Robert Exley
Since 2008, Manchester City have been known the world over as the plaything of a feudal overlord oligarch from the Middle East, bought and over indulged with in excess of a Billion pounds worth of Shiekh Mansoor’s petro-dollars. However, what a different story it was one hundred and twenty eight years earlier when the club were incepted. Arthur Connell had been the rector of St Mark's Church in West Gorton since 1865, an area of Manchester greatly plagued by unemployment, overcrowding, squalor, poor sanitation and general poverty. A side effect of such Victorian deprivation had been alcoholism and gang violence, Manchester in fact was very much blighted by a phenomenon called ‘Scuttling’ in the late Victorian era, which effectively had been large scale hooliganism and thuggery.
In the 1870s, Connell set up a soup kitchen and relief fund for the local poor. In 1875 his twenty year old daughter, Anna – thought to be the only woman behind the founding of a major English footballing side - believed that the creation of a working man’s club in the local parish hall could reverse the direction that these social pariahs were going in by fostering community spirit within the Gorton area. Anna knocked on every door in the parish, which amounted to over a thousand dwellings. From this initiative came the creation of St. Marks Church Cricket Team, who went on to become a success. Miss Connell was praised for her efforts by the Archdeacon of Manchester who stated on addressing a parish meeting in West Gorton: ‘no man could have done it - it required a woman's tact and skill to make it so successful’.
Like many top level English sides, the side that became Manchester City were founded in 1880 by St. Marks Church Cricket Team as a means of staying fit and amusing themselves during the winter months, calling themselves St Mark's (West Gorton) FC. The side were renamed Gorton Association Football Club in 1884 and then again after moving to the Hyde Road stadium, renamed themselves Ardwick FC in 1887 after moving to the area of Manchester of the same name. In 1889, very close to the club’s stadium the Hyde Road Mining Disaster occurred as a result of an underground explosion caused by a naked flame which killed twenty three miners (the youngest of which had been two fifteen year old boys) and seriously injured five more. In aid of the disaster fund Ardwick played a floodlit friendly with Newton Heath – the club which eventually became Manchester United.
Ardwick won the Manchester Cup, their first trophy, in 1891 which aided their application to the Football Alliance League that same year. The Football Alliance merged with the Football League a year later, which meant that Ardwick would become founder members of the Second Division. The first fixture between Woolwich Arsenal and Ardwick occurred in November 1893 at the Manor Ground in Plumstead. Arsenal triumphed 1-0 with a goal from James Henderson. However, financial troubles in 1894 meant that Ardwick would be reformed as Manchester City FC. That same year, City signed their first star player in the ‘Welsh Wizard’ Billy Meredith.
In 1899 City won the Second Division title and were promoted to the top flight and in 1904 became the first Manchester side to win a major trophy, acquiring the FA Cup in April after beating Bolton Wanderers 1-0 at Crystal Palace. City were also in the running for the League title and the chance of becoming the first side of the twentieth century to win the double, however finished runners up. On the final day of the following season, City were level on points with Newcastle and needed a win away at Aston Villa, but lost 2-3 with the title heading to Newcastle and City finishing third. After the game, Villa’s captain Alec Leake alleged that City’s Billy Meredith had offered him £100 to throw the game and was subsequently found guilty and suspended for one year.
As Manchester City refused to provide financial help for Meredith during his suspension, he decided to blow the whistle on his employers and expose the fact that they had been paying players above the maximum wage. An FA investigation found City guilty with seventeen players fined and suspended for eighteen months, which led to the break-up of this City side. The main beneficiaries had been Man United who snapped up four City players, including Billy Meredith, which formed the basis of Man United’s 1907/08 title side. This led to a decline which resulted in City’s relegation in 1908/09, though they returned to the top flight the following season.
In 1912 however City ended Man United’s first era of success by poaching their manager Frank Mangnall. It didn’t however lead to success for City, whose best season under Mangnall was finishing as runners up to Burnley in 1920/21. In November of that year, a fire caused by a discarded cigarette destroyed the main stand at Hyde Road Stadium. Under Mangnall’s Stewardship City moved to Maine Road in 1923, though Mangnall would retire in 1924. In April 1926 City reached the FA Cup Final after a 3-1 victory over rivals Man United at Hillsborough in the Semi Final. Their opponents in their first Wembley final would be Bolton Wanderers, though would lose 0-1. Worse was to follow for City as they would be relegated from the top tier on the final day of the season (which prior to the 1950 actually came after the FA Cup Final). City returned to the top flight as second tier champions in 1927/28 and in their first season had a 1-0 win over rivals Man United captured by Pathe News.
