Fine Margins

Richard Buxton

Description

Fine Margins is the definitive story of how two mainstays of English football took their feuding on to the game's biggest stages. The Manchester City and Liverpool rivalry is synonymous with the Premier League, but its roots go back much further. For over half a century, these two clubs from opposite ends of the M62 have been perennial thorns in each other's side. Bill Shankly laid the groundwork in the late 1960s before a series of clashes a decade later further stoked the fires, culminating in an attack on City's team bus in 1981 after they beat Liverpool 3-1 at Anfield. The feud was reignited in the mid-1990s when Liverpool relegated City on the final day of the 1995/96 Premier League season. When they returned to the top flight, Manchester's blue half became the scourge of Merseyside's Redmen, snatching players and points away from them. Countless managers, players and directors have continued what started in the Bill Shankly era, with the rivalry ramped up a notch through the reigns of Pep Guardiola and Jurgen Klopp.

Sujets

• Lancashire
• Lancastre
• Manchester
• Liverpool

Informations

• Publié par: Pitch Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 31 août 2020
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781785317477
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

First published by Pitch Publishing, 2020
Pitch Publishing
A2 Yeoman Gate
Yeoman Way
Durrington
BN13 3QZ
www.pitchpublishing.co.uk
Richard Buxton, 2020
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Any oversight will be rectified in future editions at the earliest opportunity by the publisher.
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A CIP catalogue record is available for this book from the British Library
Print ISBN 9781785316692
eBook ISBN 9781785317477
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Contents
Introduction
Born of Frustration
Maladjusted
Ascension
Dizzy Heights
Bigmouth Strikes Again
Warriors of the Wasteland
This Is How It Feels
Seven
Chasing Yesterday
Kick and Complain
Fool s Gold
Boy on a Pedestal
The Bottle
High Tension Line
Stop the Clocks
Acknowledgements
Bibliography
For Rachel and Leighton, and the continuing love and support they both provide
Introduction
WHEN DISENFRANCHISED cotton merchants finalised construction of the Manchester Ship Canal in January 1894, it signified the radical shift in the dynamic of England s north-west region.
The new waterway had taken six years to build at a cost of 15m, equivalent to 1.65bn in the 21st century; time and money that Mancunian industrialists felt was well spent to bypass Liverpool. Together they had created the world s first inter-city railway in 1830, which showcased Stephenson s Rocket, the pioneering steam locomotive. But the new initiative, first championed 12 years earlier by boiler manufacturer Daniel Adamson, would provide a bitter parting of ways for the two cities in a battle played out on the floors of the Houses of Parliament. Eventually, the Cottonopolis plan succeeded and afforded it a direct route to the sea without the need to incur previously hefty financial costs associated with importing raw materials through the mouth of the River Mersey. Four months before the Ship Canal s completion, the seeds for this inter-city war had already been sown.
Football witnessed its ultimate culture clash on 16 September 1893, the day that Manchester City - still under the guise of Ardwick AFC - and Liverpool first faced off at Hyde Road. As with their respective cities, the two clubs had emerged from contrasting social backgrounds and reflected that disparity by becoming perennial thorns in each other s side in the modern age. They have vied for major honours and players with regularity but until, recently, the rivalry found itself marginalised by the spectacle of both sides duels with Manchester United. Liverpool s encounters with their adversaries at Old Trafford are still widely celebrated as the most volatile rivalry in the English game after being stoked by both sides, and Sir Alex Ferguson in particular, over a quarter of a century. Yet the overspill of Red and Blue in the region, running through the M62 motorway s 35-mile stretch, has become far more compelling, long-standing and arguably more potent.
This is not a rivalry defined solely by on-field matters nor its current protagonists. Pep Guardiola and J rgen Klopp unquestionably play significant roles but are continuers of a rich tapestry which all began with Bill Shankly and evolved over the next half-century, through a combination of managers, players and fortunes for both clubs. No fewer than 19 figures who have been directly involved in this fixture at varying times were interviewed for the book. All had a unique role to play in telling the story of the rivalry from its inception in the early 1960s through to the new millennium. My current working knowledge as a journalist covering City and Liverpool for over a decade is a comparatively minor contribution but seeks to fill in the blanks from the late 2000s to present-day.
