THE MANCHESTER CITY FC OFFICIAL PICTORIAL HISTORY 1880-1997/98

TITLE           The Manchester City FC Official Pictorial History 1880-1997/98
EDITOR          Mike Hill
PUBLISHER       Diverse Media Ltd.
                164 Deansgate, Manchester M60 2RD.
ISBN No         0-9529086-11
PRICE           £9.99

Curious one, this, coming as it did just before the release of Gary James' monster history of the Blues. The 148 glossy A5 pages contain several hundred photos, mainly it would seem from the M.E.N's archives, each with a brief caption. There are a few colour photographs, including one of United's David May, on the spurious pretext that he was a boyhood Blue (and did you know that Ryan Giggs was a Junior Blue?).

The book has used several original negatives that have been touched up prior to publication in the paper and the effect is often comical (for example, the 1984 Lancashire Youth Cup winning team of Barratt, Simpson, Beresford, Beckford, Hoyland, etc. all have grotesque grins and added nostrils!). Not so comical are the numerous errors and omissions which have crept in. In his introduction, City historian and assistant editor John Maddocks espouses the virtues of "reading" photographs, but we still get Peter Shilton in front of the Kippax captioned as the "West Brom 'keeper at the Hawthorns." And a picture of Kaziu Deyna playing at Mönchengladbach is cropped so close that you can only see the German! I am sure that John is as disappointed as the rest of us with these. And there are over a dozen formal teamgroups, not one of which lists the players concerned. Having said that, there are some real gems here: the shot of three Blues inside a near-empty San Siro, after having driven to Milan, is a wonderful timepiece. But the overall impression is of a book hurried into publication. The timing of its release, immediately prior to Gary James' book, is interesting and the motive unclear. Let us charitably say that it is intended as a Christmas stocking filler.