MATCH REPORTS 1999/2000

FEB 5 NOTTINGHAM FOREST - MANCHESTER CITY 1-3 (1-2)

TV-Report by: Svenn Hanssen

Another fine result for the blues ensured that the position at the top of the Division 1 table was unchanged. City stayed second behind Charlton who managed to pull off a 3-1 victory against Stockport. Ipswich climbed to 3rd spot after beating Barnsley 2-1.

City had Wiekens back from suspension and Granville and Dickov back from injury. The latter two started on the bench, while Wiekens found his way into the centre of the defence. City lined up as follows:

                  Weaver
Edghill       Wiekens Jobson       Tiatto
Jeff Whitley   Bishop Horlock     Kennedy
             R.Taylor Goater

Forest got the greatest of starts when Chris Bart-Williams slotted the ball home after only 8 minutes. The big man fired his shot from outside the area and the ball curved beautifully past Weavers left and went in at post. It was one-nil and 80 minutes to go.

After the opening goal City came back into the game and Bishop was creating sparks from his midfield position. Goater and Rob Taylor worked really hard up front and often caught the defenders smashing the ball into the stands. City was establishing themselves as the dominant team, and played some neat football, while the home team was hoofing the ball about on the pitch.

After 32 minutes Rob Taylor received the ball in front of goal. He challenged Doig, and the Scotsman lost his balance for a second, that proved to be enough for the strong City striker, who slipped past the defender and lifted it high over Beasant and into the roof of the net.

When City met Forest at Maine Road in August Shaun Goater scored the only goal, and today the Bermudan international was on the goal-path again. Just 4 minutes after Taylors equaliser Jeff Whitley makes a bubbling pass towards Goater. Scimeca in the Forest defence challenged with his head, but was tricked by Goater who broke free and lobbed the ball elegantly over Beasant and into the net.

City continued to challenge and Forest looked really out of order for the remaining of the first half. City could have made it three 2 minutes before the interval when Rob Taylor found Goater in front of goal, but the Bermudan couldn't control the ball.

Half time: Forest 1, City 2.

Forest did one change during the break, as Dawson replaced Scimeca at the back. Forest seemed determined to do something with the score-line and especially seemed eager to control the midfield. Bishop had a good first half, but in the second he became more and more anonymous. Jeff Whitley also made defensive errors, giving the ball away in dangerous places. Luckily City could rely on Wiekens and Jobson to clear the danger when necessary, and Edghill was having a great game on the right.

It was Wiekens who cleared the first real touch of danger, 3 minutes into the half, when Brennan went past Edghill and crossed for Freedman just 8 yards out of the City goal. The Dutch defender gave Freedman no free ride, and so the shot went wide.

City came back after 58 minutes when Rob Taylor again made a dummy of Doig inside the area, but this time the striker curled the ball past both Beasant and the far post. Two minutes later a free-kick transformed into a great chance for Taylor to head home, but the unmarked striker only hit the ball with his shoulder and so Beasant could scramble the looping ball over the bar. The following corner was won by Jobson, but his powerful header was well taken by Beasant.

At this point a number of substitutes was made by both teams. City brought on Pollock for Bishop, Granville for Tiatto and Dickov for Taylor, while Forest let Harewood in for Quashie and Merino for Doig.

It may sound like City had the best of games; but during the second half Forest came back and almost levelled the score after 62 minutes. A free-kick beat everybody in the area, and Weaver had to pull off a spectacular jump to clear the ball of the line. 3 minutes later another free-kick just outside the City area found its way to Merino who shot low and hard from 20 yards. The ball shaved the left post with Weaver beaten.

Harewood gave Forest more punch up front, but he seemed more eager to attack Pollock in more or less ruthless manners. The City midfielder got a good beating during his 25 minutes on the pitch, but he stayed cool and seemed to control his temper well.

7 minutes from time a free-kick from Kennedy found Goaters head in front of Beasants fingertips. The lethal striker smashed the ball into the net for his 20th goal of the season. Game, set and match City.

Kennedy could have added a forth just before full time, but after a lengthy run on the left, leaving two defenders crawling on the ground, he was denied by Beasant at the near post, with three City players waiting inside the area.

A great result on away turf for Joe Royle and his men. Forest is hopelessly astray in the bottom half and will not go straight up like many had guessed before the season started. City may well do, but there are still 17 games to go. Kennedy looked high class today. He took on defenders and crossed the ball from every possible angle. Edghill had a great game, and the two front-runners did their stuff, worked hard and scored three great goals.

