As Man City prepare to face Real Madrid and Luton are 90 minutes from the Premier League, twoht remembers when the Hatters relegated City, 40 years ago this week.
Forty years ago this week and only six years after they’d been just two points from becoming the champions of England, Manchester City were relegated by Luton.As the 1982/83 Football League season came to its end, attention turned away from the top of the First Division.
But there was also excellence contained therein. Three years later, Paul Walsh would win a title winner’s medal with Liverpool and only missed out on a double with the FA Cup on account of injury. Ricky Hill, a sparkling presence, would go on to make more than 500 appearances for them over 13 years, picking up England caps along the way.
His replacement was a call-back to the Allison years. Tony Book had a remarkable playing career. He spent the vast majority of it in non-league football as a full-back with Bath City, where Allison got his first break as a manager in 1963. Allison moved on to Plymouth the following year, but decided that he wanted to take the near-30-year-old full-back with him. Aware that the
Chairman Peter Swales later acknowledged his error that would ultimately prove to be the pivot in the decline of Manchester City. In July 1979 Malcolm Allison returned to the club, and Book was moved upstairs. Over the next few months, Manchester City threw money at a British record transfer fee on Steve Daley from Wolves, who turned out to be a bit of a disaster, and others, but the team didn’t successfully gel and City finished the 1979/80 season three places above the bottom three.
It was, perhaps unsurprisingly, a nervous afternoon at Maine Road. The Match of the Day cameras were there – “It’s do-or-die at Maine Road,” was John Motson’s opening gambit from the commentary box – on a sunny afternoon in front of a second-best crowd of the season of 42,000. Manchester City in all sky blue, Luton in their change kit of orange and navy blue. It was a scrappy first half, riddled with over-cooked passes and short on chances.
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