He joined City in March 1966, when Joe Mercer and Malcolm Allison were building their classic City side. ‘It was like a happy family. We couldn’t wait to get into training in the morning, the ground was like a magnet. Joe did all the talking for the club and Malcolm did the graft with the players. He was a great motivator. You knew a lot of it was bull, but after he’d spoken to you, you felt you were the best player in the world.’ Allison, recognising Bell’s extraordinary stamina, nicknamed him Nijinsky after the famous racehorse.
Exceptional performances, especially during the championship-winning season of 1967–68, inevitably brought fame and Bell was uncomfortable with it. ‘I hated all of it. They wanted me to make records and all kinds of things. I didn’t even like opening school fêtes or signing autographs. I was okay with a ball at my feet, but I don’t like microphones.’
His career effectively ended on a misty December evening in 1975 when he was just 29 years old. City were playing Manchester United in a League Cup Fourth-Round tie when Dennis Tueart pushed the ball into Bell’s path. ‘The ball kept bobbling and I couldn’t get it to sit right at my feet. I was aware of a player coming across towards me.’ He recalls contemplating – in a split second – several possible options but ‘chose the wrong one of three’. He checked his run but was immediately ‘clattered below the knee’ by United’s captain, Martin Buchan.
His knee was bent back the wrong way at great force, tearing ligaments and rupturing blood vessels. City won 4–0, but, according to legend, many of their supporters left the ground in tears, sensing the gravity of the injury. Bell did not play again for two years and among City fans there was a brooding resentment of Buchan. Bell, typically, has remained tactful about the incident. ‘I hope it was an innocent challenge,’ he says. Did Buchan ever contact him afterwards, to inquire about his well-being? He shakes his head. I ask Bell whether he would have done so if he had hurt another player to such a degree. ‘If, in my own mind, I knew it was a complete accident I would have done, yes,’ he says.
He returned to the side at Christmas 1977, coming on as a substitute at half-time against Newcastle United when the score was 0–0. ‘As I waited in the tunnel, I could hear my name being mentioned all around the ground and everyone got to their feet when I appeared. I’m not an emotional person but I had a lump in my throat.’ City went on to win 4–0.
Bell played 35 further games, though his knee injury restricted his movement. In the summer of 1979, he formally announced his retirement from the game. ‘Malcolm came to me and said he thought it was time I called it a day. He could see that I was befuddling my brain to work around the limited movement I had. I would have gone on for forever and a day trying to get my leg right. But Malcolm was right; I’d given it long enough.’
For a while he worked with City’s young players, passing on his vast experience, but he was laid off under Francis Lee’s tenure as chairman. He would rather not discuss the issue, he feels the club has had enough bad publicity in recent years. Under David Bernstein’s chairmanship, however, he was invited back and is now employed by the club in an ‘ambassadorial role’. In practice, he attends supporters’ functions and mixes on match days with the club’s sponsors.
It is possible to detect a tinge of regret that his role does not run deeper. He still exudes a love and knowledge of the game. City are currently on a purge of their backroom staff, but there is – surely – a limit. Sign here, Mr Bell, nobility will never go out of fashion.
Saturday, 9 January 1999
Blackpool 0 Manchester City 0
A disappointing game saw City’s winning run come to an end. The match kicked off at noon on police advice and 9,752 packed into a frost-bound Bloomfield Road, with City fans out-numbering the home supporters.
Their last league meeting at Bloomfield Road had been 28 years earlier in January 1971 when 30,000 watched a thrilling 3–3 draw.
City dropped to ninth in the table, 13 points behind an automatic promotion spot.
Tuesday, 12 January 1999
The FA confirmed that Andy Morrison would be suspended for three games after his dismissal at Wimbledon.
Joe Royle launched a scathing attack on the FA after Wimbledon’s Carl Cort, also sent off in the game, had his red card reduced to a yellow. ‘I find it incredible that their player gets off when he started the whole thing,’ he said. ‘It seems that there is one set of rules for Premiership players and another for those from the Nationwide League. It is the unfairness of the situation which really hurts.’