FEB 12 MANCHESTER CITY - NORWICH CITY 3-1 (1-1)

Report by: Phil Hartley

It's a disgrace. For three quarters of this match we were outsung, out shouted and out supported (?) by the fans from that hotbed of soccer, Norwich. Most embarrassing of all was when they sung "There's only one City" and the best we could muster was a half hearted "City we're from Manchester". Oh yes, we gave it back to them in spades, once Mark Kennedy had opened his box of tricks. But c'mon, outsung by NORWICH? This is supposed to be a match report so I'll leave this point open to discussion. Suffice to say over recent weeks, for long spells, Maine Road has become very quiet. Something must be done!

Dickov and Granville replaced Taylor (calf strain) and Tiatto (international duty) respectively. There being no place on the bench for Terry Cooke, means we've probably seen the last of him. Good luck Terry, still feel you're cutting off your nose to spite your face though! City (the ONLY City!) started well, playing some great one-touch stuff. The goal was set up beautifully; Dickov feeding Kennedy who skinned his fullback, placing the ball on Shaun's head. 1-0 after 3 minutes! Shortly thereafter, Jobson planted a header on top of the net hen really he should have scored.

Norwich's only attacking tactic throughout the game was to get the ball to either Iwan Roberts or the nippy Paul Dalglish and try to win a corner. Playing with one up front, with 5 across the midfield is a tactic often used by teams looking to get a draw or maybe snatch a goal on the break. However, usually this means that when the front man gets the ball, the midfield get forward in support. Not in Norwich's case. They very nearly got the draw that they came for, but I'm glad that they didn't, not just for the obvious reasons, but because such negative tactics do not deserve to be rewarded. Hey guys! People pay money to be entertained, you know!

Anyway, from their first corner, Dalglish placed the ball a good 18 inches outside the corner markings, a move which the Kippax tried their best to alert the referee but to no avail. From the kick, Roberts got infront of Jobbo to score a trademark goal. Much of the remainder of the game until the final 10 minutes was frankly boring. Dickov was diving all over the place, so much so that when he was clearly elbowed in the face, the ref waved play on. Wiekens took a sickening kick to the chest I think, from Dalglish and it must be said that Norwich were far more physical than they used to be. Passes went astray, balls were missed and all in all it was a poor, poor game. Dickov was replaced by Allsopp on the hour, with Pollock replacing Edghill on 79 minutes.

Throughout the second half, during any break in play, Royle was clearly 'coaching' Kennedy who had had an 'in and out' game, highlighted by his cross for Goater's goal and in delivering a wayward high cross cum shot when a low, hard ball across the 6-yard box was clearly the better option. Whether Royle's words inspired the boy Kennedy, whether he was worried about getting a b*llocking, I don't know. However, in the 82nd minute from a long Wiekens punt which was not properly cleared, our left winger hit a low shot with such power that it was probably a good job the keeper didn't get in the way. 2-1 to the real City!

A minute later, Mark robbed a defender and hit the same shot, which this time the keeper did get in the way. Same result! 3-1 to the real City! In the last 5 minutes, Allsopp intercepted a clearance from the keeper, but couldn't finish. During the same move Whitley hit a superb and very astute lob which the keeper just managed to scramble over the bar. There were 2 reasonable penalty claims and Kennedy had an excellent free kick again well saved by the Norwich keeper. In truth, the game (and certainly any entertainment) was contained within the first 10 minutes and last 10 minutes of the match. A mate of mine (yep you guessed it) arrived after 15 minutes and left 15 minutes from the end. So he had a good day then! Norwich fans probably left the ground if not exactly feeling 'robbed', certainly feeling as if they could have got something from the game. However, how many times over the years, particularly in our last 2 seasons in Div 1 have we felt the same? City are a 90-minute team nowadays and we have goal scorers all over the pitch. From the 13 players who graced the turf on Saturday, only Allsopp and Weaver have not scored this season. Goater is on fire, Kennedy seems to be coming back into form, Taylor hopefully can sustain a run of both keeping fit and scoring goals and with attacking contributions from the rest of the team we look secure on that front. Another goal conceded from a set piece is not great from the defensive viewpoint and, if Morrison's injury is long term we at least need cover in this area. The ride is going to get pretty hairy over the next few weeks. I for one, can not wait!

