Before the match, there is consternation about the death just two days earlier of Stephen Boler. Boler owned almost 25 per cent of the club’s shares and one might expect talk to focus on a potential power vacuum, or another period of boardroom instability. Not so. ‘Do you think we should stand up, even though we’re in a box, when they have a minute’s silence?’ asks someone in the corridor. ‘Nah, shouldn’t think so.’
The first half is aimless and hopeless, but it doesn’t seem to matter when, behind you, the plate of biscuits is being replenished, a young girl is pouring coffee into cups, and Norman Wisdom has worked his way up to joint-owner of the dairy. The crowd boo on the half-time whistle. We cheer.
The football is briefly absorbing in the second half, especially when City score twice in quick succession but, with Norman now gone, there is the new distraction of scorelines flashed on the television from the other games. ‘Stuart Pearce has been sent off at Newcasde,’ proffers one member of the party on a return mission from the glasshouse to stock up on Budweiser and Nice biscuits. As the game falls into yet another lull, a discussion follows on Stuart Pearce. Is he tenacious and salt-of-the-earth or a muscle-bound dogger? The former is the consensus, though perhaps our minds should have been elsewhere, as Paul Dickov chips a ‘pass’ 10 yards over the head of Richard Edghill.
After the game, there is much ironic discussion about the forthcoming draw for the First Round of the FA Cup. ‘We could be sat here [meaning in all this relative splendour] watching City play Marine or Bacup Borough – imagine that!’
The draw has actually paired City against Halifax Town next Friday evening, though no one has been laughing about this. Back in January 1980, Malcolm Allison took his team of expensive follies (Steve Daley, Michael Robinson etc.) to the Shay in the FA Cup and they lost 1–0 on a pitch of sand and mud. ‘It has left a stain on our playing record that will take a long time to fade if, indeed, it is ever allowed to,’ said Allison at the time.
The memory has lingered, from the executive boxes to the manager’s dug-out, where Willie Donachie, a City player at the time – though he missed the game through injury – takes his position. People in glasshouses don’t throw stones any more.
Saturday, 7 November 1998
Oldham Athletic 0 Manchester City 3
After 12 years as manager of Oldham Athletic, Joe Royle returned with another club for the first time. Two first-half strikes by Kevin Horlock gave City a lead that Oldham rarely threatened. Andy Morrison’s superb volley, his second goal in two games, sealed victory.
‘We were nowhere near our best but we scored three terrific goals, had one disallowed, hit the bar and didn’t get a blatant penalty so I can’t be disappointed. It could have been embarrassing, really, but I’m glad it wasn’t – I still feel a lot for Oldham,’ said Joe Royle.
Tuesday, 10 November 1998
Wycombe Wanderers 1 Manchester City 0
Wycombe Wanderers had their largest attendance for two years when 8,159 crowded into Adams Park, causing a delayed kick-off.
The home side were awarded a penalty after Richard Edghill was ruled to have fouled Andrew Baird. Michael Simpson scored from the spot. ‘I spoke to the referee after the game and told him he had a good game but that he made a mistake with one vital decision,’ said Royle. ‘The two lads just collided, that was all. It was right in front of the linesman and he didn’t give anything so I don’t see how the referee, who was 20 yards away, can give it.’
Friday, 13 November 1998
Manchester City 3 Halifax 0 (FA Cup First Round)
Live coverage by Sky TV and a Friday evening kick-off contrived to reduce the attendance to just 11,108, the lowest ever FA Cup attendance at Maine Road.
Craig Russell, making his first full appearance of the season, hit two first-half goals and set up Shaun Goater who scored an easy tap-in. It was Goater’s first goal in five games. ‘It’s nice to be in the next round, but we’re still in the middle of a nightmare here,’ said Joe Royle.
CHUCKLE HAS THE LAST LAUGH
(The Times, Saturday, 14 November 1998)
The ball hits the net and our principles become decidedly flimsy. No question about it, he was worth the money, and if he wants to drive a custard-coloured Lotus, that’s his choice. Likewise, when the ball misses by some distance and the said striker tumbles to the turf we mock and jeer, begrudge him his every penny. We love them and we hate them, it’s part of the fun.