Wednesday, 13 January 1999
Terry Cooke arrived at Maine Road and completed his first training session with his new team-mates. ‘He has great pace and is very skilful. He will give us another option in attack,’ said Michael Brown, who had roomed with Cooke while they were both on England Under-21s duty.
OPULENT EXTERIOR HIDES GRIM REALITY
(The Times, Saturday, 16 January 1999)
Wheelie bins are left in alleyways. Children zip past on BMX bicycles. Grocers put boxes of vegetables and fruit outside their doorways and shoppers, well wrapped against the cold, select the best on offer. The houses are archetypal Manchester – red brick, terraced and arranged in neat rows.
Around the corner is the City Chippy, and then the streets – Beveridge, Wansford, Wykeham – stop abruptly. Standing incongruously in this slate-grey landscape is a football ground, Maine Road, the home of Manchester City, something extraordinary among the ordinary.
Football grounds are places of pilgrimage. They are perceived as permanent, largely unchanging against the backdrop of a life that can be uncertain and fickle. Between this game and the next, there might be birth and death, new job or redundancy, marriage or divorce; but these lives, rich or fallow, will be played out against a fortnightly ritual – same place, same time, same faces.
The condition of the ground is irrelevant. Camaraderie and community are present at non-league grounds where broken terracing and a flimsy fence is the sum total. Maine Road, as it happens, is impressive, though wilfully asymmetrical. Perhaps it is apt that its four stands are so dissimilar, for City has been riven by disagreement and ego. When the wind blows and the pigeons huddle beneath them, the four mis-matched structures become symbolic of the men who have squabbled over this famous club – Peter Swales, Francis Lee, etc.
The heart of the club beats within the Main Stand which runs parallel to the road that lends its name to the stadium. There are two reception areas, the one on the first floor flanked by a circular trophy cabinet which, contrary to rumour, is laden with silverware and pennants. A marble bust of Joe Mercer stares out benignly as a steady stream of deliveries are made to the reception desk.
Down the years, there has been much criticism of City’s financial extravagance, but there is little evidence of excessive spending on the club’s interior. Both the Chairman’s Lounge and the Boardroom are small and functional, similar to meeting rooms available for hire at a reasonable hotel. The various executive suites also have the same efficient, colour-coded neatness.
In the Boardroom is a colour photograph of Leighton Gobbett, a young Manchester City fan left broken-hearted after their relegation to Division Two of the Nationwide League. It is there as a reminder of the depth of feeling held for the club by its supporters.
The players and officials entrance is somewhat hidden away, through a broom cupboard of a room and down a flight of stairs. Here, at the very core of the football club, there is again no concession to opulence. If supporters imagine their heroes change and shower in oak-panelled dressing-rooms with gilded taps, they would be mightily surprised. It is hearteningly basic – a small square room, a treatment table, a lay-out of a football pitch attached to the wall, a blackboard. Beyond is another room where there is a sauna in a ramshackle hut, three showers that are not screened from the rest of the room, an ordinary-sized bath and, finally, a huge communal bath covered in ceramic tiles. It feels like a place unchanged in the past 30 years, the bath plugs rusted dirty or
ange, the tiles fractured on the walls.
The away dressing-room is similar and the match officials’ merely a scaled-down version of them both. Outside the officials’ room is a bell-push which the referee presses when he is ready for the teams to assemble. The tunnel out to the pitch is about 30 metres long, an eerie concrete cave flushed by strip-lighting. Outside of match days it is closed off by two sets of metal gates and has a distinctly primitive feel.
Out on the pitch, the stands, by their sheer size, conspire to reinforce a sense of smallness on the individual. It is difficult not to be overwhelmed, drowned in the magnitude. A walk in an empty cathedral, or alongside a docked cruise-liner has the same effect of drawing air from the body, leaving it still and stranded.
The tallest stand is the Kippax, traditionally the home of City’s most partisan and vociferous supporters. It was flattened in the close season of 1994 and a new, all-seater stand built in its place. Where it was once able to house 35,000 supporters when the ground was first built in 1923, and 18,300 when the old stand was demolished, its new capacity is 9,882.
