Is this the oldest picture of City in existence?Updated: December 20th, 2006
I was updating my links page yesterday and thought I’d take another look at supporters club sites. Browsing through the photo gallery at the excellent Baguley & Brooklands site I came across what is possibly the first picture ever taken of City:
(Click on the picture to view full size image)
I’ve been researching City’s history and couldn’t remember seeing this picture before. I checked Gary James’ Manchester: The Greatest City and the earliest picture there is from 1894-95.
City were founded in 1880 by the daughter of Rev Arthur Connell of St Mark’s Church in West Gorton. Originally called St Mark’s (West Gorton) the club changed their name to West Gorton (St Marks) a year later after the church removed its patronage.
The crosses on the shirts suggests that the picture was taken in City’s first ever season, which would date it to between Nov 1880 and Nov 1881.
~ The Baguley & Brooklands gallery also contains a unique picture of City legend Billy Meredith from 1931, which can be found here. Other historic pictures can be found in our Images section here.
Transfer round-up
The window for transfer speculation re-opened this week, fuelled by Pearce saying he wanted four more players in January.
Sky Sports reported that City were interested in 24-year-old Surinam forward Andwele Slory, who has scored 5 goals in 10 games for Dutch side Excelsior this season and bagged 14 goals in 36 games last season. His stats can be found here.
The link to Egyptian striker Amr Zaki comes from this report, which was based on a fax from an agent and claims City have tabled a £2m bid for him. David Pleat wrote this profile of Zaki in The Guardian.
But the MEN, which is in danger of becoming the official mouthpiece for City, believes that limited funds means Pearce will be looking at players from the lower leagues.
It named Izale McLeod at MK Dons, Scunthorpe’s Billy Sharp, Nicky Maynard at Crewe and Caleb Folan at Chesterfield as potential targets.
I’ll be running detailed profiles of these four - and other potential targets - next week.
~ With Micah Richards today named in the full England squad, we can only hope the four signings Pearce is after won’t be funded by his sale. As the call-up makes Richards our most saleable asset, the odds on him being at the club next season must be getting pretty slim.