The second part of our insightful interview with former City centre-half and future Wolves, Republic of Ireland and Sunderland boss Mick McCarthy.
The Manchester City of 1984 was a world away from the Club we know today.
Promotion from the second tier had been achieved on a shoestring budget and manager Billy McNeill knew it would be a challenge to stay up without substantial investment.
For Mick McCarthy, the prospect of top flight football was all he’d ever dreamed of when he’d been at Barnsley, and now he’d be doing in the sky blue of Manchester City in only his second full season at Maine Road.
McCarthy recalls his manager at the time seemed to accept there was little or no money to spend at Maine Road – a recipe, he felt, that would come back and eventually bite the Blues.
“I don’t remember Billy McNeil whinging about it too much, you know, it was just one of those accepted things, which was wrong,” says Mick.
“I mean, we were always scrapping to survive and were the church mice of the division - we were skint and never had anything. It was funny - if you went to see Billy, as the captain - and I was captain for a short spell - whenever you went in to negotiate with Billy, his chair was always higher than yours, so you'd be kind of just looking up at him and he'd start talking to you and he'd be saying, ‘how’s the family and how’s the kids’ or ‘what sort of car are you driving these days; are you enjoying it?’
“You’d come out half an hour later, and he'd be almost level looking at you because he'd slide down his chair, and then he'd go ‘alright thanks for coming’, and you’d walk out and think, ‘I never asked him what I wanted to ask him in the first place!’
“He was brilliant, really was brilliant, I didn't think that at the time, but he was. I managed to play a lot of games that season, and I seem to remember going into it full of optimism as always.
“Sammy McIllroy joined us for our first season back in the top flight plus a few others and a lad from Rotherham United, Nigel Johnson - he was a young, up and coming player and he'd done really well at Rotherham, he did all right, but I think he was just a bit indifferent. Steve Redmond was excellent – a classy centre-half and was very, very good.
“Paul Simpson was the best one of them all, and David White did well while Paul Lake was different class.”
“Clive Wilson was another really good player, so we had talent but maybe not enough.”
The 1985/86 campaign was one of ups and downs as McNeill sought to stabilise the club as best he could. Undoubtedly a nine-game mid-season unbeaten run that began with a rare 1-0 home win over Liverpool on Boxing Day, proved the foundation for survival because after the 2-0 home win over QPR at the start of February, City wouldn’t win another game all season.
The Blues had, however, reached the final of the Full Members’ Cup – a tournament organised to fill the void of English clubs being banned from European football, but for the most part, football fans weren’t interested in a third domestic competition and attendances were low.
The carrot, though, was a final at Wembley where City had earned the right to take on Chelsea. The issue was the FA had failed to make room for the final on the calendar and clubs were left to try and squeeze what should have been a showpiece game into their calendars.
That meant over the weekend of March 22 and 23, City had two games in two days – a Manchester derby at Old Trafford on the Saturday and a Wembley final on the Sunday!
City appealed to the Reds to rearrange the fixture, but with an outside chance of the title, United refused, and the Blues faced up to the prospect of two games in 24 hours.
McNeill had to decide how best to utilise his squad and with his team not looking likely to go down at that stage, he decided to balance out his squad for both games, effectively prioritising neither and McCarthy was rested for the derby which ended in a respectable 2-2 draw.
“I guess if somebody said to me now that I was missing the game at Old Trafford, I'd be fuming,” said Mick. “But as I was going to play at Wembley in the Full Member’s Cup final, I guess I accepted that.
“There was almost full house when we went down there, it was a great experience going and playing at Wembley, but it was a weird game!”
Indeed it was – City had taken around 30,000 fans to Wembley and in front of a crowd of 68,000, went 1-0 up, before Chelsea hit back with five goals to lead 5-1. It wasn’t quite over, however, and in the final five minutes, City scored three goals to narrowly lose the game 5-4.
“Yeah, I think we scored three in four minutes or something. Ridiculous! If it had gone on for another 10 minutes, we would've won it.”