Another tenet of this bizarre relationship is that it must be symbiotic: players must share both the joy and the suffering at precisely the same level as ourselves. If they are three goals down, and shuffling about impassively, we wish upon them a downpour, a veritable monsoon, hailstones as sharp as carpet tacks.
Apart from seriously inclement weather, there is another requital we covet for our anti-heroes. ‘I hope the trainer puts them through it on Monday morning,’ mutter the broken-hearted as they leave the ground. Step this way, Mr Baranowski. A Yorkshireman of Polish parentage, he is the kindly chap who makes supporters’ dreams come true. Manchester City fans will take great delight to know that Baranowski, stop-watch in hand, frown on face, is waiting to give them the mother of all Monday mornings.
He has one of those faces that is, in one instant, stern and intimidating, and then open and comical. The hair is slicked back, he wears a neat, carefully tapered moustache. ‘Some of the players have called me the Führer and Saddam Hussein,’ he says. ‘They also reckon I look a bit like one of the Chuckle brothers. I don’t mind them taking the piss. I give it them back. I always remind them that it’s me who decides how long they should run for and how fast they should go.’ Still chuckling, brother?
Although he wears the obligatory tracksuit, Baranowski is as much scientist as football coach. The vocabulary gives him away: ‘energy systems’, ‘nutritional intake’, ‘resistance training’, ‘exercise prescription’, and this is just a warm-up before we move on to ‘biomechanics’, ‘physiotherapeutic’ and ‘pharmacological’. Inevitably, he learned his trade in the United States, where fitness conditioners (the job title he gives himself) are seen as essential.
‘They are years ahead of us in the States. Every college team will have a fitness conditioner. I have put into practice what I learned over there and made it soccer-specific,’ he says. Baranowski and his staff work in peripatetic fashion, with Sheffield United, Leeds United and Lincoln City among their current clients, aside from City. He also spent six seasons with Blackburn Rovers and was called upon by Kenny Dalglish once more when he moved to Newcastle United.
Baranowski provides a bespoke training plan for footballers. They are assessed individually and then, via the stop-watch and heart monitor, they effectively compete against themselves in a series of regulated training sessions over the course of a whole year. It is the antithesis of the system that has served football for decades and, unsurprisingly, it is viewed suspiciously in some quarters. ‘A lot of football coaches have the attitude that what worked for them as a player will work for anyone else. It is all volume and not quality. They think that if everyone is completely knackered after a session, it must have been worthwhile. They are missing the point completely.’
A fitness fanatic himself and a karate black-belt, he is not impressed by the level of fitness of most footballers. ‘At City, when we first started working with them, I’d have given the squad six marks out of ten for their fitness level. We have worked with them from the first day of pre-season training and they have got on with the job without moaning. I know the results on the pitch haven’t gone as well as everyone hoped, but there is a real sense that they know there is work to do.’
The best advocate for Baranowski has been Jamie Pollock. He was put on a specific six-week training programme in the summer and lost 10 lbs which many felt had honed his game noticeably. Unfortunately, a combination of two sending-offs and a hernia operation has limited his impact. ‘Some things are out of our control,’ rues Baranowski.
Baran
owski makes no claim to be the authentic ‘football man’. He did not play the sport to any level and although he has worked alongside the likes of Dalglish and Shearer, he has a markedly secular attitude to the game. During matches his gaze wanders continually from the ball: is the centre-back racing back to his position after moving forwards for a corner?; are the midfielders covering their counterparts’ runs?; is the striker using his additional upper-body strength to shield the ball?; is the winger turning more quickly away from his marker using the footwork technique he was shown?
City, after two consecutive wins, lost at Wycombe Wanderers on Tuesday and, while their level of fitness was satisfactory, their level of finesse was once more lacking. Did Baranowski give them hell on Wednesday morning? Were they left mopping up the sweat with their wage packets? ‘Funnily enough, we never mention the last result. By the time we get to the players, Joe and Willie have already had their say with them. It is a dead issue once we’re on the training pitch.’ Damn.
