1968
Summer: Eric Alexander, son of the chairman, joins board

1969
Chris Muir leaves board.

1970
List of shareholders:
Albert Alexander (chairman) - 560 shares (28%)
Frank Johnson (vice chairman) - 521 shares (26.05%)
Eric Alexander (director) 27 shares (1.35%)
John J Humphries (director)
Sidney Rose (director)
Chris Muir - 103 shares (5.15%)
Total shares in issue: 2,000 (including 300 ‘missing’ shares)

1971
Apr: Peter Swales joins board after being given 10 shares (0.5%)
Aug 14: Double glazing tycoon Joe Smith and Simon Cussons, a member of the soap manufacturing family, become directors.
Early Dec: Albert Alexander given title of President. His son Eric Alexander becomes chairman. Joe Smith named vice-chairman.

1972
Feb: Ian Niven joins board.
Mar: Swales becomes vice-chairman.
Oct 5: Eric Alexander stands down. Swales appointed chairman.
Smith becomes president and Cussons vice-chairman. Chris Muir returns to board.

1975-79
Greenalls acquire a stake in the club in the second half of the decade.

1979
Feb: Director John Humphries, a member of the family that created and owned Umbro, dies.

1982
Freddie Pye, a colleague of Swales at Altrincham in the 1960s, joins board as vice-president.

1984-85
Kitchens tycoon Stephen Boler buys a stake in City from Peter Swales.

1988
Freddie Pye appointed vice-chairman.

Late 1980s
Share issue raises £750,000 and leaves Swales and Boler with a joint holding of 64%.

1993
Freddie Pye steps down as vice-chairman.
Aug 21: Former Sunday people journalist John Maddock appointed general manager. Maddock had joined City as a PR at the start of the season.

1994
Feb 05: Francis Lee appointed chairman after paying £3million for 112,337 shares from both Swales and Boler at £13.35 per share. Colin Barlow (the new chief executive), John Dunkerley and David Holt become directors that month. Ashley Lewis also joins board, representing Boler's stake. Andrew Thomas (the Greenalls nominee) remains on board.
Nov: David Bernstein appointed to board after being recommended to Lee by Sir Howard Davies as a City fan background and a name in the City of London who could assist in preparing the club for a flotation on the Stock Exchange.
Oct 2: Company floated on OFEX.

List of shareholders:
Francis Lee - 3,882,660 shares (21.6%)
Other consortium members - 3,713,196 shares (20.66%)
Greenalls PLC - 2,498,477 shares (13.9%)
Stephen Boler - 1,648,356 shares (9.17%)
PJ Swales Ltd & exors of PJ Swales - 1,255,704 shares (6.99%)
Total shares in issue: 17,971,806

1996
Jul: David Bernstein appointed vice-chairman.

Seven of the old directors are phased out over the following twelve months, including Freddie Pye and Ian Niven.

1997
Jan 1: Michael Turner, formerly commercial manager at Liverpool FC, appointed chief executive with effect from 3rd March. Colin Barlow continues on the board with responsibility for special project development.
Feb 17: Rights issue raises £11.8m before expenses. Stephen Boler and "John Wardle & his associate" each pay £5m for 6,250,000 shares. 1,998,343 shares are sold to other subscribers.

New list of shareholders:
Stephen Boler - 7,898,356 shares (24.12%)
Trustees connected with
John Wardle & his associate - 6,250,000 shares (19.09%)
Francis Lee - 3,882,660 shares (11.8%)
Other consortium members - 3,713,196 shares (11.34%)
Greenalls Plc - 2,498,476 shares (7.63%)
PJ Swales Ltd & exors of PJ Swales - 1,255,704 shares (3.84%)
Total shares in issue: 32,470,149

Dec 12: Colin Barlow, John Dunkerley and David Holt all resign from board. Dennis Tueart appointed director.

1998
Mar 16: John Wardle appointed to board.
Mar 17: Francis Lee resigns as chairman. Bernstein replaces him.
Jun 25: Non-executive directors Andrew Thomas (his alternate director Norman Summers) and Ashley Lewis are appointed to the newly formed audit and remuneration committees of the Board.
Oct 30: Stephen Boler dies. Boler’s shareholding to be managed by Walbrook Trustees, representing the Boler family.
Nov 23: Chief executive Mike Turner resigns. Chairman David Bernstein assumes a number of Turner’s responsibilities. Chris Bird becomes chairman's assistant.

1999
Jun 1: John Wardle appointed deputy chairman. Chris Bird promoted to chief operating officer. Alistair Mackintosh becomes finance director.
Dec 6: BSkyB buys 9.95% of club for £5.5m. £4.8m of loans from Wardle & Makin converted into shares. Wardle, Makin and Boler family awarded 5,390,538 bonus shares following triggering of clause in Dec 1996 rights issue. Total of 13,468,683 new shares issued.

New list of shareholders:
John Wardle - 13.99%
David Makin - 11.01%
Walbrook Trustees - 18.89%
BSkyB - 9.95%
Francis Lee - 7.24%
The Greenalls Group Plc - 4.84%
Total shares in issue: 53,672,693

2000
Jul 27: Thomas resigns as director. Bryan Bodek appointed to the board and replaces Thomas on both the audit and remuneration committees.

2001
Feb 7: De Vere Group PLC (formerly The Greenalls Group Plc) sells ‘substantially all’ of its stake to Makin and Wardle.

New list of shareholders:
JC Wardle - 16.1%
David Makin - 13.85%
Walbrook Trustees - 18.75%
BSkyB - 9.88%
Francis Lee - 7.13%
Total shares in issue: 54,089,353

2002
Sep 05: Sara Billington appointed assistant to chief operating officer Chris Bird.
The 31-year-old from Baguley joined the Blues in 1996 as secretary to then managing director Colin Barlow. She is a former pupil of Wellington Road School in Timperley.
"My job will be to assist the chief operating officer in day-to-day business, head up the communications department, assist the chairman and be front of house on match days."
Dec 24: Chris Bird appointed managing director - development. Alistair Mackintosh appointed managing director – finance

2003
Feb 27: Chris Bird tenders resignation.
Mar 5: David Bernstein resigns.
Mar 7: Chris Bird leaves
May 19: John Wardle becomes chairman. Bryan Bodek appointed deputy chairman. Alistair Mackintosh becomes managing director.

2005
May 25: Ashley Lewis leaves board.

2006
Jan 25: Mark Boler becomes director.

2007
Jul 6: Dr Thaksin Shinawatra becomes chairman following the complete takeover of the club.
Jul 6: Panthongtae Shinawatra, Thaksin’s son, appointed non-executive director. Panthongtae ‘founded How Come Group, an events organising company in Thailand and is a major shareholder in seven other companies in Thailand covering various fields including photography, television programme production and beverages.
Jul 6: Pintongta Shinawatra, Thaksin’s daughter, appointed non-executive director. Pintongta is ‘a major shareholder in 12 companies in Thailand ranging from real estate and car-leasing to technology.
Jul 6: Sasin Monvoisin, a fashion company director, appointed director.
Jul 6: John Wardle become non-executive Deputy Chairman.
Jul 6: Dennis Tueart resigns from the board.
Jul 6: Mark Boler resigns from the board.
Aug 9: Taweesuk Jack Srisumrid appointed Executive Director. Taweesuk is managing director of The Empire Asia Group Co Ltd, a leading financial advisory and private investment group based in Thailand.

And back to the present day

Is it just me who's got a really good feeling about the Chelsea game? With City players allegedly read the riot act and Chelsea having to face Fenerbahce next Tuesday, I'm getting confident about a win. And fact that beating Chelsea would probably secure the title for United is for me the final clincher.

~ I decided to hold over the story about Micah Richards' dealings with the News of The World as I'm not quite happy with it yet, but I will definitely be running it next week.

Some historic season ticket figures

2008-04-02T07:02:00.000-07:00

I'm a bit unsure what to make of yesterday's MEN story about season ticket sales.

Obviously it's good news that sales are up 4,000 on the same period last year, even though the circumstances back then were very different. But trying to work out whether sales will eventually be higher than last season is tricky, particularly as the club don't release official figures and the ones given in the MEN are sometimes contradictory.

The paper claims that last summer we 'sold 7,000 on the news that Eriksson had taken over' but last year stated we had sold 22,000 by June 24 - two weeks before Sven's appointment. As the total figure for 2007-08, including half-season tickets, was given as 28,000 then something doesn't quite add up.

But aside from my nit-picking, my guess is that we'll end up with roughly the same number of season ticket holders as last year. Given the current economic climate and the record number of fixture changes we've had to put up with, that would still be a pretty remarkable achievement.

Below are some historic figures for season ticket sales I've managed to dig up, mainly from the MEN. The big surprise is that we now have nearly twice as many season ticket holders compared to the 1970s (the 1975-76 figure comes from this site and was a record at the time).

1975-76: 15,000

1998: '3,000 down on previous season'

2001-02: 25,000 (24,000 by Jun 16)

2002-03: 24,000

2003-04:
May 31: '35,700 of the 36,000 available sold'
Jun 18: 36,000+
Aug 10: 'around 36,000'

2005-06: 32,000

2006-07: 27,000 (almost 28,000 including half-year season tickets)

2007-08: 28,000 (including half-year season tickets)
Apr 1: 15,000 sold
Jun 24: 22,000 sold and ‘City expect those numbers to swell considerably’
Jun 28: 22,500 sold and club 'on course to top the 27,000' sold last year

2008-09:
Apr 1: 19,000 sold

Working to a shoestring budget

News that CoMS if finally going to get two video screens reminds me of this account by Timpsons chief executive John Timpson of how he ended up funding the old scoreboard:

It was great returning to the Premiership but not when we moved to our new stadium. The old atmosphere was missing and my new seat couldn’t see a scoreboard. Some people wonder why anyone needs a big board to know the score, but as well as the goals, it shows the time left to the final whistle.