In the 1930s, Manchester City built one of the few sides from the era that could challenge Arsenal’s dominance, shown here in Pathe’s series on top English sides in training, with stars such as Fred Tilson, Eric Brook (the scorer of two goals for England in the ‘Battle of Highbury’ where the national side met Italy with seven Arsenal players) and future famed Man United boss Matt Busby. During Arsenal’s first title season in 1930/31, the Gunners met Man City home and away over the Christmas period and scored seven goals in total. On Christmas Day at Maine Road Arsenal won 4-1 with goals from Jack Lambert, David Jack, Cliff Bastin and Joe Hulme. On Boxing Day back at Highbury the Gunners ran out 3-1 winners with goals from Bob John, Cliff Bastin and Joe Hulme, however in an era of big crowds only 17,624 bothered to turn out at Highbury to witness the match.
The two sides would meet in the FA Cup Semi Final in 1932 at Villa Park, where Arsenal proceeded to Wembley with a 1-0 win secured by a goal from Cliff Bastin. Manchester City’s FA Cup form however would carry over into the following seasons, reaching the FA Cup final again in 1933, though losing 0-3 to Everton. Man City would return to Wembley twelve months on, on route attaining English football’s highest attendance for a club game outside of the FA Cup Final, when 84,569 turned up to watch Man City beat Stoke City at Maine Road in the FA Cup Quarter Final. This season City would return to Wembley and be victorious, beating Portsmouth 2-1 in a North-South Final with two goals from Fred Tilson. The referee for that encounter would be future FIFA president and Arsenal life President Sir Stanley Rous. City later went on to meet Scottish Cup winners Glasgow Rangers in a friendly at Ibrox, though lost 0-1.
Arsenal however would continue to dominate the league through this period, beating Man City 3-0 at Highbury in October 1934 in front of an attendance of 68,145. Man City however would achieve back to back victories at Highbury, inflicting a 2-3 defeat on Arsenal in September 1935 and a 1-3 defeat in December 1936. Manchester City went on to win the League in 1936/37, finishing five points ahead of third placed Arsenal, though exited the FA Cup in the Quarter Finals, losing 0-2 to third tier Millwall away at the Den. Around this period Man City would also set the record for scoring in consecutive games, totalling forty four, which stretched into the following season. This record would last until it was surpassed by Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal in 2002.
City’s last visit to Highbury before the war came in October 1937, which Arsenal won 2-1 with goals from Alf Kirchen and John Milne in front of a crowd of 68,353. Incredibly, despite the free scoring nature of this Man City side, they would be the only ever side to be relegated from the top tier as reigning Champions in 1937/38. However, believe it or not, their collapse was not actually as calamitous as it sounds. In somewhat of a freak of a season, despite finishing second from bottom (only kept off the bottom by goal average) Man City were the top tier’s top scorers with eighty goals. Also, the gap between them and Champions Arsenal was a mere sixteen points (even under a three points for a win system, the points gap would still have only been twenty three!), with Arsenal having won the title losing as many as eleven games and failing to win exactly half the number of games they’d played in that season.
City returned to the top tier as Second tier champions in 1946/47 after football resumed after the Second World War, though would drop down to the second tier again in 1949/50, bouncing back up the following year as second tier runners up. By this point however, former blue Matt Busby had begun to build a formidable side across town at Old Trafford with City starting to play second fiddle in Manchester, with the only bright spot reaching back to back FA Cup Finals in the mid-1950s – a central part of which being the inception of the ‘Revie Plan’. Future Leeds Utd. manager Don Revie turned out for Man City from 1951 to 1956 as a deep lying centre forward and was part of a plan similar to the one the Hungarians used against England a couple of years prior, with Revie initiating attacks by coming into the centre of the field to receive the ball, in order to draw the opposing centre-half out of position.
On route to Wembley in 1955, Man City would knock their neighbours Man United out of the FA Cup in the fourth round. In the final however City would be struck by the ‘Wembley hoodoo’ as Jimmy Meadows tore a ligament meaning that in an era before subs were permitted City would have to play on with ten men and would lose to Newcastle United 3-1, with the Tynesiders winning their third FA Cup in four years. City returned the following season however after beating Spurs in the Semi-Final 1-0 at Villa Park to meet Birmingham City in the final.