The top tier would not be the ideal place to hold a convention of vertigo sufferers. The drop to the pitch is incredibly steep, but, if the game fails to absorb the visitor, the views across Manchester and beyond are magnificent. On a clear day, it is possible to see the Welsh hills while, in the foreground, Old Trafford is visible at just three miles away. ‘You’ll easily spot it, it’s that thing that looks like a toast rack,’ says a helpful member of the ground staff.
Maine Road has been the home of Manchester City for more than 70 years, but the club may soon be packing away the memorabilia and moving a few miles to the east of the city to a new purpose-built stadium. Since the club’s formation, it has had six grounds and, though many supporters have a nostalgic affection for Maine Road, they are keen to put behind them the recent disastrous times. They want to re-invent the club, make it feel new and fresh again. They know that wherever they may play, it is they – the fans – that imbue it with a sense of the sacred.
• It would have been injudicious to say so at the time, but I thought the dressing-rooms were distinctly shabby. The washing area was open-plan, certainly no place for the bashful. None of the fittings seemed to match, as if they had been bought hurriedly in a closing-down sale.
There were few concessions to luxury. The area immediately beyond the dressing-rooms was pannelled in thin strips of hardboard. It felt like the waiting room in a taxi rank. Beyond this stretched the tunnel, a long, dark, concrete tube. Obviously, no one would want to see hanging baskets and Persian carpets in there, but this was like something out of Rollerball.
The proposed move to a new stadium obviously made it pointless to renovate the interior of Maine Road. All the same, these conditions had prevailed for many years. It was peculiar that the place set aside especially for the players – surely the most important sector of a club’s community – had been left to fall into a state of dilapidation. No expense had been spared bringing footballers to Maine Road, and yet, while they undertook their job of work, they were housed in facilities barely a notch above those used by pub teams on local recreation grounds. Maybe it did fuel their hunger, hone their primal instinct, or perhaps it made them feel that they weren’t particularly special in the general scheme of things.
Saturday, 16 January 1999
Manchester City 3 Fulham 0
Joe Royle promised that City would take a more direct route and their hurly-burly approach secured them a creditable win against league-leaders, Fulham. ‘That’s the best we have played all season. We were excellent and did not have a weakness,’ said Royle.
First-half goals from Shaun Goater and Gareth Taylor were complemented by a third from Kevin Horlock who scored directly from a free-kick.
Terry Cooke enjoyed his first appearance in a City shirt, playing in front of 30,251 fans. ‘It was totally different from the atmosphere at Old Trafford. The fans there just expect to win and sit back to enjoy the game. Here, the ground is full of fanatics and they can make such a difference,’ he said.
The win lifted City to within two points of a promotion play-off spot.
Wednesday, 18 January 1999
Australians Danny Allsopp and Danny Tiatto were the star turns at the Junior Blues’ annual pantomime. More than 500 attended Humpty Dumpty and representing Christmas-past were ex-City players Paul Power, Alex Williams and Roy Clarke.
ROYLE BEGINS TO PLAN LONG RETURN JOURNEY
(The Times, Saturday, 23 January 1999)
Alan Ball’s already-shrill voice went a notch higher, his hair a shade more red. Frank Clark’s skin turned pinky and he reportedly gave up strumming his beloved guitar. Steve Coppell, after a mere six matches, just blurted it out: ‘Manchester City are making me ill.’
Conspicuously, Joe Royle has only lightly furnished his office but, by City’s standards, he is practically a stalwart after nearly 11 months in the job. Time, perhaps, to put up a few pictures, invest in a coat-stand even, though best wait a little longer before depositing family photographs around the edge of the desk.
Back in 1989, a newspaper carried a cartoon drawing of this infamous office. A player poked his head around the door and exclaimed: ‘I hear they’ve fitted an ejector seat in here.’ Since then, City have had eight managers and numerous caretaker-managers. Clearly, the seat is well-oiled and efficient.