Irritated, I wrote to the City chairman, who promised to investigate my problem. Nothing happened, so I wrote again and was assured a new scoreboard would be considered at board level.

When nothing appeared next season, I wrote again, enclosing a £25 cheque payable to the Manchester City Scoreboard Fund. That got an immediate response. Their commercial manager called, praised my initiative, and asked for sponsorship towards their community youth programme. “I want a bloody scoreboard,” I replied.

Last July I bought one, a digital screen with “Timpson” written below in 4ft letters. My scoreboard inspired a sparkling start to the season, and after three games we led the Premiership. But it didn’t last. By Christmas, we were a mid-table team usually shown on Match of the Day after midnight.

Reaction, stats & ratings: Birmingham 3 City 1

2008-03-31T06:55:00.000-07:00

I think it was the 'Return of the City Slackers' for this one.

Little urgency from the kick-off and too much laughing on the pitch for my liking. The MEN claims Sven read them the riot act after this performance, though it sounds more like they were threatened with Thaksin's wallet. With Lukas Podolksi's agent, Kon Schramm, recently claiming that City bid £15.9m for the player in January, a summer clear-out is at least looking likely.

There were plenty of threads about unlucky purple jerseys on the talkboards after this game, but the fact that Rob Styles was referring was possibly the worst omen of all. According to Premiersoccerstats, City's record when Styles has refereed is now W2 D4 L12. Mark Lawrenson is not exactly City fans' favourite pundit, but his comment on MOTD that the Sun Jihai penalty was the worst decision ever made was no exaggeration. It's hard to say whether Styles has a bias against City, but his Wikipedia entry at least shows that it's not just us that fall victim to his baffling decisions.

The other mystery of the game was why Geovanni has not been playing more this season. Despite coming on with just 18mins he still earned the highest score for an outfield player in this week's ratings, and managed to get a shot on goal after just 15secs on the pitch.

Yet for most of this season you felt there was more chance of Sven playing Tord Grip on the right wing than Geovanni. As his absence has clearly not been down a lack of talent the problem presumably lies off the pitch. With Geovanni's contract expiring in the summer you have to fear that he will be the first casualty of any clearout.

~ Almost a shocker of an own goal by Sun Jihai, but judging from these clips at mancityfans it would have still fallen well short of the worst own goal ever.

~ As an antidote to last week's Beckham Mania, here's a video of him playing in LA Galaxy's 4-0 drubbing by Colorado on Sunday. Judging by the clip, Beckham's hapless teammates are now almost as lazy as he is.

~ Sven's post-match interview
~ Getty Images photos
~ Latest Premiership table.

Player ratings

Ratings come from (in order): MEN; Fidel Castro, bobadji, xavi6, irblinx (Mancityfans), goat boy, Humlannitton (Bluemoon), Kevin Parker (OSC), Sunday Telegraph Opta, Setanta, Sky and Sky Your Rating and the BBC.

Hart: 6.4 (MOTM)
(6, 6, 6, 7, 7, 7, 7, 6, 6, 7.5, 7, 5.7, 5.5)

Sun Jihai: 4.9
(5, 2, 6, 3, 5, 7, 4, 7, 6, 6, 5, 4.7, 4.6)

Dunne: 5.1
(5, 6, 4, 6, 5, 6, 5, 4, 5, 5.5, 5, 4.8, 5.4)

Onuoha: 5.0
(5, 4, 5, 4, 5, 6, 5, 4, 6, 6, 5, 4.9, 4.8)

Garrido: 5.6
(4, 6, 6, 6, 6, 7, 6, 4, 7, 6, 5, 4.6, 4.6)

Vassell (Caicedo 59): 3.9
(5, 1, 2, 2, 3, 5, 4, 5, 4, 6.5, 5, 3.7, 4.6)

Gelson Fernandes: 5.8
(6, 6, 6, 5, 5, 7, 6, 6, 7, 6, 5, 5.4, 5.1)

Hamann (Geovanni 72): 5.4
(6, 5, 4, 5, 4, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 5, 5.6, 5.1)

Ireland: 4.5
(6, 4, 1, 5, 3, 6, 4, 2, 7, 6, 5, 4.3, 4.9)

Elano: 6.2
(6, 6, 7, 6, 7, 7, 6, 7, 7, 7, 6, 4.8, 6.3)

Benjani (Mpenza 81): 5.2
(5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 5, 6, 6, 4, 6.5, 6, 3.8, 5.2)

Subs:

Caicedo (Vassell 59): 5.1
(6, 5, 6, 5, 4, - , - , 5, 5, 5, 6, 4.6, 4.4)

Geovanni (Hamann 72): 6.3
(6, 7, 7, 8, 7, -, -, 6, 6, 6, 6, 5.5, 5.3)

Mpenza(Benjani 81)

Subs not used:
Isaksson, Corluka

Birmingham: Taylor, Kelly, Jaidi, Queudrue, Murphy, Larsson, Muamba, Johnson, McSheffrey, Forssell (Parnaby 70) Zarate (O'Connor 90).
Subs not used: Doyle, Jerome, Nafti.

Match stats

Bit short of time this week so I'll have to direct you to the Daily Telegraph's excellent stats, while you can also find match details at the BBC and Setanta.

Match reports

Birmingham 3 City 1

Birmingham grateful to Zarate for mastering clash of Styles (Jim Foulerton)
Manchester City, it has to be said, were awful and Sven Goran Eriksson did not spare his players. "The referee got it completely wrong with their penalty, I've never seen anything like it but we cannot just blame him," he said. "We must blame ourselves because we gave the ball away so many times and if we want to play in Europe we have to do a lot better than that. We will talk on Monday but if we play like that next weekend against Chelsea it will be a very unpleasant day."

Zarate beats the Tevez prescription (Simon Burnton)
Styles seems to have quite an active subconscious because these things keep happening. This was the third successive league game in which he has sent a player off and gone on to award that player's team a controversial penalty - and he also found time to offend the manager of Ghana last week. But this decision must stand alone; adjectives simply do not exist to describe its absurdity.

Birmingham City win allays relegation fears (Colin Malam)
Appearing to respond to the taunts of the crowd, Styles then awarded 10-man Birmingham a laughable penalty as if to ensure they got the win they deserved. With Arsenal coming back from the dead at Bolton and Fulham drawing at Derby, Birmingham now have a four-point buffer.
While Manchester City manager Sven-Goran Eriksson agreed that Styles got Birmingham's penalty "completely wrong", he refused to blame the referee for the defeat.
"We must blame ourselves," he said. "If we want to speak about Europe we can't lose as many balls as we did today. We must be better than that with Chelsea coming to Manchester next."

Zarate kid fires for McLeish (Philip Dorward)
'The referee got it completely wrong and I've never seen a penalty like that. But before blaming the referee we should blame ourselves. If you concede two goals as we did today we will never win a Premier League game,' said Eriksson.
Contrasting Birmingham's busyness was Man City's dizziness. Benjani set the tone in the 10th minute when he rattled the post with the goal gaping. There then followed one-way traffic. Elano cleared Raidi Jaidi's header off the line. Two more Sebastian Larsson crosses caused Sun Jihai to shin over his own crossbar and Richard Dunne almost lob Joe Hart.

Mauro Zarate keeps Birmingham on survival course (Brian Doogan)
Birmingham were superior in almost every facet, though they might have fallen behind early on when an incisive pass by Elano, perfectly measured for Mwaruwari, yielded a quick chance for the City striker. Jaidi managed to apply just enough pressure to throw his aim, however, and his shot struck the post. Larsson’s crossing ability hauled Birmingham into the game and twice in rapid succession he panicked Richard Dunne into elementary errors.

Revealed: how City fans have been messed around the most

2008-03-26T08:22:00.000-07:00

I was at the Sky Sports site the other day and noticed that their fixture lists include a record of when games are rescheduled.

After scrolling through City's fixtures I discovered that our games have been rescheduled a staggering 21 times so far this season, including 13 home games. We've had more league games moved than any other club, and when FA Cup, Coca-Cola Cup and European games are included only Everton fans have had to put up with as many fixture changes as us.

Here are the number of fixture changes for each club this season (if anyone has difficulty reading this table I've published it in a different format at the bottom of the page):

And here are the fixture changes in full:

Aug
Sat 18
City v Man Utd (moved to Sun 19)

Sep
Sat 1
Blackburn v City (moved to Sun 2)
Sat 15
City v Villa (moved to Sun 16)
Sat 29
City v Middlesbro (moved to Sun Oct 7)

Oct
Sat 6
City v Newcastle (moved to Tue Jan 1)
Tue 30 (Coca-Cola Cup)
Bolton v City (moved to Wed 31)

Nov
Sat 3
City v Sunderland (moved to Mon 5)
Sat 10
Portsmouth v City (moved to Sun 11)

Dec
Sat 8
Spurs v City (moved to Sun 9)
Wed 26
City v Blackburn (moved to Thu 27)
Sat 29
City v Liverpool (moved to Sun 30)

Jan
Tue 1
Newcastle v City (moved to Tue 2)
Sat 19
City v West Ham (moved to Sun 20)
Tue 29
Derby v City (moved to Wed 30)

Feb
Sat 9
United v City (moved to Sun 10)
Sat 23
City v Everton (moved to Mon 25)

Mar
Sat 15
City v Spurs (moved to Sun 16)

Apr
Sat 5
City v Chelsea (moved to Sun 6)
Sun 6
City v Chelsea (moved back to Sat 5)
Sat 19
City v Portsmouth (moved to Sun 20)

May
Sun 11
City v Newcastle (moved to Sat Sep 29)

It's hard to tell what precise effect this has had on attendances, but it does make this season's average gate of 42,068 - up 5.2% on last year - all the more remarkable.

Of course, there is an upside to all this too. The table also provides some indication of how this season's £900million TV money will be shared out.