In the event City beat Birmingham 3-1 with German former POW Bert Trautmann incredibly playing on with a broken Neck. Another noteworthy thing about this final is that it was refereed by Alf Bond who lost his right arm in an industrial accident in a rubber factory at the age of nineteen. City’s FA Cup victory however would not be a turning point for their fortunes. Five months on from Cup victory, Arsenal beat Manchester City at Highbury 7-3 with goals from Jimmy Bloomfield, Dennis Evans, Joe Haverty and four goals for Cliff Holton. Man City would only achieve one finish in the top half of the table in the seven seasons which followed the 1956 FA Cup Final. In between, Arsenal achieved a 5-4 win over Man City at Highbury, with goals from Danny Clapton, Jackie Henderson and a hat-trick for David Herd.
One bright spot for City during this period would be the signing of a young Denis Law from Huddersfield for a then British record of £55,000 making his debut against Leeds Utd in March 1960. Law would also score six goals in one game against Luton Town in an FA Cup tie in 1961, only for the match to be abandoned with twenty minutes to go and City actually losing the rematch. Law would only last one season at City, before transferring to Italian side Torino in 1961. City were relegated from the top tier again in 1962/63 finishing second from bottom, though on their final visit to Highbury before relegation inflicted a 2-3 defeat on Arsenal.
Man City this time spent three years outside the top flight with one of their most notable fixtures in the second tier being a 2-3 defeat away at Plymouth Argyle (then managed by Malcolm Allison), which involved an audacious two-man penalty kick scored by Argyle’s Mike Trebilcock a couple of years before he scored two in the FA Cup Final for Everton. This successful two-man penalty obviously pre-dates the more famous one by Johan Cruyff and Jesper Olsen for Ajax in the 1982 by eighteen years. Meanwhile, over at Old Trafford their rivals Man United had the holy trinity of Best, Charlton and Law, Man City’s attendances sank to an all-time low of just 8,015 who turned out to watch the blue half of Manchester lose 1-2 to Swindon Town.
Man City finished the season in eleventh position in the second tier, their lowest finish since 1893/94. In the close season of 1965/66 City appointed former Arsenal captain Joe Mercer, who had been sacked by Aston Villa after suffering a stroke, ably assisted by a dynamic younger coach in Plymouth’s Malcolm Allison. In their first season the duo achieved promotion for City as second tier champions, as well as their first appearance on Match of the Day with a 1-1 draw away at Bristol City. In their first season back in the top flight, Arsenal defeated Man City 1-0 at Highbury through a goal from Frank McLintock. City however managed a 1-1 draw against Man United at Maine Road, but as the red half of Manchester marched to the title that season, City had to make do with a lowly fifteenth place finish in the League.
The following season brought much improvement at Maine Road as Mercer and Allison fired Man City to the League title for the first time in thirty one years, an incredible turn around on what they inherited just three years prior and according to an article in the Manchester Guardian at the time had: ‘fulfilled the ancient prophecy that the meek shall inherit the earth with which nowadays must be incorporated the Football League championship as well as local councils’ (a sentiment a bit difficult for a Guardian reader to muster now City were funded by Petrodollars!) City however failed to pick up any points at Highbury in 1967/68, with Arsenal winning 1-0 in September with a goal from John Radford.
Matches on route to the title include a 1-1 draw away at Everton captured by Ken Loach’s BBC docu-drama, ‘The Golden Vision’. Also, a 4-1 home victory over Tottenham at Maine Road. City secured the title on the final day with a 4-3 win over Newcastle United at St. James’s Park. City started the following season with an incredible 6-1 win over West Brom in the Charity Shield. By the end of the Month, City also appeared in the first ever edition of LWT’s ‘The Big Match’ with a 1-1 draw against QPR at Loftus Road.
Three days later however City left Highbury on the receiving end of a hiding, with Arsenal winning 4-1 with goals from John Radford, Jon Sammels and two goals from David Jenkins – the latter breaking through from the Arsenal academy which reached back to back FA Youth Cup Finals in the mid-sixties, but was transferred to Spurs in exchange for Jimmy Robertson two months on from this game. City finished the season in thirteenth position, though were to reach the 1969 FA Cup Final, after defeating Everton 1-0 in the Semi Final at Villa Park, beating Leicester City 1-0 in the final at Wembley.