FEB 18 HUDDERSFIELD - MANCHESTER CITY 1-1 (1-1)

TV-Report by: Cathal Whelehan

The minute this game ended I emptied my glass and left the bar. I wasn't even close to well oiled, having only finished work twenty minutes before kick off and spending the majority of the first half biting my nails, my beer glass hardly getting a look in. At the time it didn't seem like a night to go out on a proper tear anyway... something disappointing about the whole thing. That disappointment that you can't quite shake off and which sits in your stomach like a bad kebab. With hindsight I should have been getting completely scuttered and enjoying the fact that we'd basically nicked a point without deserving it one jot, I'll do my celebrating double style tomorrow when I get back home. I'm not in my usual surroundings tonight, so maybe that has something to do with my reluctance to go mad celebrating an undeserved draw. I watched the game in a Stuttgart hotel bar, having spent the latter half of this week at our office here and to be honest the atmosphere in the bar was about as far removed from what I'm used to when watching City on telly as it could have got. In one corner there was a bloke playing a piano endlessly, endlessly, endlessly. It was like watching the game in a stuck lift, with politeness and awkwardness whereever I cared to glance. Surreal...

I'm not surprised about JR's comments after the game, where he stated he was delighted with the point. We should be. In the end we were away from home and when you sum things up we only played like half a team so the point has to be seen as one gained but not really deserved.

On the positive side, we could see this result and the one at Norwich as games we could easily have lost (not so much the Norwich one admittedly) but in the end we've taken points each time. Could these have been two straight defeats in a parallel life? Hopefully we've just seen the back end of another bad run of games, but a run where we have got away without doing any real damage to our ultimate objective other than to have somewhat lost touch with Charlton. JR may be very publicly blasČ with his view on how catchable Charlton are, but he must feel disappointed that we are a full 6 points behind now.

Right here's the performances as I saw them..

WEAVER: Superb saves again showing what quality he has, I thought when Gorre's shot came back off the post and hit Nicky on the back that we'd see a repeat of Wolves' first goal in the 4-1 and naturally a repeat of the result. Not much he could have done about the first goal, which was well taken, although the same can't be said of the defence who did everything but actually point to the spot in the net that Wijnhard should have a pop at. I have to say though, that - MOM award or not - young Nicky certainly looked to be more distracted than usual and at one point was almost as fast asleep as Wiekens, who back passed to Nicky while he was busy examining the grass somewhere between the centre circle and the goal. Nicky admitted he didn't even know who had passed the ball forward as he hadn't been looking and that was why he dived on it, giving a indirect free in the box. Scary moments. He was though, at one point, the most effective defender we had as he herded a Hudd' attacker around the perimeter of the box before deciding he should really get back to the rough vicinity of the onion bag again. I'd love to see a lot less of Nicky wandering around, but so long as he keeps getting in the way of the ball I'm happy to see him express himself from time to time, if that's what he's doing. Many of the saves were not only good but also extremely brave with three or more directly at feet of attackers. An eccentric showing. Deserved the shampoo but could do with a shorter leash. The new Grobelaar? 8/10

EDGHILL: A poor performance from Reg. Nicky's first really good save came in the first 5 minutes because Reg was left for dead by Jamie Vincent. At least he got himself in the way of Huddersfield's second bite at the cherry from the half-cleared first effort. Why does Edghill continuously hold the ball in defence when there are passes on, choosing instead to wait 'til he gets closed down and then it's 50/50 if he'll win a throw as the best possible result?? A bit lucky to have only been booked the once too. JR must notice that Reg hasn't performed well since he was nearly topped by the arch-ex-rag at Southampton. He certainly isn't doing much by way of captaining! Gives away too many stupid free kicks in his right back position for my liking. If there's more than one way to skin a cat, then Huddersfield demonstrated upwards of 10 ways to skin an Edghill on tonight's show. Poor 3/10

WIEKENS: This man is a mere shadow of what he used to be. I don't care to count the times he allows the ball to bounce in defence these days and tonight he often lost sight of the ball completely. REM had set in when he made his backpass "to" Nicky who was taking up something close to an attacking position at the time. Wiekens looked even slower than I've seen him in the past, which to be fair to him, I'd put down to the pitch partly as it was lashing down all day there. Never seemed to get any distance on his clearances unless he made the clearance on the volley. Again not good enough and certainly not as good as he can be but not as absent as Edgy. A somewhat begrudging 5/10 (but only because 4/10 would be a bit too harsh and I'm not doing ice skating score fractions).