Sunday, 15 November 1998
Despite lying outside the play-off zone, bookmakers William Hill quoted City as third favourites to win the league, behind Fulham and Stoke City.
Saturday, 21 November 1998
Manchester City 0 Gillingham 0
Jamie Pollock returned for the first time in seven weeks but Gillingham, on their first ever visit to Maine Road, defended well. ‘We have dominated the game, had a redundant goalkeeper, their keeper is man-of-the-match, everything flashes around the box and we’ve come away with a draw,’ said Joe Royle. City had dropped 14 points at home already during the season.
Monday, 23 November 1998
Mike Turner, City’s £100,000-a-year chief executive, announced that he was to leave the club ‘to pursue other interests’. He had been with City for two years and resigned amid rumours that he was unhappy with the behind-the-scenes atmosphere. ‘There is still a canker of back-stabbing within the club that seems to go on from generation to generation,’ a ‘close source’ told the Daily Mail.
Thursday, 26 November 1998
Gareth Taylor, Sheffield United’s 25-year-old Wales international, signed for City. The 6ft 2ins striker cost an initial £350,000, rising to £400,000 after a specified number of appearances.
Friday, 27 November 1998
A supporter discovered a counterfeit Manchester City kit on sale in a sports shop in Kampala, Uganda. It bore little resemblance to an authentic kit, replete with sky blue polka dots and huge shorts. ‘The material appears to have come straight from Mike Baldwin’s knicker factory,’ said Steve Doohan. ‘And the shorts! Even Jamie Pollock would struggle to fill them with his voluminous behind.’
TURNER TAKES FAMILIAR PATH OFF CITY ROAD
(The Times, Saturday, 28 November 1998)
Ladies and gentleman, today and for the rest of his life, Mike Turner will be pursuing other interests. He is not alone, for there are many others dotted around the north-west of England who are doing just the same after once pursuing the interests of Manchester City FC.
Turner resigned this week as chief executive of City after almost two years at the club. ‘He has left to pursue other interests’ said a club spokesman. ‘Resigned’, in Turner’s case, is probably a misnomer. More likely, he was jollied along through the main door, both sad to go and glad to go – life’s like that at City. The other recent snarl in the Maine Road boardroom was the death a month ago of Stephen Boler, the largest individual shareholder.
Since David Bernstein succeeded Francis Lee as chairman in March, the new regime has zealously portrayed itself as pragmatic, staunch and provident, an antidote to the profligacy and egocentricity of before. Bernstein has honest brown eyes and a gracious but assured manner. When he tells you something, you believe him. He is big on words like ‘stability’ and ‘foundations’, but sometimes he is like the television reporter speaking directly to camera: ‘We are determined to bring stability to this club,’ he avers. To his right, still within the shot, someone is making off with the desks, or holding up a placard reading, ‘Don’t Believe A Word’.
Manchester City will always be so, at least until it attracts an individual or organisation with the finance to secure overall control. The fragmented nature of the club’s ownership dictates that a certain level of turmoil is a normal state of being. The best Bernstein can hope for is a manageable turmoil. He oversees a board comprising four main factions held in an uneasy but workable alliance: JD Sports, Greenalls Brewery, Goldenworld Ltd (Francis Lee’s business interest) and the Limelight Group which is the generic name of Boler’s former businesses incorporating Moben kitchens and Dolphin bathrooms.
Where power is so indistinct, it can be appropriated by those with no authentic right to it. A book published this week, Cups for Cock-Ups by Ashley Shaw, claims that the club hosts a malevolent force, the much-vaunted Fifth Column. Directors and managers are only allowed to change the club superficially while its administrative staff, who habitually remain at the club much longer, protect their own interests. In short, their jobs and salaries remain intact, sometimes to the detriment of the club itself.