Disappointed to have lost, it was time to refocus on league football where the Blues had been in freefall. The winless streak continued, and City went into the final game of the season knowing a bizarre set of results could mean relegation. Ipswich Town would have needed a big win at Sheffield Wednesday and City would have needed a heavy home defeat against the side who had relegated us in 1983 – Luton Town – but thankfully, that didn’t happen.
City’s 1-1 draw with Luton meant a 15th place finish and Ipswich went down having lost at Hillsborough.
For Mick McCarthy the following campaign – the 1986/87 season – would be his last as a City player, and just four games in, Billy McNeill quit as manager to join Aston Villa.
“That was very strange, but even more so now being a manager myself, it seems understandable, looking back,” recalled Mick. “He’d come down from Celtic, and he thinks, you know, for all intents and purpose, they look like this great club, which it is, with great fans, but absolutely diddly squat to spend and he had no funds.
“He spent £200,000 on me, which was a lot of money at the time, and I think he got value for money, too, but, he didn’t have the funds he really needed and being a manager and being in that position, you get sick of it. Villa came in for him and he must have thought he would obviously be going to get better money because wouldn’t have left otherwise. But it was ridiculous because they ended up getting relegated with us!
“Who knows what their circumstances were, but looking at it with a fresh pair of eyes now as a 63 year-old, I can fully understand why Billy left, but it came as a real shock - and I have to say it was a disappointment to me because he'd signed me and as much as we used to argue quite a bit, I loved him. I got on great with him and I was quite sad to see him go.
“Frizz (Jimmy Frizzell) got the job which, at the time and it seemed like the normal thing, but looking back on it, he can't go from Frizz to gaffer. He had no money either.”
It would be a dismal season for City fans, with a thumping headed goal from McCarthy against United being one of the few highs. The Blues started the New Year with a 1-0 win over Oxford United, before embarking on a 16-match winless run in all competitions.
With four games remaining, relegation looked a certainty, but a 3-0 win over fourth-placed Arsenal, followed by a 0-0 draw at champions Everton and a 1-0 victory over Brian Clough’s Nottingham Forest, meant a win on the final day at West Ham and the great escape might just be possible.
“I think results had to go with us, but we didn't win our game at Upton Park anyway – we lost 2-0 - so, you know, it just looked like a completely futile thing, which was a shame because we'd given ourselves a chance. We’d had a spell where we were losing game after game I seem to remember, and then we had a spell where when there was nothing to play for and, we suddenly started picking up points again.
“We got ourselves into a position where we could stay up and had the chance to have gone down fighting - but we didn't. We lost and that was that. I just don’t think we were good enough, that's all, I think we were weighed down because we were Man City and you have got to live up to these expectations about being Manchester City, but we just weren’t good enough.
“I think I'd got a year to run on my contract, and I guess I didn't want to play in the Second Division again because I’d spent a long time trying to get out with Barnsley, and now, after one and a half seasons with City, we had gone down and I just didn't want to go back.
“I didn't feel I was entitled; I felt, because I worked hard to get there, and I didn't want to go back again, so when the chance to go to Celtic came along, it was a really fabulous opportunity. I didn’t do what I did because I wanted to leave City - that wasn't the case. I just didn't want to go to the Second Division because I’d done my shift in that tier.”
Mick left City in May 1987 having played 157 games during his time at Maine Road and he stayed with Celtic for two years before going on to play for Lyon and Millwall where he became a player-manager.
It was 1992, and his career in management had begun – and 31 years later, he is still a manager having recently taken over as boss at Blackpool, at least until the end of this season.
So, with three decades of management under his belt – eight as manager of Republic of Ireland – what does he make of Pep Guardiola and the Manchester City of today?
“They're incredible, everything about them, I mean, the manager quite clearly, he is an incredible manager and coach and I think he's changed the way football is played in this country,” said Mick.
“The players that City have got, the things that they've done, the way they play – the Champions League has been a challenge which is incredible, because they have been the best team for the last four or five years, but I think it will happen soon.
“The training ground, the way the club is managed and everything about it, I mean, it's just amazing compared to the club I joined and the manager telling me that they'd sell the goal posts if they could!
“It's a long, long way from that let me tell you that one, and though not that many people seem to realise I was a City player for four years, nowadays – but I’m proud that I did.”
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