JOBSON: Of the defenders he played ok. Again he seemed to allow the ball to bounce a few times in defence (I think it was the fallout from Wiekens' mistakes) but all in all had a fair to middling game without really being outstanding. I think I must have been at the bar anytime he did anything good so a short summary only. Sorry, buuurrrrrp. 6/10

GRANVILLE: Didn't see anything from him in the first half really apart from some chasing back and more chasing back. He seemed to always be roaming forwards when the ball was coming back towards him. At the end of the first half and for spells in the second half he looked a bit better with more space being available on the left. When he came forward with the ball it seemed to wake Kennedy up a bit too, his having been fairly well silenced for much of the first half. All in all a fair to middling performance. 5/10

JEFF WHITLEY: Pretty quiet for the first twenty odd minutes, I hardly noticed him at all. Got more into the game (relatively speaking) as it went on. Showed our only real intention to tackle for the ball when he got going, and did what he usually does in annoying whoever had the ball for Hudd until they passed it to someone else. In short he didn't give many Hudd players a whole lot of time on the ball but unfortunately there weren't many among his teammates in a position to prevent the ball being passed on anyway, so his efforts were all but canceled out. Took a nasty whack near the end but seemed to get over it ok. Simply because of loads of huff and puff but no real result 6/10.

HORLOCK: He didn't look much like he wanted to get the ball very often. Shrugged himself up into a small thing going in for headers, half pulled out of tackles on the ground usually opting for the "fling yourself at the ball/man" and hope that the former pops out somewhere and that the latter doesn't get thrown too far into the air. One shot on goal but got too much under it. Pretty ineffective on the whole. Headed the ball out off (from behind?) the line in the second half so thank God JR obviously saw reason to leave him on the pitch at the time. Changed for Tiatto around the 80th minute. 5/10

BISHOP: Didn't like the conditions on the pitch very much by the looks of it. So many under-hit passes sticking to the grass and slowing down to a near complete halt 10 to 15 yards away from the intended target. Hit a decent shot on target in the first half, getting well over a fairly high ball. Straight at the 'keeper though and never causing that much trouble. Some passing was very good, just too much of it was poor. Taken off in the 90th minute to give Jim Whitley a run out. A bit disjointed so, 6/10

KENNEDY: One of those days where he was well and truly boxed off for long periods. He didn't have any joy for most of the first half and seemed not to be able to deal with the slippery ball a lot of the time. When Granville started to play he started to play too and got some lovely crosses in which were just begging for someone on the near post. Someone we didn't have tonight unfortunately with the exception of two occasions when both Goater and then Dickov hit wide from close range, albeit with Goater's being the "easier" of the two chances and Dickov's having probably been the wrong choice when a dummy may have presented better option for Goater lurking behind him. Again, I would question how much attention Kennedy was actually paying at times. Several times his first touch would be heavy handed, usually when he was near one of the touch lines thereby giving away throws and goal kicks where something more could have come of it for us. Still he go his crosses off after a while so, 6/10

GOATER: Not his best game, although he scored again, very like the first v. Forest in the way the ball presented itself to Shauny, where a crossed ball bounced over the defence, in particular Monkou, who'd lost his footing slightly. Shauny kept his eye on it well and put it away neatly enough. Very lucky to have Shaun's prowess around when things are tough. A 22nd goal for Shaun even when he has an off(ish) night, so someones watching over us. He won pretty much nothing in the air tonight though and was looking a bit tired to me. I hope I'm wrong, but was he limping towards the end slightly?? Nice to see him getting back into defending roles when needed too, definitely one of the parts of his game I like. He always seems to get down to work whereever the work needs to be done. He spent portions of the first half hanging around behind the midfield on the right side, leaving Dickie on his own up front. If Shauny can see that we're constantly getting overrun on the right of midfield and defence, then I just hope JR is watching as closely. Missed a couple in the second half one from mid range and one from a near post cross from Kennedy, where his left foot would have been a better choice to glance it past Vaesen. Strange kind of performance to have to mark but his was a performance maybe dragged down in quality by the lack of support from midfield. I'll give him 6/10 but it wasn't really his fault.

