Some historical triviaUpdated: May 8th, 2007
I’ve no idea how accurate this Sunday Mirror story is linking Micah Richards to United, but its point that only two City players have been sold to United since the 1930s made me curious.
I’ve just completed a list of City’s transfers since 1889 for the upcoming Purelymancity book, so thought I’d work out how many deals have involved current Premiership clubs.
Surprisingly, our transfer dealings with United are not that unusual. Since 1945 we’ve only sold one player to Arsenal (Tommy Caton in 1983 for £450,000) and one to Spurs (Paul Stewart in 1988 for £1.7m), while the first City player to move to Liverpool since the war was Robbie Fowler in January last year.
Here’s the complete table:
If the Mirror had delved further back into our transfer dealings it would have found perhaps the darkest moment in the club’s history, told in Simon Inglis’s Soccer in the Dock.
In May 1906 the FA banned 17 City players and suspended three directors after finding the club guilty of making illegal payments. Four City players - Herbert Burgess, Sandy Turnbull, Jimmy Bannister and the legendary Billy Meredith (who was found guilty of offering a £10 bribe to the Aston Villa captain) - were sold to United on December 5th that year. The players, who formed the backbone of City’s 1904 Cup winning team, played a key role in United winning their first Championship title in 1908.
~ Probably the strangest transfer deal of all involved Kazimierz Deyna, who was transferred from Legia Warsaw in Nov 1978. According to Gary James’s Manchester: The Greatest City the £120,000 transfer was paid for mainly in goods such as typewriters and medical equipment.
Super-casino vote tomorrow
The decision to award the super-casino licence to Manchester goes to a Commons vote on Wednesday, with MPs given the option of voting it in or throwing out the plans for all 17 new casinos.
Despite more than 100 MPs - including 83 Labour - signing a Parliamentary motion expressing “surprise and regret” at the recommendation of Manchester, The Telegraph believes the vote will carry a three-line whip, making it unlikely the decision will be overturned.
Regardless of what happens tomorrow the row will probably never fully go away. The revelation that Chris Collison, one of the five members of the Casino Advisory Panel that chose Manchester, is a City season ticket holder and used to work for Manchester City Council (link)
probably doesn’t help matters either.