Royle, just three months short of his 50th birthday, has been involved in the professional game since signing for Everton on £7 a week at the age of 14. He is financially secure, respected within the game, and yet after being offered 14 other jobs, he elected to return to Maine Road where he had spent three seasons as a player in the 1970s. ‘I always felt that City as a club had great warmth. I enjoyed my time here as a player and it had a feeling of familiarity for me.’
He has a surprisingly gentle handshake and eschews the routine bone-crunching wrench of most of his football contemporaries. He is a big man, as wide as a wardrobe, but with soft blue eyes. The smile is boyish. Sometimes he smiles for no particular reason. Perhaps he’s thought of his next one-liner, for he excels in them. The twinkle in his eye will have got him out of a few scrapes.
Despite his physique, he was not a particularly aggressive footballer. When he first played for Everton, their manager, Harry Catterick, told the other players to kick him in training, to rouse his temper. He was sent off only once in nearly 500 games for hitting the Aston Villa centre-half, Allan Evans. ‘It was retribution. He had been kicking me all afternoon. I didn’t punch him, it was more of a forearm smash really, but I’m not proud of it.’
He was an only child, born to Joe and Irene Royle, from Norris Green, Liverpool. They lived with Royle’s grandparents in a two-bedroom terrace house, and he often slept in the same room as his parents, on a camp-bed at the foot of their bed. ‘I’d say there wasn’t enough room to swing a cat, but it was such a small space I don’t think you could fit a cat in there to swing in the first place!’ His father was a steam engineer by day and a club pianist by night. ‘In Liverpool, my dad is better known than me. As a musician, he’s backed a lot of people who are now famous. Whenever I see Ken Dodd, he always asks me how my dad is.’ Joe Royle Sr was born in Salford and supported Manchester United; so, as a boy, Royle had divided loyalties between United and Everton.
Although he excelled at football, he also represented his home city at swimming and high-jumping and played cricket to a good standard. He was approached by both his favourite clubs, but chose Everton rather than United. He spent eight years at Everton before joining City in 1974 and later moving to Bristol City and Norwich City.
As a manager he transformed Oldham Athletic into a superlative passing team, reaching the League Cup final and the semi-final of the FA Cup in 1990 and winning promotion to the top division in 1992. With a certain inevitability, he returned to Goodison Park as manager but after a run of poor results was sacked two years ago.
He replaced Frank Clark at Ci
ty last February but was unable to avoid relegation to Division Two, with the team winning just two games from the last eight of the season. He inherited a huge squad of 53 professionals of whom only Georgi Kinkladze was really known outside Manchester. ‘I thought the atmosphere around the place was too easy-going. Some of the players had an unprofessional attitude,’ he says.
The club was heavily in debt – and still is – but Royle practically halved the wage bill by selling or releasing nearly 30 players. The sale of Kinkladze to Ajax upset many supporters for he had lit up many otherwise wretched Saturday afternoons with his quicksilver skills. ‘Gio is blessed with sublime ability but it became a case of when we won it was all down to him, but when we lost it was everyone else’s fault,’ he says. Aside from any possible divisive effect on team spirit he might have had, the £5 million raised from Kinkladze’s transfer was essential for the club’s well-being.
Of the City team selected by Royle for his first game as manager, only three were included in the team that beat Fulham 3–0 last Saturday. ‘We have tried to be fair and give everyone a chance but we have also had to make some tough decisions. I have asked my members of staff their opinions, but there has been no great dissension on who we should keep and let go.’
City have lost just six league games this season and though they feature in the promotion race, many supporters are disappointed. There has been little flair or artistry, and for a good while there was a shortage of endeavour and a willingness to trade tackles with the likes of Lincoln City and Bristol Rovers. ‘It takes time to build a team,’ says Royle. ‘We are not going to turn round a tail-spin that has been in place for the last 23 years [their last trophy was the League Cup in 1976] in just 10 minutes. Alex Ferguson took four years to get it right at United, and that was with a great deal of money to spend and a team he inherited that already contained several internationals.’
Blue Moon: Down Among The Dead Men With Manchester City Page 12