DICKOV: Very, very disappointing. I really hate to see the way Paul is picking up a worsening reputation with each game that passes, not for his moaning and tantrums as such, as they're are all part of his make up. The problem is that these parts of his make up seem to be slowly taking over the majority share of what is undoubtedly a very useful player if he focusses on actually playing rather than play-acting. Now - and hopefully only as a one off - he's added swinging his elbow around to all of that. He could easily have been sent off in the first half for lashing out at Monkou. Luckily the linesman will have seen Dickov's arm tangled under Monkou's body only seconds before and so could have been forgiven for thinking that Dickov just pulled his arm free if it came to making a decision about the matter. He didn't just pull it free though and had Monkou's head been up rather than down, Dickov could have brained him and been off. Didn't really get himself into anything resembling a decent position often and missed a chance to have a first-go shot having been put well through in the second half. Instead he tryed to get the ball to his right foot. I felt he was unlucky to have had a free kick given against him for a handball in the same incident which I didn't really see properly although the ball did seem to roll under his arm after he fell over it/ sat on it. He should try to remember the way he used put his effort into creating chances and getting in scoring positions, rather than whinging, moaning, fowling and throwing tantrums. Drop the Beckham antics Paul please. I think Allsopp on the bench may have been a better bet in the closing stages if only to get him a run out as Dickov wouldn't have been missed that much. A lowly 4/10 and 'til he starts playing football again, that's where my rating will remain for the time being.

TIATTO: Only played ten odd minutes but did ok, nothing to really talk about really. No rating.

JIM WHITLEY: Nice to have him back, but he only played about 2 minutes of injury time. I don't think he touched the ball at all and if he did all I know is nothing came of it. No rating.

Sum of the ratings: 57/110 (I think, I only totted it up quickly). So like I said, we played with half a team but still picked up a point. I should be out celebrating, I think, but even now it still doesn't feel right. Tomorrow morning will dictate the mood, I'll see how I feel. Funnily enough alan brazil didn't really say much to really get my back up tonight, which is one positive to take away I suppose.

I even think he suggested that "Goater or Wijnhard should have a crack at this one" (or words to that effect) when talking about the indirect free kick we gave away in the box (see Weaver/Wiekens above). Aye, go on then Goatman!! Hammer it Brucewards and knock that permanent dopey look off his boat! First sensible suggestion ever to leave brazil's mouth and even that was because he wouldn't know who Goater played for without looking at the crib-notes. Someone must have had a word in his shell-like at Sly-TV, he was strangely full of praise for Weaver, Kennedy etc.

Hmmm.. I feel like exploring now... let's have another look at that mini-bar... well HELLOOOO Mr. Daniels, how do you do??

FEB 26 MANCHESTER CITY - WALSALL 1-1 (0-1)

Live report by: Svenn Hanssen

It was a wonderful day for football. The sun was shining and inside the superstore people were shopping City gear like crazy. I was aiming for the Le cock sportif hold-all. It turned out to be a nice looking bag with 7 compartments. Now that's gonna impress the sh*t out of my training mates (if you can't do it on the field you might as well do it in the locker room ;-)

Before the game I met with my Internet friends Paul, his wife Bingning, Ashley, Steve, Heidi and Peter. The Mean Team was gathered at last :-) When I got my match ticket from Egil Svarstad (our most loyal Norwegian supporter I might add) I also had the opportunity to meet the two Norwegian trainees who came to England the same day. One right back and a goalkeeper. Now the latter will have a hard time getting past Weaver - this game was only to confirm that. Our young goalie is showing magic between the posts at the moment.

From my seat in the upper Kippax I had a great overview of the ground. My thoughts flew towards Egil who was probably seated behind a pole in the Main stand. But when the roar of the audience met the players as they entered the field I was ready to be entertained.

City lined up in familiar fashion:

                 Weaver
Edghill      Wiekens Jobson   Granville
Jeff Whitley  Bishop Horlock    Kennedy
              Dickov Goater

The game didn't start at a particularly breathless pace. Nothing much was happening and a lot of bad passing and some good defending was the only notable. Goater was looking sharp and secure. When he got the ball with a defender behind him and his back against the goal he always let it back for a midfielder, and then rushed into the area to collect a possible cross or through-pass. He also did a great job in the air, but poor Dickov was never close enough to catch the ball as it skidded off Goaters head. Dickov ran a lot, but to me he looked out of position, and his runs caused no danger for the Walsall defence.