It's unclear what the exact formula for payments will be as details have not yet been published, but if it's similar to the last TV deal then around £142m will be shared out depending on TV appearances. That should net around £10m-£11m for City, on top of an estimated £31m that will be automatically allocated to each club. With merit payments now worth around £670,000 per place, an 8th place finish would earn us £8.7m. In all, that would add up to nearly £50m in TV money for this season, compared to £22.4m last year.

But, as always, it's the fans who pay the price.

~ Here's a link to an interesting site called The Right Result (originally posted by Doctor Congo at Bluemoon), which shows what the Premiership table might have looked like had referees made correct decisions.

~ Finishing off the table theme, the latest figures for arrests at football matches have just been released. The full figures haven't been put on the Home Office website yet, but you can read the full 2006-07 figures, which break down every type of arrest for each club, by clicking here.

~ I notice that a new statue of Southampton legend Ted Bates was unveiled last weekend after the original one was pulled down following complaints from irate fans. If you missed it first time round, I wrote this story about the fiasco back in May.

~ I'm pretty much tabled-out for this week so I'll be running the all-time City managers ranking next week. I'm also finishing off the first of the Tabloid Tales series which I'll be running early next week.

Player ratings after 30 games

2008-03-25T06:35:00.000-07:00

Below are the ratings and squad details for the season so far (cup games are not included):

And here's the match-by match breakdown for games 21-30 (substitute appearances are in italics). Ratings from the other games, and other squad details, can be found in the Stats & Squad section:

21 - Newcastle 0 City 2
22 - Everton 1 City 0
23 - City 1 W Ham 1
24 - Derby 1 City 1
25 - City 1 Arsenal 3
26 - United 1 City 2
27 - City 0 Everton 2
28 - City 0 Wigan 0
29 - Reading 2 City 0
30 - City 2 Spurs 1

Reaction, stats & ratings: Bolton 0 City 0

2008-03-24T08:39:00.000-07:00

Unusually for a City fan, Bolton Wanderers have always occupied a special place in my memory.

When I was a kid my Dad, who was a match reporter for a Sunday newspaper, would take me up to Burnden Park and get me in the press box. The experiences provided some early lessons in life. After borrowing my Dad's press pass and using to get past two lines of uniformed stewards, I learned that the difference between being important and not being important was often a 4" by 3" piece of card.

Burnden Park was also where I had my first Roger Melly moment, watching the then Bolton manager Ian Greaves machine-gunning expletives into his conversation with journalists (being a weird kid I timed it on my digital watch and can exclusively reveal that, off camera, Ian Greaves talked at 14 swear words-a-minute).

But there was also an important football lesson to be learned at Burnden Park back in the late 1970s. At the time Bolton were challenging for promotion from the old second division. They were winning games and playing decent football. But most importantly, in Frank Worthington they had a player that set the pulses racing whenever he touched the ball. They also had Willie Morgan, disgarded by Man United as too old, dazzling down the left wing, and the combination was to prove irresistible to the fans who were flocking back to the ground.

It was a lesson taught by the great Bob Lord at Burnley two decades earlier. His formula was to invest heavily in the youth set-up, pay top money for the best manager you can find and ensure the team played exciting football - a formula that took his unfashionable club to the league title in the 1959/60 season and the runners-up spot and FA Cup final in 1961/62.

For me, Bolton are a classic example of a golden rule of football: that being efficient and hard-working is never going to be enough in football, even if it get results. Despite four seasons of top-eight finishes their average attendance slumped from 26,800 to 23,600 and this season stands at 20,400.

City too had been suffering a similar slump in attendances that reflected the lack of excitement on the pitch, and before the takeover were on the type of downward spiral that looks like sending Bolton down this season. But now our game plan appears not too dissimilar to Bob Lord's. Our academy is arguably the best in the country, we're paying top dollar to a big name manager and we're trying to play attractive passing football.

But despite our recent spending, and the early-season flashes of brilliance from Elano, we still desperately lack that special player - a Shaun Wright-Phillips, Kinkladze or a Peter Barnes to get the adrenalin pumping, and to get us talked about and watched by neutrals.

It appears that Thaksin and Eriksson recognise this need too, so now all we can do is wait for the summer transfer window to open and hope.

Just please God, not Beckham.

~ This was another weekend that helped our chances of European qualification through the Fair Play league (there's a guide to how European qualification works here).
The official Fair Play table was last updated on March 4, and since then we've only picked up two bookings.
Behind us in the Fair Play table are Wigan (7 yellows & 1 red since Mar 4), Reading (5 yellows), Fulham (4 yellows), West ham (6 yellows, 1 red) and Portsmouth (4 yellows).

~ Match highlights
~ Sven's post-match interview
~ Getty Images photos
~ Latest Premiership table.

This week on Purely Man City

Tomorrow I'll be publishing the players ratings for the first 30 league games, and later in the week will be running an all-time ranking table for City managers.

I've also been writing a series of articles called Tabloid Tales. The first one, which I'll publish either later this week or early next week, looks at Micah Richards's recent dealings with agents and how they might have shaped his treatment by the tabloid press.

Player ratings

Ratings come from (in order): Manchester Evening News; Fidel Castro (Mancityfans), sky tot (Bluemoon), Kevin Parker (OSC), Sunday Times, Sunday Telegraph Opta, Setanta, Sky and the BBC.

Hart: 6, 8, 8, 7, 7, 7, 8, 7, 6.5 (av: 7.2 MOTM)
Nothing too exacting from shot shy Bolton on a day that was horrible for the keepers. (MEN)
Good in the air and saved us with a magnificent save from Diouf. (Fidel Castro)
One good save and some good punches. (sky tot)

Corluka: 6, 7, 7, 6, 7, 7, 7, 7, 6.0 (av: 6.7)
No errors in concentration like last match as he returned to his controlled self. (MEN)
(Nearly) back to his best. (Fidel Castro)
Better today, but didn't get forward enough. (sky tot)

Onuoha: 7, 8, 8, 6, 6, 7, 6.5, 7, 6.4(av: 6.9)
One great clearance in the first half and continued to press his claims for rest of season. (MEN)
Dunnesque with less hoofing. (Fidel Castro)
Best performance so far. (sky tot)

Dunne: 7, 7, 7, 7, 6, 6, 6.5, 8, 6.9 (av: 6.8)
Calm and composed even when the bombardment came and set great example. (MEN)
Great defender, shame about his hoofing though. (Fidel Castro)
Another solid performance. (sky tot)

Garrido: 6, 7, 7, 6, 6, 6, 7, 6, 5.7 (av: 6.3)
Looked as though he might be overwhelmed but fought back gallantly. (MEN)
Apart from being painfully slow had a very good game. (Fidel Castro)
Solid game. (sky tot)

Vassell (Caicedo 58): 6, 4, 5, 6, 5, 5, 6.5, 5, 5.7 (av: 5.4)
Easy to see why he was brought in and put his body on line all afternoon. (MEN)
Didn't know he was playing. (Fidel Castro)
No threat again. (sky tot)

Gelson Fernandes: 7, 8, 8, 8, 6, 7, 6, 6, 6.4 (av: 6.9)
One of the big improvers this season and mixed it well with Bolton midfield. (MEN)
A few stray passes but was working for 3 out there, seeing as Johnson and Ireland decided to hide all game. (Fidel Castro)
Would have been a 9 but some stray passes. (sky tot)

Johnson: 7, 5, 5, 7, 6, 7, 6, 5, 6.5 (av: 6.1)
One or two terrific blocks on the edge of his own box but couldn't get forward enough. (MEN)
Far too quiet. (Fidel Castro)
Went missing for a lot of the game. (sky tot)

Ireland (Elano 58): 6, 5, 5, 5, 6, 6, 6, 5, 5.7 (av: 5.5)
Saw one shot cleared off the line by Gardner and hit another chance well wide. (MEN)
One good shot in first half, can't pass for shit and didn't get involved nearly enough. (Fidel Castro)
Unlucky not to score, but again no cutting edge. (sky tot)

Petrov: 6, 7, 7, 6, 5, 5, 7, 7, 7.0 (av: 6.3)
His dead ball delivery was excellent but the pace wasn't all there after his three-match break. (MEN)
Few good crosses, but nobody there to get on the end. (Fidel Castro)
Some great crosses. (sky tot)

Benjani: 5, 6, 6, 6, 5, 5, 6, 6, 6.0 (av: 5.7)
Struggling for chances and most of his best work outside box. Lacked vision on occasions. (MEN)
Thought he had a good first half, but in the second half he lost every challenge, couldn't hold the ball up and was tripping over his own feet. Ireland and Johnson offered him no support whatsoever though. (Fidel Castro)
Good 1st half, faded 2nd half. Should have scored. (sky tot)

Subs:

Elano (Ireland 58): 6, 7, 7, 6, 7, 6, 7, 7, 5.9 (av: 6.5)
Lively almost scored within seconds of coming on. (MEN)
We finally started playing a bit of football when he came on. Unlucky not to score, but I was impressed with some of his touches and passes. (Fidel Castro)
Nearly scored, we looked more dangerous. (sky tot)

Caicedo (Vassell 58): 6, 6, 6, 5, 6, 5, 6.5, 7, 5.7 (av: 5.9)
Had glorious chance to open his account and steal points. (MEN)
So unlucky not to score, plus we looked more of a threat going forward with him upfront helping Benjani. (Fidel Castro)
Unlucky not to get his 1st goal. (sky tot)

Subs not used:
Isaksson, Jihai, Castillo

Bolton: Al Habsi, Steinsson, Cahill, O'Brien, Gardner (O'Brien 45), Diouf, Nolan, Campo (McCann 63), Guthrie, Taylor (83 Giannakopoulos 83), Davies
Subs not used: Walker, Rasiak

Match stats

The stats (below) are compiled from a live commentary. For more detailed stats, including a breakdown of each player’s passes and tackles click here (and trawl to the bottom off the page), while you can also find match details at the BBC , Sky and Setanta.

