By 1970 Manchester City had become the “knock-out kings” of English football.
In March, they won the League Cup with a 2-1 defeat of West Brom. The following month the European Cup Winners Cup was added to the trophy cabinet, after a 2-1 defeat of Gornik Zabrze. City even lifted the National Five-A-Side trophy that season.
The key to City’s success was the club’s youth policy, which was now putting United’s firmly in the shade. Seven of the players who started the Cup Winners’ Cup final—Joe Corrigan, Tommy Booth, Glyn Pardoe, Mike Doyle, Alan Oakes, Tony Towers and Neil Young—were from the youth team, as was the sole substitute Ian Bowyer. Of the 12 players who played more than 10 league games that season, eight were products of the youth team. More importantly, the “Boys in Blue” had time on their side. At the start of the 1969-70 season, City’s 25-man squad had an average age of just 22.8.
The financial rewards of City’s youth policy were also becoming apparent. At the end of the season City announced its fourth consecutive year of profit (£31,100).
And once again it was manager Joe Mercer to whom the media gave most of the credit. Little mention was made of the work of Harry Godwin, who joined City in 1950 before becoming as chief scout in 1965, or of youth team coach Johnny Hart. For Malcolm Allison, who had been in sole charge of City’s coaching since 1965, the lack of credit must have been particularly galling.
As his close friend, Noel Cantwell, explained: “Malcolm Allison doesn’t just coach players. He puts a part of himself into them. When you watch a side in action who have been coached by him you are watching Malcolm Allison.”
But the start of the World Cup in Mexico that May would give Allison a new platform. The tournament gave rise to a new phenomenon in Britain: the football pundit. And the most outspoken of all was the man who would soon become known as “Big Mal”.
Throughout the tournament Allison lambasted the England manager and his players, while spelling out his views on the future of the game (which included the controversial idea of banning the back-pass to the goalkeeper).
‘This refreshing outspokenness has made Allison into something of a tele-celebrity, a compulsive word-spinner, who has shoulder-charged professional chat specialists like David Frost and Simon Dee over the sidelines.’
According to the Hull Daily Mail, ‘women have gone potty’ over this ‘15st of masculine aggression in peacock attire’.
Back in Manchester, Allison had also been attracting admiring glances from members of the city’s business community.
On 23 November the Manchester Evening News (below) revealed that vice-chairman Frank Johnson had agreed to sell his 25% stake to Oldham-based double glazing tycoon Joe Smith.
The next day the paper revealed that Smith was head of a consortium that now controlled 40% of the club’s shares. More importantly, with an estimated 200 of the club’s 2,000 shares believed to be missing (the result of a fire at the Hyde Road ground in 1920), the consortium now claimed they effectively had control of the club.
As well as former director Chris Muir and solicitor Michael Horwich, the consortium also included Simon Cussons, the 27-year-old heir to the Cussons soap manufacturing fortune. But it was the fifth consortium member, Ian Niven, who provided the best indication of who was pulling the strings. A lifelong City fan and landlord of the Fletcher's Arms in Denton, the 46-year-old Niven had been approached by Allison to find a buyer for Johnson’s stake.
The man he found did not hold back on his admiration for City’s assistant manager. “All I want now is to see Manchester City become the greatest club there has ever been or ever will be in the world,” Smith told the Evening News. “I will do my utmost, everything in my power, to co-operate in any way in any project with Mr. Allison to better the club. He is the greatest man in football."
Chairman Alexander, however, was in fighting mood, telling the Evening News,
“I hadn't had my breakfast when he (Smith) called on me. I told my wife to ask him to wait while I washed and shaved, and then I went downstairs and asked him straight out to put his cards on the table. I didn't recognise him. In effect he came to me as a stranger.
All I can say is that if anyone tries it, they will find I am a very rough nut to crack. We have had similar crises before and I have weathered them.”
Alexander, who spent four years in the trenches during the First World War, knew all about wars of attrition. He realised that new weapons—as well as fresh blood—were essential for victory. But first he needed to crush the mutiny in his ranks.
The battle of Manchester City had now officially begun.
Part 3