The term fine margins became synonymous with this fixture during the fiercely contested Premier League title race of 2018/19 when every inch counted, quite literally, as Klopp s challengers and Guardiola s reigning champions took their battle for supremacy down to the wire. Its origins, however, delve back even further than that. John Stones provided the seminal moment of that campaign with a sliding goal-line clearance after a first attempt had cannoned back off Ederson and looped towards an empty net. It was an act which practically helped City to reclaim their crown by a solitary point. Dave Watson, one of Stones s defensive predecessors, was not so fortunate with his own attempt at heroism in attempting to cut out a cross against Liverpool in the 1976/77 season. The men from Manchester missed out on the First Division championship by the same one-point gap that they would laud over their geographical neighbours some 42 years later.
Both moments are documented in this book alongside others which form some of the biggest bones of contention among their respective followers. Ask any fervent Liverpool fan about the on-field moment that still sticks in their throat most, and many will invariably reference Stones s now iconic clearance which prevented them from clinching their first championship since 1990. Long-suffering City supporters would hark back even further to the 1981 League Cup semi-final and referee Alf Grey s dubious officiating that denied them a place in the Wembley showpiece. Both are moments which feature in this book alongside the stories of those that were present for many of the fierce contests.
At the time of writing, the football world finds itself plunged into a rare area of uncertainty with the fall-out from the coronavirus pandemic. What the future holds remains unclear for everyone connected to the beautiful game. The only thing for certain, now that it is has been deemed safe to resume, is that Manchester City and Liverpool will continue what was begun almost 60 years ago and now assumes a rightful place on the world stage.
Richard Buxton June 2020
Born of Frustration
EVERYTHING STARTS with Bill Shankly, both in terms of Liverpool s modern renaissance and the definitive starting point in their rivalry with Manchester City. When he pitched up at Anfield in December 1959, the Scotsman surveyed what he would later describe as the biggest toilet in Liverpool . Sweeping changes were required to transform both the decrepit stadium and its team, languishing in the Second Division, to former glories.
Shankly s playing career had come to life at Preston North End, where he won the FA Cup in 1938 alongside the great Tom Finney, before embarking on a route in management which took him from Carlisle United to Huddersfield Town, via Grimsby and Workington. His arrival from Huddersfield proved to be a seminal moment in the histories of both the Reds and English football itself. An open-door policy at Leeds Road had endeared him to the Terriers players and helped several promising youngsters make their first-team breakthrough, including Denis Law and Ray Wilson.
But Shankly feared that he had taken the Yorkshire club as far as was realistically possible due to a level of ambition that was not reciprocated within the boardroom. Efforts to sign compatriots Ian St John and Ron Yeats were rebuffed by the Huddersfield hierarchy, who claimed they could not afford even one of the pair, let alone both. His frustrations with the money men would be mirrored in the formative months of his time on Merseyside when Shankly lobbied for a reunion with Law, who had already established himself as a Scotland international. Within weeks of taking charge as manager, attempts to persuade his paymasters to relinquish the funds to lure the 19-year-old to Anfield fell on deaf ears with the club s transfer limit capped at 18,000.
On 16 March 1960, a day before the transfer deadline, Law set a new British record with a move to Manchester City. The 55,000 fee would have made him one of the first million-pound footballers in 21st-century equivalence and stood at over three-and-a-half times the figure that Liverpool had been willing to sanction. A switch to Maine Road offered the teenage forward s talents the more befitting stage of the First Division, although Law later admitted that he had expected to pitch up on the opposite side of the newly created M62 motorway.
Well of course Bill Shankly was the manager at Huddersfield and he had just gone to Liverpool so when they were coming in, I thought that I would be going to Liverpool, really. Unfortunately, the fee was just a bit too high, so I went to Manchester City, he told the Blue Moon Podcast in 2014. Bill Shankly was like a father to me. He looked after me for four or five years so I was a bit disappointed at the time not to go there because he was a great manager anyway and of course you know what he did to Liverpool, took them from the Second Division right through until all the honours.
Law scored twice in his first seven appearances for City before repaying their outlay in full with 23 goals from 43 games in the following season as Les McDowall s side finished 16th in the First Division. He can legitimately claim that his figure would be far higher had an FA Cup fourth-round tie with Luton Town not been postponed after 69 minutes. The Blues had taken a 6-2 lead at Kenilworth Road, with Law scoring all six, before referee Ken Tuck called time because of treacherous conditions. When the game was replayed four days later, both he and City were on the receiving end of a 3-1 defeat.
Law, however, would not be long in Manchester s blue sid