appetites.
“Look at this lot here playing in the Cup Final,” he said. “We’re better than these. We should be here next season.” He was sowing the seeds in our heads already.
6. Every Schoolboy’s Dream
After the title success we went on a six-week tour of
America
. I think it was the club’s idea to promote City’s name over there. However a lot of things went wrong on that tour and the fact we never really had a pre-season break probably backfired on us the following season. We were out of the title race by October and soon out of
Europe
and at one stage things got so bad that we were staring at relegation.
From my point of view, the
US
trip went from bad to worse. As an example, almost as soon as we’d arrived we were all sat down for dinner when news filtered in from home. News that meant none of us could finish our evening meal. United had won the European Cup. We were all gutted. Okay, we knew the United players socially and we recognised how good some of them were but we weren’t pleased for them in the slightest. In fact it’s one of the few times that I can recall Malcolm being quiet for five minutes.
For a true Blue such as myself it was a nightmare because we had just spent so long fighting to come out of United’s shadow. We murdered them 3-1 in
Stretford
and then took the title off them, so we were all thinking we were the Kings of Manchester and we were at their level. Then they won the European Cup which meant they’d gone one better than us. What we wanted more than ever was to shut their big red mouths up, to be top dogs in
Manchester
and I think we took it out on them in the subsequent derbies. Having said that I’d have preferred a couple more championship wins rather than the usual four points off United, however welcome that might have been.
My room-mate for this trip was big George Heslop . For the length of the flight to
New York
I kept telling George about a certain posh restaurant we had to try out once we got there. It was called Tarantinos – Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra were said to be regulars and I must have bored George senseless for six hours about it. The mother-in-law’s brother owned it and she’d given me a note to pass onto him when I arrived to seal the deal, so to speak.
So one night we got dressed up very smart and arrived at the restaurant but when we arrived a man in top hat and tails refused us entry unless we gave him a few dollars! He was unimpressed that we played for
Manchester
City
so in the end we had to pay him. Inside we asked to speak to the manager, who wasn’t there. We kicked up a fuss and were eventually thrown out. After eating humble pie for a few days back in
England
, I went to see the wife’s mother, who wrote a letter to her brother in
New York
.
He was so apologetic for what had happened while he was away that he sacked the manager for the poor service and said to get back in touch if we were ever back in town. Later I found out the guy was arrested at the Swiss/Italian border trying to smuggle a million dollars into his homeland. But he did send us a picture of himself and Frank Sinatra in his restaurant together with a cookery book which he’d written himself. Mind you, it would have cost a fortune to cook some of the dishes that were in it!
Despite that incident, we used to get a fine reception wherever we played in the States. The players would be introduced individually onto the pitch, just as in American Football, and one player who was guaranteed a tumultuous reception was our very own Bobby Kennedy. Well don’t forget he had the same name as the former president’s brother who was running for office that year!
Then, one sad but bizarre night, our chairman really lost the plot. The former president’s brother was shot dead and someone ran over to our chairman and said: “Have you heard the news? Bobby Kennedy’s been shot,” to which Albert Alexander replied: “What the blazes was he doing out of his
“Look at this lot here playing in the Cup Final,” he said. “We’re better than these. We should be here next season.” He was sowing the seeds in our heads already.
6. Every Schoolboy’s Dream
After the title success we went on a six-week tour of
America
. I think it was the club’s idea to promote City’s name over there. However a lot of things went wrong on that tour and the fact we never really had a pre-season break probably backfired on us the following season. We were out of the title race by October and soon out of
Europe
and at one stage things got so bad that we were staring at relegation.
From my point of view, the
US
trip went from bad to worse. As an example, almost as soon as we’d arrived we were all sat down for dinner when news filtered in from home. News that meant none of us could finish our evening meal. United had won the European Cup. We were all gutted. Okay, we knew the United players socially and we recognised how good some of them were but we weren’t pleased for them in the slightest. In fact it’s one of the few times that I can recall Malcolm being quiet for five minutes.
For a true Blue such as myself it was a nightmare because we had just spent so long fighting to come out of United’s shadow. We murdered them 3-1 in
Stretford
and then took the title off them, so we were all thinking we were the Kings of Manchester and we were at their level. Then they won the European Cup which meant they’d gone one better than us. What we wanted more than ever was to shut their big red mouths up, to be top dogs in
Manchester
and I think we took it out on them in the subsequent derbies. Having said that I’d have preferred a couple more championship wins rather than the usual four points off United, however welcome that might have been.
My room-mate for this trip was big George Heslop . For the length of the flight to
New York
I kept telling George about a certain posh restaurant we had to try out once we got there. It was called Tarantinos – Dean Martin and Frank Sinatra were said to be regulars and I must have bored George senseless for six hours about it. The mother-in-law’s brother owned it and she’d given me a note to pass onto him when I arrived to seal the deal, so to speak.
So one night we got dressed up very smart and arrived at the restaurant but when we arrived a man in top hat and tails refused us entry unless we gave him a few dollars! He was unimpressed that we played for
Manchester
City
so in the end we had to pay him. Inside we asked to speak to the manager, who wasn’t there. We kicked up a fuss and were eventually thrown out. After eating humble pie for a few days back in
England
, I went to see the wife’s mother, who wrote a letter to her brother in
New York
.
He was so apologetic for what had happened while he was away that he sacked the manager for the poor service and said to get back in touch if we were ever back in town. Later I found out the guy was arrested at the Swiss/Italian border trying to smuggle a million dollars into his homeland. But he did send us a picture of himself and Frank Sinatra in his restaurant together with a cookery book which he’d written himself. Mind you, it would have cost a fortune to cook some of the dishes that were in it!
Despite that incident, we used to get a fine reception wherever we played in the States. The players would be introduced individually onto the pitch, just as in American Football, and one player who was guaranteed a tumultuous reception was our very own Bobby Kennedy. Well don’t forget he had the same name as the former president’s brother who was running for office that year!
Then, one sad but bizarre night, our chairman really lost the plot. The former president’s brother was shot dead and someone ran over to our chairman and said: “Have you heard the news? Bobby Kennedy’s been shot,” to which Albert Alexander replied: “What the blazes was he doing out of his
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