Match reports

Bolton 0 City 0

Snow fun at the Reebok as Bolton draw blank again (Mike Rowbottom)
The ball was coming down with snow on it in a literal sense at the start of the second half as a minor blizzard ensued, and you sensed that if City – so good at home, so indifferent away – were to weaken, it might be then. To Eriksson's satisfaction, they didn't, and they are pressing on to the end of their campaign, refusing to acknowledge that a Uefa Cup place is beyond them.
Perhaps the most warming aspect of the afternoon for City was the encouraging form of the Brazilian midfielder who lit up the early part of their season, Elano, after he came on as a second-half substitute.

Optimism papers over the cracks at Bolton (Alyson Rudd)
Nolan was unhappy at how Corluka reacted after being fouled. “He made a meal of it – that’s what these foreign lads do when they come over here. We just get up and get on with it – that’s the English mentality – but from him I sort of expected it.”
That is perhaps an old-fashioned view of overseas talent, but there has been conjecture about the way Manchester City’s foreign signings, in particular Elano, were so effective at the start of the season, but have faded. The Brazil playmaker came off the bench, however, and gave a gutsy display. “He is a very proud man,” Sven-Göran Eriksson, the City manager, said, “and wants to show me that he should start the game this weekend against Birmingham.”

Campo and Nolan hint at Bolton's lack of harmony (Steve Bierley)
Manchester City began the season in a state of transition and still look that way. Benjani appeared no more comfortable in the lone striker's role than any of his predecessors while, until the arrival of Elano on the hour, the central midfield lacked creative impulse. Martin Petrov remains City's best attacking option but there is an obvious need to find a balancing right-sided player of similar pace. "Next season all our new players will be better, because they will know what the Premier League is about," said Sven-Goran Eriksson. A change of formation might also help.

Tension tells on Bolton after Man City draw (James Mossop)
For cold, abject, footballing poverty you had to join the shivering thousands as they watched their Bolton team slide closer to the doom-laden prospect of relegation from the Premier League.
The entire match was a shocker with Manchester City contributing to the misery at a time when they have targeted a top 10 finish. A point apiece was more like a point of nothing.

Aimless Bolton Wanderers give Gary Megson cause for concern (Paul Rowan)
While Bolton Wanderers dominated for much of a bitterly cold afternoon yesterday, they still gave the impression that hell might freeze over before they manage to score another goal in the Premier League. They drew a blank for the third league game in a row and their manager, Gary Megson, will hardly have taken comfort from breaking a run of five successive league defeats, so blunted were his team in front of goal.

Bolton spirit wanes as Campo fails to look back in anger (Duncan Mackay)
The loss of Nicolas Anelka is beginning to look like it might turn out to be an expensive folly. Bolton may have got £15 million from him, but they stand to lose double that if they are relegated. For all the possession they enjoyed, they had to wait until the final minute before they managed a serious effort on target, Davies rising to head a cross towards the bottom corner only to have his celebrations cut short when Martin Petrov booted it clear.

In pictures: City's managers from 1889 to the present

2008-03-21T07:14:00.000-07:00

I'm going to be adding a history section to the main site in the next few weeks, so have been sifting through online archives for some new image galleries (the existing image archives can be found here).

Below are the 34 people to have managed City, excluding caretaker managers. There's a few pictures I haven't been able to find so if anyone knows where I can locate any of them please let me know.

I've also been compiling an all-time ranking table for City's managers which I'll be publishing next week, while an historic gallery of City's chairmen will be added soon.

(Click on the image for the full-size picture)

Lawrence Furniss (1889 to 1893)

Joshua Parlby (Summer 1893 to summer 1895)

Sam Ormerod (1895 to June 1902)

Thomas Maley (Jul 1902 to Jun 1906)

Harry Newbould (July 1906 to Jul 1912)

Ernest Magnall (Sep 1912 to summer 1924)

David Ashworth (Jul 1924 to Nov 1925)

Albert Alexander Snr (Nov 1925 to Apr 1926)

Peter Hodge (Apr 1926 to Apr 1932)

Wilf Wild (Mar 1932 to Nov 1946 & 1947)

Sam Cowan (Dec 1946 to Jun 1947)

John Thompson (Jun 1947 to Feb 1950)

Les McDowall (Jun 1950 to May 1963)

George Poyser (12 Jul 1963 to Apr 1965)

Joe Mercer (Jul 1965 to 9 Oct 1971)

Malcolm Allison (9 Oct 1971 to 30 Mar 1973)

Johnny Hart (30 Mar 1973 to 16 Nov 1973 & caretaker April/May 1965)

Ron Saunders (24 Nov 1973 to April 1974)

Tony Book (9? Apr 1974 to Aug 1979)

Malcolm Allison (Aug 1979 to 8 Oct 1980)

John Bond (18 Oct 1980 to 29 Jan 1983)

John Benson (3 5? Feb 1983 to 7 Jun 1983)

Billy McNeill (Jun 30 1983 to 22 Sep 1986)

Jimmy Frizzell (21 Sep 1986 to May 1987)

Mel Machin (May 1987 to 30 Nov 1989)

Howard Kendall (Dec 1989 to 5 Nov 1990)

Peter Reid (11 Nov 1990 to 26 Aug 1993)

Brian Horton (28 Aug 1993 to 16 May 1995)

Alan Ball (2 Jul 1995 to 27 Aug 1996)

Steve Coppell (6 Oct 1996 to 8 Nov 1996)

Frank Clark (9 Dec 1996 to 17 Feb 1998)

Joe Royle (18 Feb 1998 to 21 May 2001)

Kevin Keegan (21 May 2001 to 11 Mar 2005)

Stuart Pearce (11 Mar 2005 to 14 May 2007)

Sven-Goran Eriksson (6 July 2007 to present)

Have City been saved from the Curse of Schechter?

2008-03-20T10:29:00.000-07:00

With credit crunches and banking collapses now dominating the news I thought I'd take a look at City's recent debt levels.

The club's debt had reached a record £68million in the financial year to May 2007. That includes a £44m loan package made up of a £30.3m loan arranged by Bear Stearns in 2002 and a £13.7m loan arranged by Schechter & Co in 2003.

Both loans were securitisations, which means the debt was secured against future season ticket sales. Back then securitisations were a new type of financial package, and offered clubs the chance to borrow money which wouldn't be available from traditional lenders.

Understandably, they soon became popular. Between 1999 and 2003 nine English clubs took out securitised loans, seven of which were arranged by Schechter & Co (details here). But looking at how these clubs fared after the securitisations makes interesting reading, and provides a pointer to where City were heading before the takeover.

As the table below shows, four of the clubs were subsequently relegated (in Leeds' case twice) and three of those ended up in administration, while the three clubs that didn't go into administration are all currently in a relegation battle. In fact, the only club whose league position is higher than when they took out the loan is City - and that's only thanks to the fresh funds provided by this summer's takeover.

Not that securitisations are necessarily a bad thing in themselves. Everton raised £30m this way though Bear Stearns in March 2002 while Spurs borrowed £75m from Lazard in November that year and neither seem to have suffered as a result.

The problem appears to be that few clubs spent this money wisely. In a 2002 interview Andrew Lee, football analyst at Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, foresaw the problems that lay ahead:

'You give them (clubs) money up front and they spend it willy-nilly. To recoup what Man City have spent, they'll have to get into Europe or win something. I find some clubs' financial planning comical,' he told The Observer.

Another prophet of doom to be proved right was John Moore, football analyst at Bell Lawrie Whitetold, who called football securitisations 'an accident waiting to happen':

'Football clubs have two assets: their ground and the goodwill of their fans, and that is what guarantees the revenue stream,' he says. 'Now clubs are cashing those assets. But you can only sell the crown jewels once. Anelka will probably be middle-aged by the time Man City finishes paying off its debt. 'Football clubs badly need to cut costs. Securitisations just give clubs more money to spend, when many have spent too much already'.

Certainly, the old City and Newcastle boards are good examples of bad housekeepers, with both sharing the unfortunate habit of blowing small fortunes on crocked ex-Liverpool strikers (there's a breakdown of Keegan's spending here). Ipswich provide another example of recklessness, spending £22m to increase Portman Road's capacity from 22,600 to 30,000 - then attracting an average crowd of 25,000 the following three seasons.

In City's case, the debt only became a real problem after the move to CoMS in 2003. The club spent £20m fitting out the commercial areas of the stadium (details in this pfd file), which was £5m more than originally budgeted. The deal struck with Manchester City Council also limited the financial benefits of the move, with 50% of ticket sales between 34,500 to 40,000 and 60% of sales above 40,000 paid to the council. Other added expenses were also included in the deal, with the club picking up the £200,000 a year bill for security on the whole 32-acre SportCity complex.

As the table below shows, the increases in ticket income following the stadium move was dwarfed by the increase in operating costs:

According to this analysis by academic Tom Burns, another potential downside of a securitisation is the restrictions that can be placed on the operation of the club, through the signing of covenants.

These could include a restriction on raising debt elsewhere, the creation of a reserve fund to protect the lender from payment defaults, and restrictions on 'any changes to the nature of the business without the approval of the bondholders'.

It's not known what conditions had been placed on City's loans, but it is possible that the nature of the deal created problems for City's cash flow, particularly as it is the norm to place a proportion of season ticket money into a separate 'locked' account until the annual debt repayment is made.

What is clear is that City's debts were creating serious problems. With the club running at an annual loss, the finances had been shored up by the sale of SWP, loans of £19.2m from John Wardle and David Makin, and in December 2006, by a £10m bridging loan from Standard Bank that was due to repaid in August.

It's unclear what City's current debt levels are or what they will become, but in December Thaksin gave this insight into his current plans, telling Reuters:

"If we want to own and manage Manchester City football club forever, we have to find other sources of income. You have to know how to use modern financial instruments, that's what we're planning.
"Securitisation is the name of the game they are playing in Western countries. We have to work on that.
"If we manage clubs in the old style, it's not going to work. The Premier League is global by nature."

