📸 Season 1997-98, Championship
📆 6th December 1997
🏟 Maine Road
A one-goal defeat that saw City drop to 18th in the second division (Nationwide League Division One) table. The goalmouth scramble at the North Stand end features two Wolves players who had earlier worn the sky blue of City with differing levels of distinction.
Keith Curle (2), a £2.5m signing from Wimbledon under Peter Reid, played over 200 games in a five-year stay in Manchester, becoming captain and a semi-reliable penalty taker too. His last game for City was the relegation disaster against Liverpool, when Alan Ball ordered Steve Lomas to waste time at the corner flag when City needed to score another goal to survive. What a way/day to bow out. Curle famously netted a penalty at the Scoreboard End at Old Trafford and ended up walking back towards the centre circle with a City fan draped around his neck. Was less lucky with a penalty at Cardiff in the cup that was saved and resulted in City going out in a bearpit atmosphere in south Wales.
Curle served Wolves for a similar period after leaving City, lasting four years and making over 150 appearances up to the year 2000. Helping out in a beleaguered Wolves rearguard here is 'keeper Mike Stowell (3), nearly 400 appearances for the West Midlanders standing against his 14 loan appearances for City in 1988. Stowell's inauspicious City debut came at Ewood Park, where he dropped a clanger for the home side's first goal. Stowell also played in the 4-0 mauling by Liverpool in the FA Cup 6th round, his biggest game for City.
Wolves were another of six clubs Stowell played for as a loanee from mother club Everton, before joining full-time in 1990.
This was one of three games against Wolves that Paul Dickov (1) played for City, all lost, at a time when Wolves were something of a bogey side (curiously almost all of City's opponents in the 90s were bogey sides). On this occasion Dickov would be booked and the winning goal would be scored by Kit Symons (4), a defender synonymous with all that went wrong with City during this time. Leaping with Stowell and causing very little danger at all is another player whose mere mention brings City fans of a certain vintage out in the sweats: Ged Brannan.
.jpg)
No comments:
Post a Comment