Make no mistake, Francis Lee was one of the true Manchester City greats, a player of such passion and devotion and a character of such forcefulness that he would have been vying with today's giants for a place in the All-Time City eleven. In my estimation, he would be in it too, with a big white number nine on his proud broad back.
Lee was afraid of nothing and no one, hurtling into the kind of tackles in the 1970s that would make today's hard men blanche. He could dish it out too, built as he was with thighs like tree trunks and an oak barrel of a body. But he could shift, could Francis. Quick and nimble, he was deceptively agile with both feet, a good dribbler, accurate passer, deft penalty taker (and penalty winner) and packed a shot like a thunderbolt that pinged in from all angles.
When I interviewed him in 2022 at his Algarve villa, he was bursting with tales of the good old days, despite recent illness. That trademark chuckle dotted the conversation, as did a row of well judged expletives. Even in his later sadly diminished state, Francis Lee was still a true giant.
As one of the talismen in Joe Mercer and Malcolm Allison's thrilling late 60s City side, Lee burst onto the first division scene like a cluster bomb and took little time making a name for himself. Robust at Bolton, he became unstoppable at City, with the guile of Neil Young alongside and the combative wing skills of his lifelong friend Mike Summerbee out wide. Behind him Colin Bell provided a supply of passes and energetic back up to the front men to complete an utterly beguiling City forward line. Nobody could live with them and they knew it.
But there was an edge to Franny that the others perhaps lacked. Allison, himself no stranger to stepping up to be counted, saw that in the Bolton tyro and brought him to Maine Road as quickly as he could. He knew he could build a side around the likes of Lee and Bell and Summerbee, because they were imbued with characteristics that others did not possess. One of Allison's abiding and favourite memories of Lee came during the Summer tour of the U.S. in 1968, just after City's league championship win and before they embarked on their inaugural European Cup campaign.
Tiring of the slow service in their San Francisco hotel, Lee began to chew on the flower decoration in the middle of their table. Allison, ever the showman, ever the whirling pivot of everything that happened at the club, saw his onfield persona in Lee. There was a cockiness even then that the City coach knew he could harness for the good of the side. Alongside Bell's matchless stamina and Summerbee's steely nous, Lee would play the Westhoughton gunslinger role to a tee.
This was the Old Elite of Manchester City and Lee was its regal centrepiece, a cosmic wrecking ball of a striker, with x-ray vision and laser accuracy. Nobody played a more central role to this initial searing burst of sunlight when Manchester turned sky blue and we thought summer would last forever. That it did not last forever was predictable enough but Lee, with his vision on and off the pitch, was one of the first to note that things were turning sour.
He saw it in the arrival of Peter Swales to the City board, who he would later oust in a dramatic fight for control of the club in the 90s. He saw it in the arrival of Ron Saunders to manager characters and heroes at City that no longer wished to be treated as feeble pliant young lads. Lee had a nose for goals, a nose for fun but also a nose for looming trouble.
Before that trouble could engulf him, Lee was off to Derby County. It was no desertion, however. Discarded by Swales, his heart was still with the club, as it remained to his last day. His final act was to head to the training ground to say farewell to the men and boys who had accompanied him through the highs and flights of City's remarkable trophy glut of 1967-1970.
"I shook hands with the players, the guys I had grown so close to over the years and then, just as I was leaving, I turned round to them and said, 'I'll tell you what, lads. I've got some bad news for you. We've been here all these years and won all the things that has made all this money for the club and we're still training in a school yard. That shows you the kind of twats that are running this club!'"
Lee's perspicacity was not confined to the football pitch.
And he returned to Maine Road, as a Derby County player on the way to the league title, after Swales had thought he might be able to sell him to "some club in the 2nd division". Lee cut inside City's backtracking defence and smacked an unerring howitzer past his old mate Joe Corrigan and into the top corner for the winner and the birth of Barry Davies' most famous line of Match of the Day commentary.
"Look at his face! Just look at his face!!"
Well, we did look at his face, beaming from ear to ear with that mischievous grin that was his trademark. Francis Lee of Bolton. Francis Lee of England (the greatest England side, in Mexico 1970), Francis Lee of Derby County but most of all, by far most of all, Francis Lee of Manchester City.
It is to all these Francises we must now say goodbye. God bless you, Francis, for your service to this great club. May you rest well and in peace in the muddy goalmouth in the sky.
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