That begs the question of what Thaksin actually intends to securitise, as he can't be referring to season tickets sales. One possibility is that future sponsorship income could be the next to be mortgaged which, as long as our finances are entwined with Thaksin's, should not pose a problem. But whatever the current debt is, it's clear we've got a long way to go before matching some Premiership clubs, whose debt levels are listed in this Telegraph article:

Man United: £660m (at June 2006) - £42m annual interest
Liverpool: £350m (at January 2008) - £30m annual interest
Arsenal: £307m (at November 2007)
Fulham: £159m (at June 2006)
Newcastle: £110m ('liabilities' at June 2007 – before Mike Ashley takeover)

~ It should be pointed out that Bear Stearn's recent problems shouldn't affect City's debt in any way.
The £30.3m loan didn't actually come from Bear Stearns itself, but was arranged by them on behalf of another lender, reportedly insurance giant Axa .
The debt will exist regardless of what happens to Bear Stearns and is repayable at the agreed interest rate, which is 7.27% fixed for 25 years on the £30.3m loan and 7.57% fixed for 25 years on the £13.7m.

~ The biggest loser in the Bear Stearns collapse is Spurs owner Joe Lewis, who is £600m out of pocket after building up a 9.7% stake in the company. Though according to newspaper reports he still has around £1.5billion tucked away.

Reaction, stats & ratings: City 2 Spurs 1

2008-03-17T08:25:00.000-07:00

So Thaksin returns to Eastlands vowing to "tighten the bolt" and we pick up our first points - and goals - in five weeks.

It could well be coincidence of course, but I do wonder whether the two events are related. Back in the 1990s I used to work at News International in Wapping, and it was noticeable how the mood became more focused whenever Rupert Murdoch was making one of this occasional visits. With City appearing to lack motivation in recent games, having a powerful figure such as Thaksin taking a close interest again certainly wouldn't have done us any harm.

"When the chairman comes, if he has some magic things, ways to concede less goals and score more, then he's more than welcome to tell me or tell the players," Eriksson told the Mirror last week.

Thaksin does indeed have some magic things, including 'talismans and various Buddha amulets' used to ward off the black magic alledgedly used by his enemies. Whether he uses any of these at City is another question, but after losing to Spurs for the last eight games on the trot, Thaksin's belief that nine is a lucky number certainly won't have been diminished.

But back to the more earthly matter of our football. There were some interesting comments posted after the game by colly at Wookies Lair, who believes that Sven is creating a Serie A style team that values retaining possession above all else and is quite happy to surrender two-thirds of the pitch when defending. Clearly, we don't yet have the players to make this system a success right now, but maybe there is a good case for instilling it into the players this season, even if it means some square pegs in round holes over the short term.

Of course, the sooner we can try out this system in Europe the better, which brings us to the matter of Uefa Cup qualification. Although a sixth place finish would get us into the Intertoto Cup, that would involve playing six matches during June and July. A far less gruelling option would be qualifying through the 'Fair Play' league. Here's how qualification works:

In all there are three places up for grabs across Europe, with qualification depending on each country's Fair Play ranking. According to Uefa.com, the top ranked country at the end of the season will be awarded one extra Uefa Cup slot, while any other country that achieves a high enough score will go into a draw, from which two Uefa Cup places will be awarded.

England are currently top of the official Uefa ranking (pdf file), while City are the highest ranked team in the Premier League's Fair Play table, excluding the clubs who have already qualified for Europe or who are certain to do so.

The Premier League's scoring system appears remarkably subjective, with points awarded for such things as 'Positive Play', 'Respect Towards Opponent' and 'Behaviour of Official'. It smacks of something that could be easily rigged, which I suspect would favour a high-profile club such as ours over next-placed Wigan.

Uefa don't give any explanation as to how their ranking system works, but after reading this startling thread on the Liverpool Echo talkboard, which correctly predicted the Champions League draw 90 minutes before it took place, you wonder whether they've allocated the places already.

~ There was a touching moment before the game when Malcolm Allison made an unexpected visit to City Social Club. Big Mal was given a long and heart-felt ovation on leaving the Club, witnessed by King Kev at Mancityfans.

~ Sven's post-match interview
~ Pictures from rtfract; Getty Images
~ Latest Premiership table

This week's Purely Man City

With news that Bear Sterns, who arranged a sizable chunk of City's current debt, is in trouble I thought I'd take a look at City's debt this week.

I've also been scanning in photos of City's managers from the 19th century to the present, which I'll be publishing later in the week, along with an all-time ranking for City managers.

Player ratings

Ratings come from (in order): Manchester Evening News; Gaudino's Perm, Dunny, Father Dougal MaGuire, mcigo, goat boy, (Bluemoon), Daily Mirror, Sky and Sky Your Rating and the BBC.

Hart: 6, 7, 7, 6, 6, 7, 7, 6, 6, 6, 6.2, 6.5 (av: 6.4)

Corluka: 5, 7, 5.5, 7, 6, 6, 5, 6, 5.5, 5, 5.8, 5.8 (av: 5.9)

Dunne: 7, 8.5, 8.5, 7, 7, 8, 8, 7, 7, 7, 7.7, 7.2 (av: 7.5 MOM)

Onuoha: 7, 8, 8, 7, 6, 8, 7, 7.5, 7.5, 8, 7.0, 6.8 (av: 7.3)

Garrido: 6, 7.5, 7.5, 8, 8, 7, 7, 6, 6, 6, 6.2, 6.1 (av: 6.8)

Ireland: 6, 7.5, 7.5, 8, 5, 7, 7, 6.5, 6.5, 7, 6.3, 6.7 (av: 6.8)

Gelson: 7, 9, 9, - , - , 8, 7, 6, 6.5, 6, 6.6, 6.5 (av: 7.1)

Johnson: 8, 7.5, 7.5, 8, 7, 7, 7, 6.5, 8, 7, 6.6, 6.8 (av: 7.2)

Castillo (Vassell 71): 5, 7.5, 5, 8, 8, 7, 6, 6, 5.5, 6, 6.5, 6.4 (av: 6.4)

Elano (Caicedo 75): 7, 7, 7, 8, 7, 7, 7, 6, 6.5, 7, 6.5, 6.6 (av: 6.9)

Benjani (Jihai 88): 6, 7.5, 7.5, 7, 5, 6, 7, 7, 6, 7, 7.0, 7.0 (av: 6.7)

Subs:

Vassell (Castillo 71): 6, - , - , - , - , - , 6, 7, 6.5, 6, 6.4, 6.5 (av: 6.3)

Caicedo (Elano 75): 6, - , -, - , - , - , - , 6.5, 5.5, 6, 6.1, 6.1 (av: 6.0)

Jihai (Benjani 88)

Subs not used:
Isaksson, Geovanni

Spurs: Robinson, Hutton, Woodgate, Dawson, Chimbonda, Lennon (Huddlestone 45), Jenas, Zokora, Malbranque (O'Hara 67), Berbatov, Keane (Bent 67)
Subs not used: Cerny, Tainio,

Match stats

The stats (below) are compiled from a live commentary. For more detailed stats, including a breakdown of each player’s passes and tackles click here (and trawl down the page), while you can also find match details at the BBC, Setanta and Sky.

Match reports

City 2 Tottenham 1

Keane blows his top as City keep hopes of Europe alive (Ian Herbert)
This win was as much about Spurs' implosion, compounded by the captain Robbie Keane's disgruntlement when called from the field, as anything else.
And when Sven Goran Eriksson sits down to talk cash with Thaksin today, he might suggest that something more heavyweight is required in the on-field department. It is a significant week for the Swede, who said: "It is important for the club and me to sit down with [Thaksin]. We've got a lot to discuss. It's important to draw the lines on where we want to go."

Manchester City ride their luck to inflate Keane’s anger (Oliver Kay)
“He [Thaksin] has been away a long time and to have finally the chance to sit down with him is important for the club, for me and hopefully for him,” Eriksson said after yesterday’s match. “I don’t know what it [tighten the bolt] means, but it’s good to get a win on the day he comes back to see us play live. We have a lot of things to discuss.”
At least Eriksson should be talking from a position of strength when he meets Thaksin today. City could have crumbled yesterday after a poor first-half display in which a mistake by Vedran Corluka allowed Pascal Chimbonda to set up Keane for a well-taken goal, but they persevered in the second half and got their reward.

City victory puts smile on Thaksin's face as Keane departs in a huff (Daniel Taylor)
Eriksson was certainly entitled to be happy because City had not won at home in the league since December 15 and, as he noted afterwards, the Premier League's statistics show there is only a 10% likelihood of winning a match after going a goal down. "It shows that our spirit and morale is still there," he said. "Plus it shows the players have not given up in terms of qualifying for Europe.

Lucky Man City cash in on Spurs' flaws (Phil Shaw)
Eriksson, who meets Shinawatra today to discuss "where we go from here", acknowledged that City had enjoyed "a little bit of luck", but added: "The spirit we found in the second half showed morale is still high and the boys haven't given up on the season. If we'd lost, Europe would have been very, very far away. Now it's only far away."

A closer look at City's spending

2008-03-13T08:50:00.000-07:00

City's wage bill appears to have increased by around £8m this season - and should be near the £44m mark in the financial year to 31 May 2008. Last season our wage bill was £36.38m, up from £34.34m the previous year.

Below is an estimated breakdown of the additions and savings that have been made to the wage bill this season. Figures in bold are from newspaper reports which are listed further down. Most of the figures are guesstimates, so if anyone believes a figure to be too high or low please let me know.

Additions to the wage bill

Savings to the wage bill

Sources: Richards (MEN) (previous wage - Sunday Mirror), Samaras (Times), Sven (BBC), Danny Mills (The Sun), Schmeichel (Daily Mail), Castillo (Independent), Corradi (Channel 4), Corluka (Sky Sports)

If you add the extra wage costs to this season's transfer spending, which I put at £53.2m, the additional spending on the team this season is up to more than £61m.