In football an autocracy is much easier to administer. Across the city, for example, United have benefited greatly from the single-minded approach afforded by the secure ownership of the Edwards family. City suffer for their stifling pseudo-democracy. The talk is as plentiful as the paperwork, but sometimes they order peas instead of beans, full-backs instead of wing-backs. Even now, for all Bernstein’s obsession with rationalisation, the club has a staff of 104 (excluding players) and an annual wage bill (including players) of almost £9 million. Macclesfield Town FC, of the same division, is run on a staff of 10 full-time officials.
There was little consternation at the news of Boler’s death at Maine Road and no mention of a power vacuum; this is because the club has carried one for as long as anyone can remember. Turner’s departure has been greeted with a similar shrug of the shoulders. He was brought in by Lee to administer much of the club’s day-to-day activities on a weekly wage in excess of £2,000. He had previously been commercial manager at Liverpool FC and before that had worked for Puma and as a Rugby League administrator.
In the long-term, Turner will be seen as another legacy of the Lee era finally swept away. They will proffer the opinion that he was, like so often before, someone else’s idea of a good appointment; football clubs are habitually run on such a whimsical basis. Paradoxically, Bernstein himself was invited on to the board by Lee. Nothing is black and white among the blue and white.
Officials claim Turner’s departure does not mark a return to the club’s infamous internal squabbling. ‘I have talked a great deal about stability but you cannot legislate for everything,’ said Bernstein. ‘It was Mike’s decision to go.’ Some suggest that Turner was upset over the appointment of a new financial controller. He has also been heavily involved in several industrial tribunals with former club employees. Turner is on ‘holiday’ this week and has received a cash settlement from City so is unlikely to go public on why he has left such a well-paid job at a club he has supported since a boy.
Dave Wallace, editor of the City fanzine, King of the Kippax, reluctantly senses further boardroom disharmony. ‘Whatever way you look at it, Turner was in a high-profile position. You can’t pay someone that kind of salary and then claim he wasn’t important in the scheme of things. It does throw up once more the question of stability and unity.’
Turner’s exit, along with the death of Boler, will have alerted predatory outsiders with a declared interest in acquiring City, principally the solicitor Raymond Donn and businessman Mike McDonald. There has long been speculation about possible takeovers, but it would require a large amount of capital. Boler’s shares alone have been valued at £8 million and collecting enough of the others to wrestle power would cross several entrenched political boundaries within the current set-up.
City fans, meanwhile, view the shenanigans with indifference. They’ve seen it all before and have learned repea
tedly that it hurts to care too much. Generally, they trust Bernstein and Joe Royle, and there is a prevailing belief that they are the men of integrity to address the multitude of problems both on and off the pitch. Both, however, must be wary of the tackle from behind.
• My intuition on Chris Bird was correct. It was announced soon after Turner’s departure that he was to become the ‘chairman’s assistant’ while simultaneously undertaking his PR duties. It seemed a vague term, but carried with it significant authority and prestige. He immediately began to attend board meetings and his capacity for hard work and long hours meant he soon became City’s ‘Everyman’ – the club’s interface between the media, the supporters and the directors. He was known to everyone within the club. The tea ladies joked with him, the ground-staff would stop and talk. I remember a remark made by Colin Bell at the end of our interview. This footballing legend, a man who had travelled the world, met all manner of people, announced demurely: ‘I asked Chris first, and he said it was okay to talk to you.’
I did not write a profile on Bird during the season because of the intrinsic risk. In his own right he wielded a degree of power, but he was also the emissary of Tueart, the director responsible for media relations. Unlike many in the PR profession, it was always manifest that Bird’s remit would not limit itself to simply drafting the odd news release or issuing press passes. He was a man on the move, a man with plans.
Born in 1963, he left school with one ‘O’ Level and joined British Rail as a trainee signalman at Guide Bridge, Audenshaw. He worked nightshifts and spent his days running a market stall on Hyde Market. Even then, he rarely needed more than three or fours hours sleep to get by. He had been on the market since a young teenager, and patently had the gift of salesmanship. ‘My dad always said I wasn’t someone who had kissed the blarney stone, I’d swallowed it,’ he said. He left British Rail to join his father, Patrick Bird, working at a local dye factory.
Blue Moon: Down Among The Dead Men With Manchester City Page 8
