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| Phil Neal looks pensive as he watches City stumble to defeat in his tenth and last game in charge at Oakwell, Barnsley, a disastrous 0-2 loss. 28th December 1996. |
25 years ago, Philip George Neal was temporarily in sole charge of Manchester City. If you had been asleep, or perhaps more aptly for the times, irrevocably hungover, you might have missed his stewardship of the club altogether. In historical terms, however, it is worth holding onto, as an example, a small, foul-smelling segment, of the very worst of Manchester City.
It came between the truncated disaster of Steve Coppell's tenure (just the 33 days sufficing for Steve) and the gentle, guitar-strumming disintegration under Frank Clark. To say it was the best of times, the worst of times was to do bad times a great disservice. Manchester City were slipping inexorably towards a first-ever assignment in the third tier of English pro football and some of the most horribly iconic fixtures in the club's long history.
Neal had been a rampaging fullback in the all-conquering Liverpool side of the 70s, brought in as a budget defender from Northampton Town, in the days when even the top dogs shopped at Oxfam. As a postscript to a fabulously decorated playing career that had included 50 full caps for England, most of which fell in the country's grim avoid-qualifying-for-all-finals spree of 1974-1979, his managerial stints at Bolton then Coventry then Cardiff had progressed from promising to dull to defensive leeks.
Making 650 appearances for Liverpool juxtaposed nicely with presiding over precisely 10 City games and a collection of results that make him quite possibly the worst-ever manager of Manchester City.
Neal was in the dugout and calling the shots for a home calamity v Oxford United (lost 2-3), a dreadful, icy 0-0 night draw with Huddersfield at Maine Road that had not a single redeeming feature, stultifying home defeats to Tranmere (1-2) and Port Vale (0-1) that you had to see to believe and no-nonsense (full of nonsense) defeats at Portsmouth (1-2), Wolves (0-3), Oldham (1-2) and Barnsley, Neal's spectacular last game in charge (0-2).
If you have been counting, that makes eight.
The other two games, although both victories, summed up City almost as succinctly as the big top collapses at home to Port Vale and Oxford. This was pure cabaret, sheer unadulterated slapstick for the frozen masses huddled in disbelieving knots on the Kippax. The home game with West Brom, Neal's second in charge, was clutched from the jaws of defeat by an unknown deity floating around the ground that bitter Wednesday night. The now-you-see-it, now-you-don't 3-2 win lifted City to 17th in the old League Division One. That's "up to seventeenth".
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| Paul Dickov prepares to welcome the ball back from orbit. |
By the time the Bradford match came around, City had slipped back to 21st. There were 24 teams in the division. The 3rd division was smiling coquettishly and lifting its hem at us. We winked back and proceeded to fall into an open manhole.
The Bradford game fell on Saturday 7th December 1996. The day of days dawned damp and cold and proceeded along similar lines for those hardy souls still focussed enough to be going. Bus, pub, wet walk of (no) hope. Neal's programme notes talked of "roller coasters", a sure description of everything City in the 90s. It basically meant the good man was sat on a bucking train the destination, speed and safety of which he knew not a jot about.
With Richard Edghill, Scott Hiley and Peter Beagrie all sidelined with long-term injuries, City's starting eleven on this day looks threadbare when put alongside the team Pep Guardiola fielded in this season's December fixture against Wolves, the very side that had humbled Neal's City 3-0 the weekend before in 1996.
In goal Martin Margetson, a name who always struck fear into the home fans rather than those backing the away team. The back four made up of skinny midfielder Ian Brightwell, accident-prone skipper Kit Self-inflicted black-eye Symons, nominally aided by the razor fast, skillful, double-dagger threat of Eddie McGoldrick and Graham Rodger. In midfield new acquisition Neil Heaney from Southampton joined the Ferrari twins Nicky Summerbee and Georgi Kinkladze and the indomitable lion himself Steve Lomas. Up front the strangely subdued partnership of Uwe Rosler and Paul Dickov, with all number of continental talent waiting for the call from the bench.
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| Like two Lamborghinis in a stock car race, Waddle and Kinkladze battle it out in an over-staffed midfield. |
Sadly, it was goodbye to Darren Wassall, the lumpen replacement for the ineffable Michael Frontzeck. His loan finished, Wassall was returning as quickly as his legs would carry him to the relative peace of Derby County. Imagine for a moment, if you will, Derby County being a safe escape route from Manchester City. Bradford arrived with Gordon Cowans and Chris Waddle starring, although Brightwell's brother David did not make the cut. Laugh-a-minute manager Chris Kamara no doubt kept the team talk light on tactical insight.
In fact, it was soon painfully apparent that both managers probably had more insight into tictacs than tactics, as a match that could only be desribed as "hurly burly" got underway. There was, as Peter Fitton described in his report for the Sun, "no tracking back, hardly a tackle". That he was referring to the twin Rolls Royce models of Kinkladze and Waddle, might have legitimately been aimed at both sides as a whole. What today would pass for rudimentary game management at City might as well have been densely packed scientific code on the day. The ball shot about like an electron in search of a nucleus. As far as repulsive force was concerned, City were it.
Despite being rather worryingly two ahead after 12 minutes, it was already 2-2 by the 54th, the giant Swede Robert Steiner, as Fitton put it "built like a true Viking, big and powerful with pillaging instincts" bringing the Yorkshire side level as darkness fell on a bewildered Maine Road.
With tempers fraying on and off the field and the crowd noise morphing from frantic passion to doom-laden frustration up stepped 17-year old sub Whitley, "Steve" according to Fitton, Jeff to the rest of us. Whacking the winner within a minute of coming on, he brought the house down and 25,000 present to their feet.
With Waddle's legs failing and the dual Christmas offering of Mikail Kavelashvilli and Lee Crooks on the pitch, City somehow held out. It had been a thrashing, flailing show of limbs and guts, without coherence, direction or plan. So far, indeed, from what we witness these days to be unrecognisable as the same sport.
Neal, flushed with the warmth of success and the bravado of victory, headed for the press room. "Watching this team is the best laxative in the land," he confided generously, a hot tea in his hand, perhaps to wash the cursed orange pill down with. Just around the u-bend were defeats at Oldham and what we stupidly thought at the time to be a one-off dive into the absolute realms of the pathetic, a lumpen, ashen, abandon-all-hope loss at home to Port Vale. Neal's time was done. The smoke and the dust were choking us all. The laughter of others a death knell in our ringing ears. It had to be brought under control, this whooping, veering monster that appeared only to know how to descend.
No worries, we were told, an end to laxatives was nigh. Frank Clark was coming and soon constipation would be the very last of our problems.
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