However, this should be put in the context of the increase in revenue following this summer's £2.7billion three-year TV deal.

Last season City earned £21.37m in TV and prize money, but the average Premiership club is set to receive around £40m this time round. Considering the number of times we've been on TV this season, it's likely we'll be receiving an above average payout.

It's also worth noting that most of our transfer deals involve overseas players, which means payments can be spread over the length of the contract. So I'm estimating that we'll only be paying around £13m-£14m in transfer fees in this financial year which, added to the extra wage costs, leaves us with a figure similar to the increase in our TV revenue.

Adolf Hitler: his part in our downfall

2008-03-11T08:49:00.000-07:00

March 11th 1941 is not exactly a date etched in the history of Manchester City Football Club. But 67 years ago today an event took place that was to have far-reaching consequences for this club: the bombing of Old Trafford by the Luftwaffe.

Some might see it as a cause for celebration, an anniversary possibly deserving of the minute's applause that has become the fashion nowadays. But the reality is that the bombing raid was one of the key events that shaped City's post-war decline - and helped cast us in the shadow of our neighbours for the following decades.

March 1941: proof that some Germans do have a sense of humour

United were in a perilous financial state at the end of WWII. According to Gas Masks for Goal Posts, a history of football during the war, the club had a £15,000 overdraft and had to wait until March 1948 before the War Damage Commission awarded them £17,478 to rebuild the heavily bombed Old Trafford.

The solution was to share Maine Road for three seasons, starting in 1946-47. The deal, no doubt made in the spirit of post-war unity, also looked like a good one for City, with United agreeing to pay an annual rent of £5,000 plus 10% of gate receipts. City also got the use of The Cliff for reserve matches.

But the timing of the ground-share could not have been worse for us. City had gone into a slump before the war, and after being relegated in 1938 (a year after we won the title) started the 1946-47 season in Division 2. United, on the other hand, were on the brink of an exciting new era, guided by their greatest ever chairman, James Gibson, and his new appointment as manager, Matt Busby.

One of Gibson's greatest achievements was the creation of the Manchester United Junior Athletic Club in 1938. A precursor of today's academies, United's Juniors produced four members of their 1948 FA Cup winning side and later nurtured the Busby Babes. City, who had also suffered financial losses during the war, had no such youth system to fall back on. It had paid little attention to youth development in the 1930s, illustrated by the fact that every player from the 1937 title-winning team was signed from another club. In fact, the only Manchester-born player in that side was Billy Dale - who was actually signed from United.

Other forces also conspired to make this ground-share a unique situation. During this period it was common for Mancunians to have season tickets for both clubs, with a combination of post-war unity and strong regional identity meaning that many were happy for both clubs to do well.

The problem was, United were now performing a whole lot better than City, and their brand of successful attacking football stood in stark contrast to struggling City. As the table below shows, the ground-share marked a dramatic shift in the relative fan bases of the two clubs. Here are the attendance figures for the five seasons before and after the war, along with each club's league and FA Cup finishes:

In the 1980s City's chief scout, Harry Goodwin, recalled the drift in support to United after the war:

"Because they were a better team than City (United) took over a lot of the support of the men whose loyalties had strayed while they were away in the services, and of those youngsters who were just getting interested."

Gary James's Manchester: The Greatest City also reveals the financial boost United received from their stay at Maine Road. According to a story in the Manchester Evening News from October 1949, United were poised to announce an aggregate profit of £75,000 over the three seasons at Maine Road. Another report claimed they were £100,000 in the black by 1948.

The Evening News also noted that the 1949-50 season, when United returned to Old Trafford, was not expected to be as as profitable. ‘Attendances at the remodeled Old Trafford are limited to 60,000 and therefore, United might not be able to show such handsome dividends at the end of the current season,’ the paper wrote.

Of course, it wasn't until the Munich tragedy in 1958 that the gap between the two clubs became a gulf. But in my view, it was during the years between 1946 to 1949 that the two clubs developed their own distinct characteristics.

United, drawing a large section of support from former City fans and neutrals, developed a fanbase that held success, glamour and importance as their key values.

And standing in stark contrast were City's fans, unswayed by such temporal matters as trophies, who prided themselves in loyalty above all else.

Old Trafford in Mar 1941 (top), and what it looks like nowadays

~ This article is an abbreviated extract from the upcoming book, Purely Man City: Writings, Reference & Miscellany, which will be published in May 2008.

Reaction, stats & ratings: Reading 2 City 0

2008-03-10T06:37:00.000-07:00

It's very hard to judge a performance when you're playing four full-backs and your wide positions have been given to a central midfielder and a forward, but right now our problems are looking as much psychological as anything else.

Reading, battling for Premiership survival, certainly appeared to want the win a lot more than we did. The same was true of Cardiff and Barnsley this weekend, which begs the question: if some Premiership players can't even gee themselves up when a semi-final is at stake, how do you motivate a team that is marooned in the mid-table comfort zone?

In August I wrote this piece about Sven's belief that a team needs at least three 'cultural architects' to influence less motivated players on the pitch. Once Dunne had limped out of the game on Saturday it was pretty clear that we were looking a team without any leaders.

I suppose we'll have to wait until this summer's transfer window before we can really address this problem, but until then I'd love to see some of Jim Cassell's youth team given a chance to inject some passion into this side.

~ A new City blog, The Lonesome Death of Roy Carroll, has just published its first post which is worth a read.

~ So many great footballing moments this weekend but my favourite has to be watching Fergie getting all squeaky-voiced following United's FA Cup exit (the clip is on p5 of the archive).
For the record, the ex-City players in quarter-final action were James & Distin (Portsmouth), Sinclair (Cardiff), Miller (West Brom), Anelka & Shaun Wright-Phillips (Chelsea).

~ One ex-City player making the headlines for all the wrong reasons this weekend was Bradley Wright-Phillips, exposed by the Sunday Mirror for taking part in this disgraceful incident.

~ Sven's Sky Sports post-match interview; BBC interview
~ Charlie Nicholas's view
~ Getty Images photos
~ Latest Premiership table

Coming up on Purelymancity

There's plenty of features lined up between now and the end of the season. I'll be publishing a story about City's history each week until May, starting tomorrow with a commemoration of a significant anniversary for us. A history section will also be added to the main site soon.

I'll also be running at least one feature a week on more topical matters. This week I'll be taking a closer look at City's finances, and in particular, our current wage bill.

Player ratings

Ratings come from (in order): Manchester Evening News; Grob (Mancityfans), Kevin Cummins (in the Observer), Sunday Times, Sunday Mirror, Sunday People, Sunday Telegraph Opta, Sky and the BBC.

Hart: 7, 7, 7, 8, 7, 7, 5, 6.5, 8, 6.5 (av: 6.9 MOTM)
Couldn't be faulted in any department. Kicking was sound and handling when required top drawer. (MEN)
Exposed for the goals and had no chance but made a couple of great stops, especially the one for that Polish fella who played in their midfield. Can hold his head up high. (Grob)

Corluka: 6, 6, 7, 6, 7, 7, 7, 5.5, 5, 5.4 (av: 6.2)
Beaten in the air in the build up to the Reading goal but otherwise a sound enough display. (MEN)
Was having a solid game at full back but looked as if he had never met ball when he went to centre half. I wouldn't like to criticise him though, the circumstances weren't his fault.

Dunne (Jihai 29): 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 7, - , 6, 6, 6.5 (av: 6.2)
Was in the midst of another display of leading from the front when he suffered bad cut to shin. (MEN)
Was just getting into his groove when the injury struck. Things would have been different if he had stayed on. We lost our leader and our organiser.

Ball: 6, 5, 6, 6, 6, 7, 7, 5.5, 5, 5.5 (av: 5.9)
Sullied an otherwise competent display of defending by not stopping Doyle for first goal. (MEN)
Out of position and it showed. Isn't a centre half in the slightest. Still, he tried his best.

Garrido: 5, 4, 5, 6, 6, 6, 6, 6, 5, 5.5 (av: 5.5)
First start in a long while for the Spaniard who was caught up field for second goal. (MEN)
A little harsh but the guy is a liability who cannot defend man to man. He's got to go in the summer. Nice on the ball, takes up good positions but just cannot defend and doesn't have the pace.

Elano: 5, 6, 5, 6, 6, 6, 6, 5, 6, 6.0 (av: 5.7)
Slightly better but still not firing on even half the cylinders he showed earlier in season. (MEN)
Did a reasonable job on the right. A few nice balls, got stuck in but doesn't have the pace to play as a winger and if yesterday's formation was going to work, we needed some pace on the wings.

Gelson Fernandes: 6, 5, 7, 6, 5, 7, 7, 7, 4, 5.6 (av: 6.0)
Usual high octane stuff from the Swiss international but killer pass not there. (MEN)
Dilly dallied on the ball over and over again and basically did nothing of note but run around and look busy. I couldn't actually tell you what he was supposed to be doing.

Hamann (Castillo 67): 6, 6, 6, 6, 5, 6, 5, 6.5, 5, 5.4 (av: 5.6)
Got booked for the tenth time this season and will now be banned. The best passer for Blues. (MEN)
Got booked early which quietened him down but did an amicable job trying to organise a midfield that was a long way below par.

Johnson: 6, 5, 6, 6, 6, 6, 5, 6.5, 6, 5.6 (av: 5.8)
Got in trouble for diving when he should have had a penalty. Quieter than last week's return. (MEN)
Out of sync with his team-mates, created nothing and linked with no-one. Looks nothing like the saviour he was built up to be.

Vassell (Caicedo 59): 5, 6, 5, 7, 6, 6, 4, 5, 7, 5.5 (av: 5.7)
Not a natural on the left and struggled to make any inroads behind the Royals defence. (MEN)
Not good enough as we all know but was probably our biggest threat which shows how bad we really were yesterday. Stupid decision to take him off and lob Caicedo on the left.

Benjani: 5, 5, 5, 6, 6, 6, 7, 5, 6, 5.7 (av: 5.7)
Didn't look like scoring as the Blues continue to fathom out a way to play to his strengths. (MEN)
Bullied by Bikey and it simply was not his day.

Subs:

Jihai (Dunne 29): 5, 5, 6, 6, 5, 6, 5, 5, 5, 4.8 (av: 5.3)
Goal came down his side. (MEN)
Simply not good enough. Patchy defending, cut inside everything he went forward and gave the ball away time and time again. Hopefully with his contract expiring he'll be out of the door this summer.

Caicedo (Vassell 59): 5, 5, 4, 6, 6, 6, 4, 6, 6, 4.7 (av: 5.3)
No real threat. (MEN)
Out of position and didn't get into the game bar a few nice touches. Tried to shoot a couple of times which was different for us.

Castillo (Hamann 67): 5, 5, 4, - , 6, 6, 4, 6, 4, 4.8 (av: 5.0)
Again played on the right. (MEN)
Another played out of position, as with Caicedo, never in the game but showed some nice touches.

Subs not used:
Schmeichel, Ireland

Match stats

The stats (below) are compiled from a live commentary. For more detailed stats, including a breakdown of each player’s passes and tackles click here (and trawl to the bottom of the page), while you can also find match details at the BBC, Sky and Setanta

Reading: Hahnemann, Rosenior, Bikey, Ingimarsson, Shorey, Oster, Harper, Matejovsky (Cisse 79), Hunt, Doyle, Long (Kitson 82). Subs not used: Federici, Sonko, Kebe

Match reports

Reading 2 City 0

Kitson underlines return of better form at Reading (Jim Foulerton)
To make matters worse for the visitors, their captain, Richard Dunne, needed nine stitches in his shin after a first-half collision with the irrepressible Stephen Hunt. There was no malice on Hunt's part; if anything, Dunne put more into the tackle with his Ireland international team-mate.
City's manager, Sven Goran Eriksson, said it would be 10 days before the stitches were removed, but he will have to repair City's wounded pride quicker than that. After a bright opening to the season, Eriksson's team are heading in the wrong direction, with one win in eight League games.

Shane Long hauls Reading up Premier League (Clive White)
City must have wished they had a recognised striker on the end of an Elano cross after 25 minutes instead of full-back Vedran Corluka who ran the ball over the bar instead of running it into the net.
Worse was to follow when Michael Johnson got a booking for diving instead of a penalty for what looked like a foul on him by Ivar Ingimarsson. Eriksson, with the benefit of a television replay, commented: "You can't speak about yellow cards, you must give a penalty."

Joe Hart’s heroics not enough to deny Reading (Brian Glanville)
This was an enormously important and deserved victory for Reading against a Manchester City team that lost Richard Dunne to injury early and so expensively. Without the heroics of Joe Hart in goal, it could well have been worse for the visitors.

Kitson makes it lucky 13 for resurgent Royals (Will Buckley)
'It's a difficult and frustrating time,' said Sven-Göran Eriksson, his City counterpart. 'The last three games we have one point, we haven't scored, and we've conceded four easy goals.'

Lethal Long writes page in tall Irish story (Sachin Nakrani)
The significance of this result could be judged by the jovial nature of Reading's usually downbeat manager, Steve Coppell, after the final whistle signalled a second consecutive win and brought out the comedian in him.
On hearing that the Republic of Ireland's No2, Marco Tardelli, had been in attendance, Coppell reminisced about the time he faced the Italian in a Cup-Winners' Cup tie between Manchester United and Juventus. "Tardelli was the first player who ever man-marked me," Coppell said. "I still have his signature on my arse."

The first foreigner to play for City (and the 83 that followed)

2008-03-05T13:41:00.000-08:00

And it's not the legendary Bert Trautmann surprisingly, but a Canadian called Walter Bowman, who signed for City in 1892 when we were called Ardwick AFC.

Actually, Bowman was the first foreigner to play professional football in Britain when he signed for Accrington earlier that year (details here).

He originally arrived in Britain in 1888 with Team Canada, who played a staggering 23 games between Sept 1st and and Oct 31st, including a 2-0 win over Newton Heath (who at that time were based in Manchester).

Below are the 84 overseas players who have played for City. Sixteen players have been added since the last time I published the list, including the name of our third foreign signing, Gerry Baker. Born in New York to Scottish parents, Baker grew up in Scotland but played for the US national side. In what is probably a football first, Gerry's younger brother, Joe, played for England - despite having played for Scotland schoolboys (details).

Royle

Keegan

Pearce

Sven

And here are the totals by country:

~ Probably the strangest transfer deal of all involved Kazimierz Deyna, who was transferred from Legia Warsaw in Nov 1978. According to Gary James’s Manchester: The Greatest City the £120,000 transfer was paid for mainly in goods such as typewriters and medical equipment.

~ I also came across a fascinating site called allfootballers.com, which has compiled this graph showing where players in the English leagues were born, dating back to 1888.

Reaction, stats & ratings: City 0 Wigan 0

2008-03-03T07:27:00.000-08:00

Plenty of murmurings on Saturday likening this match to the worst days of the Pearce era. While there were certainly some similarities at first glance, I can't help feeling that dire games like these are merely a frustrating part of the great transition now taking place at City.

These comments from Dev Alahan at Mancityfans pretty much summed up my thoughts on the game, so I decided to save myself some typing and post them here:

Always difficult to break a side down that aren't that arsed about attacking. We were slow going forward and missed Petrov, at times played like strangers. Not surprising. Benjani has never played with Johnson and hardly played with Elano. Ireland has never played on the left and Vassell has hardly played well at all. Johnson and Fernandes have never played well together, and Neddy and Dunney have not paired at Centre half since when? When big Phil and Neddy came on same situation. And I did warn that players bought in January with season well in flow take longer to adjust than Summer players. A few moves tried but players not on same wavelength as a result.
A few fans will lose there sense of reality and criticise the team taking none of the above into account, but you cant account for some fans stupidity.
Team was very young, average age well low, missing Richards and Petrov first time since when?

According to the press, Sven is now looking for a 'Plan B', so maybe now's a good time to recall the last time City fans were talking about 'Plan Bs'. Last summer, with takeover talks dragging on and the club in suspended animation, I wrote this post, which to date is the most read story on this site ever.

Maybe a change in tactics will work, but I suspect that a change in personnel is what's really needed.

Which brings us to Thaksin and his recent comments about his plans for City.

While it's easy to dismiss his bold claims as merely playing to his Thai audience, everything I've read about Thaksin so far suggests that his words should never be taken lightly.

On Saturday, Sven was asked on GMR whether Thaksin's interest in City was starting to wane now he's back in Thailand. He dismissed the idea out of hand, describing how Thaksin now phones him before games to ask what team he's putting out.

In January Sven told City fans that he was 'so blown away by his (Thaksin's) plans he had to sit down' (reported on Bluemoon and in The People), while last week he told the Telegraph:

"We've never talked about the amount of money he might spend, about all the money involved. He's just said, 'Sven, find the players to compete at the highest level possible', so we have names, and we'll see what happens."

And that's precisely the reason I can't get downbeat about performances like these. Frustrating as it might be right now, I just can't imagine we'll be starting any game next season with Vassell or Ireland on the wing, or with Benjani up front for that matter.

My guess is that we'll be suffering some of the same problems next season too, as new signings again learn how to play together, and it won't be until the 2009-10 season that we see a City team that plays like a genuine top four side.

But after 31 years without a trophy, I'm prepared to wait.

~ Sven's post-match interview
~ Pictures from rtfract.com; Getty Images
~ Latest Premiership table.

Player ratings

Ratings come from (in order): Manchester Evening News; xavi6, Blue2, MaineRoadMemories, Grob, irblinx (Mancityfans), Richard Tucker (refract.com), Colin Savage, Sunday Times, Sunday people, Setanta, Sky, Sky Your Rating and the BBC.

Hart: 7, 7, 7, 6, 7, 7, 7, 7, 7, 6, 6, 6.5, 7, 7.0, 6.8 (av: 6.8)
One save to make of any note as City dominated but his handling was good in dire conditions. (MEN)
Kept us in it with a great save low down from Palacios. Didn't have another save of note to make. Solid. (xavi6)
Kept us from losing the game towards the end. (MaineRoadMemories)
Made the crucial save, dealt with bog-awful back passes well, generally good. (Grob)
Safe hands with numerous Wigan shots on target, one great save and overall strong. Distribution wasn't great at times, do we honestly believe that playing the ball long for Vass to try and win a header is a good plan?! (irblinx)

Corluka: 6, 6, 5, 5, 4, 5, 6, 6.5, 5, 6, 6, 6, 5, 5.1, 6.1 (av: 5.5)
Decent enough return to action for the Croatian who got forward when ever he could. (MEN)
Solid if unspectacular. Wigan didn't have anyone out left to trouble him though. (xavi6)
Didn't try at all today. Played like a centre back and didn't get forward. When he did his crossing was pitiful. (MaineRoadMemories)
Painfully average defensively and going forward. (Grob)
A so-so performance, didn't do anything massively wrong but also nothing stood out. (irblinx)

Onuoha: 7, 7, 4, 5, 5, 6, 6, 7, 6, 6, 7, 7, 7, 5.2, 5.9 (av: 6.1)
Toss up who played in middle and the fact that Richards wasn’t missed was to Nedum’s credit. (MEN)
Covered well in the first half for Dunne and his pace was key. Didn't lose the ball as much as usual. (xavi6)
Plays a lot better at centre half. Passes worse than Dunne and dilly-dallys on the ball. (MaineRoadMemories)
Better than at right back but his ability on the ball is pathetic. (Grob)
Very strong defensively, not much clue as to what to do next once he's won the ball though. (irblinx)

Dunne: 7, 7, 6, 5, 5, 6, 6, 7, 6, 7, 7, 7, 8, 6.6, 6.4 (av: 6.5)
Several superb shot blocks interspersed with one or two dodgy moments against Heskey. (MEN)
Positioning was excellent to make some good blocks, though seriously guilty of pumping the ball long. (xavi6)
Nothing to do. Awful passing (again). (MaineRoadMemories)
Snuffed out King and Sibi. Couldn't pass wind going forward. (Grob)
The usual few key interceptions but not exactly a difficult night for the defence. (irblinx)

Ball: 6, 7, 6, 5, 4, 8, 7, 6.5, 5, 6, 7, 6, 7, 5.3, 5.8 (av: 6.1)
Usual controlled, reliable self and has become one of the more consistent performers for Eriksson. (MEN)
Played really well for me. Wanted the ball a lot and his crossing was excellent. (xavi6)
See Corluka. (MaineRoadMemories)
MOM. Did the job of 2 men on the left. A couple of good balls in and made Valencia look average. (Grob)
A solid performance, could really have done with some support on the left! (irblinx)

Vassell: 6, 7, 6, 5, 6, 5, 5, 6.5, 5, 6, 5, 6, 7, 5.0, 5.9 (av: 5.8)
Plenty of eye catching work but not always in the most dangerous areas of the pitch. (MEN)
Played really well. Defended excellently at times e.g. in the last minute chasing Valencia back. Super cross for Benjani. (xavi6)
Tried hard on the right and the left. Great cross for Benjani. Superb run back and great tackle in the 88 minute. (MaineRoadMemories)
Hopeless. Good defensively, shit going forward. We are going nowhere with this plank in the side. (Grob)
IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH, playing as a winger and didn't beat a player once and only managed one decent cross when big Phil played a killer ball. (irblinx)

Gelson Fernandes: 7, 7, 6, 5, 5, 4, 5, 6.5, 7, 6, 6, 6.5, 6, 5.5, 5.9 (av: 5.9)
Broke play up with some dexterity and delivered a series of successful short passes. (MEN)
Great energy from him and he filled the Hamann role well. (xavi6)
Only player to look like he had any fight in him today. (MaineRoadMemories)
An amateur among professionals. A poor poor poor man's Hamann. (Grob)
Not really up to scratch today. (irblinx)

Elano (Caicedo 49): 5, 5, 5, 5, 4, 2, 5, 5.5, 4, 6, 5, 5.5, 5, 4.1, 5.2 (av: 4.8)
He is regularly being kicked out of games and was particularly inconsistent until off injured. (MEN)
Aside from one stunning left footed ball over the top he was shite again. Looked lazy on the ball and didn't pose any threat. (xavi6)
Supposed to be our creative force but looking more like a Joey B at the moment. (MaineRoadMemories)
Deserves an extra point for the pass that injured him. Abysmal. A passenger in every sense of the word. (Grob)
Still hasn't learnt how to handle hatchet artists like Brown. (irblinx)

Johnson: 8, 8, 7, 5, 6, 6, 7, 7.5, 6, 7, 8, 7, 7, 6.2, 6.3 (av: 6.8)
Quite a comeback for the ace midfielder who was the Blues most energetic performer. (MEN)
MOM for me. So good to have him back. Up and down all game. Some of his passing went astray but the lad hasn't played in a good while. (xavi6)
Played well but didn't create very much. Just kept playing it sideways. (MaineRoadMemories)
Decent in fits and starts but then went missing when we needed the midfield to stand up and be counted. (Grob)
MoTM. A great first game back, faded towards the end but went box to box, corrected the few mistakes he made himself. The only thing lacking is that incisive attacking play which will be back once he's played a couple of games. We really have missed this lad. (irblinx)

Ireland (Castillo 63): 6, 6, 3, 5, 4, 6, 2, 6, 4, 6, 6, 6, 6, 4.7, 5.5 (av: 5.1)
As has been the way recently a little bit of everything varying from the excellent to the disastrous. (MEN)
Some good link-up play early on. Could've scored with a shot in the first half. Faded badly. (xavi6)
Lightweight and dire. Even Ball was having a go at him in the first half. (MaineRoadMemories)
Out of position, out of form, out of luck. Felt sorry for him marooned out left. (Grob)
Garbage, this lad needs to be sat on the bench for a while. (irblinx)

Benjani: 6, 6, 4, 5, 4, 6, 6, 6, 5, 6, 5, 6, 6, 4.7, 5.8 (av: 5.4)
Might have done better with near post chance in second half but otherwise well-marshalled. (MEN)
Held the ball up well but what a fucking miss. Also had a horror touch in the first half when through. Loses points for that. (xavi6)
Missed his chances and looks no better than our other strikers. (MaineRoadMemories)
Missed the golden chances but the balls into him were awful on the whole. (Grob)
Some great movement and layoffs but no end product. (irblinx)

Subs:

Caicedo (Elano 49): 7, 7, 7, 5, 5, 6, 6, 7, 6, 6, 6, 6.5, 6, 5.2, 6.0 (av: 6.1)
Looked sharp but his passing varied hugely. (MEN)
Made a huge difference. He's a big fucker! Great touch and played two quality through balls that Elano could only have dreamed of playing today. He's gonna be good. (xavi6)
Touch goes from the sublime to the ridiculous. Looks ok but it's harsh on Sturridge who has scored two goals. (MaineRoadMemories)
Some great bits of play. Some amateurish shenanigans. Not my cup of tea although I'm sure some are wanking over his through balls. (Grob)
Looked very bright when he came on, not afraid of getting stuck in. (irblinx)

Castillo (Ireland 63): 6, 6, 6, 6, 5, 5, 4, 6, 6, - , 7, 6.5, 5, 5.1, 5.7 (av: 5.7)
Likes a shot but couldn’t find a way through. (MEN)
Looked lively and wanted the ball. One shot but not much else. (xavi6)
Why does such a one-footed player want to play on the right? Kept cutting inside. Offered a little more than others. (MaineRoadMemories)
Played out of position and didn't even bother to make an impression. (Grob)
Hardly did anything. (irblinx)

Subs not used:
Isaksson, Hamann, Garrido

Wigan: Kirkland, Melchiot, Scharner, Boyce, Edman, Valencia, Brown, Palacios, Koumas, Heskey, (Sibierski 66). Subs not used: Pollitt, Bramble, Olembe, Bent

Match stats

The stats (below) are compiled from a live commentary. For more detailed stats, including a breakdown of each player’s passes and tackles click here, while you can also find match details at the BBC and Setanta.

Match reports

City 0 Wigan 0

Chris Kirkland denies poor Manchester City (Les Ward)
(City) did not look remotely close to threatening their neighbours' global appeal during this dismal stalemate. But if Thaksin, presently back in his native Thailand, 18 months after being ousted as prime minister in a military coup, can get his hands back on his substantial funds, City might just have a chance of bridging the gap, but it will not come cheaply.
Even with the millions at their disposal, attracting top-class players to City this summer will become an even tougher proposition if more results like this come along to snuff out their hopes of qualification for Europe.

City's fortunes tied to fortune of owner (Ian Whittell)
For large spells of the contest Wigan looked the more threatening team, the fast and physical front pair of Emile Heskey and Marlon King a thorn in the side of the City defence.
City manager Sven-Goran Eriksson claims they are capable of finishing fourth in the Premier League, so this was a sobering state of affairs. But more alarming yet was City's paucity of ideas and threat in front of goal. Already, in eight months at the club, Eriksson has spent some of Shinawatra's millions on five forwards, yet the Brazilian Elano, a mercurial talent of no fixed position and usually given a floating role, is the leading league scorer with five goals.

Determined Wigan show welcome steel in stalemate (Brian Doogan)
With Thaksin Shinawatra, the Manchester City owner and former prime minister of Thailand, back in Bangkok to answer corruption charges and to try to secure £800m of frozen assets, the club he bought last summer is facing its own moment of truth. Sven-Göran Eriksson, the manager, remains confident that his team will qualify for Europe, insisting that they are “better than Everton in so many ways”. On the evidence of Monday’s defeat to the fourth-placed side in the Premier League they are not, and this was another lacklustre, indeed ominous performance. After a brilliant start to the season, City are stuttering badly.

Benjani lacks sense of direction as City continue to lose way (Guy Hodgson)
Certainly their manager Steve Bruce saw it as a missed opportunity. "The longer the game went on there was only one team going to win," he said. "The unfortunate thing is that we made the chances and couldn't take them." Sven Goran Eriksson, his City counterpart, added: "It's disappointing but I can't go into the dressing room and accuse the players of not trying hard or lacking spirit. We needed to score to make it a different game."
Yesterday Eriksson reverted to the 4-4-1-1 formation that brought nine successive home wins at the start of the season. Elano was reintroduced but is not the inspirational force he was in the autumn and his effectiveness was debilitated further by a knee injury. There was also an onus on Mwaruwari Benjani's to run into gaps but his eagerness was often fruitless because he he spent most of the match offside.

Manchester City slump evidence Sven-Goran Eriksson must strengthen (Ian Whittell)
Presumably Thaksin Shinawatra, Manchester City’s billionaire owner, could afford to have the television feed of his team’s latest league disappointment beamed to the Thai bolt-hole where he is awaiting trial on corruption charges and that is a blessing for Sven-Göran Eriksson, the team’s manager.
Viewing City’s goalless and largely chanceless draw with Wigan Athletic served to emphasise the need for Thaksin to clear his name and free frozen assets worth a reported £800 million that will allow Eriksson to embark upon a summer spending spree after City’s recent slump that has brought only two wins in the past 11 matches.

Palacios' captivating presence leaves Bruce in raptures as Eriksson claims festive fatigue (Robert Warner)
Publicly, however, the City manager is blaming simple fatigue for his team's recent swoon. "I think we felt that straight after Christmas and the new year we were a little bit low mentally, but that is maybe my fault," he said. "I should have given the players some days off now and then, but I didn't do it and I have learned what to do next season at Christmas time. Sometimes players need a break mentally, but I think we are OK physically. We just need the luck to score a goal."