The back-four did their job putting the Walsall strikers out of action, but when it came to passing it was always Edghill who got the ball. I've often heard of his bad passing and this game gave me the opportunity to see it first-hand. He really had a hard time finding his own team mates this Saturday. To his defence I must add that the offensive players did him no favours. With no running up-front there was simply no-one to aim the ball at.

It was Kennedy on the left that caused the most difficult moments for the visitors. Once he put the ball brilliantly between two defenders for Granville to finish, but his shot went outside. Another effort by the Irish international clipped the crossbar and went over. You could hear the roar of the home crowd when Kennedy got the ball, to my amazement many of the supporters disapproved of him getting it. They simply screamed for him to pass the ball instead of holding on to it. Some of the supporters next to me claimed that it was obvious to the defenders that Kennedy was going to run with the ball, and that a lot of chances were missed because he didn't pass the ball quickly enough.

Walsall on the other hand looked hopeless for most of the first half. Some nice touches up front on the counter-attacks, but when they scored the opening goal 2 minutes from the interval it was only because the ball took a nasty deflection off Edghill and took Weaver by surprise. The big goalie looked hopelessly wrong-footed as the ball curled behind him and into the net.

Half time score: City 0, Walsall 1.

City made two changes for the second half: Robert Taylor came on for the lame Dickov and Tony Grant replaced Kevin Horlock. This didn't improve things that much as City continued to walk the field instead of running and the passing was dreadful at times. Taylor looked slow and not fully match fit, but now City had two big strikers to aim at and despite Taylor getting free-kicks against him most of the time it proved to be a good move by Royle in the end.

To me Grant was anonymous as in the other games I've seen him. He still needs some time to adjust to the team and to find his place. His distribution is supposed to be second to none. This didn't show on Saturday, but then again he had problems finding a moving target for his passes.

The whole team looked like it belonged 10 places down the table, and the crowd decided to let Edghill have the blame for the poor performance. When he got the ball and tried to make a pass he was often unsuccessful and the crowd started booing. Now this was doing the skipper no good and after that it only got worse. In the end Royle decided to replace Granville with Crooks and play Edghill on the left where Kennedy was doing the passing, but alas; as soon as Edghill got on the left he received the ball time after time and had to do the passing. It really puzzles me how little support he got both from his team-mates and the crowd. Everyone could see that he was reluctant to do the passing and my guess is that it's the captaincy that is driving him into this self-destructing behaviour. It would be much easier for him to just keep low and play it safe to Wiekens and Jobson.

20 minutes from time Edghill managed to play his only "good" cross of the match. The ball was met by Walker in the Walsall goal, but he was obstructed by a defender and the ball fell to Taylor who used his strength to keep both the goalkeeper and the defenders away. After some shovelling he managed to pass it to Goater who was only happy to convert his 23rd goal in 32 games. Now that Bermudian is showing some killing touches this season.

After the goal came the best spell of the home team this afternoon. A series of crosses from the left nearly paid off and at one time it looked like the ball was destined for the net, but instead it was heading out of the goal.

A couple of minutes from the end Bishop nearly made it two with a header that made the crowd jump, but a reflex save by the goalkeeper made the ball bounce out of danger.

Walsall had grown more and more comfortable with their leading role during the game and seemed keen to get the upper hand. Weaver had to really stretch himself to keep the Saddlers from getting all the points. One of his saves was really unbelievable: The ball was squared in front of goal towards the back-post where a Walsall striker only had to chip it in, but Weaver moved sideways and threw himself at the shot and managed to scramble the ball outside the post.

Full-time: City 1, Walsall 1.

My seat in the upper-Kippax gave me a great view of the ground. I could also hear the singing of the crowd. But the upper-Kippax is a quiet place in itself. Not many were singing in my area. The ones that raised their voices were only giving the players a hard time. Edghill often got the "useless *wat" comment and Kennedy the "pass the ball you to**er". Now I'm not sure why people are behaving like that. City went up one division last year. Now we are third in Division 1. The team may not have played up to their best this Saturday, but the abuse have been going on for a while. To me the upper-Kippax was a disappointment. I remember the stand before it became an all-seater. The win against Leeds (4-0), people rushing down the stand after each goal, hugging each other. Niall Quinn making a wink to the fans on request, Blue Moon sounding all over.

The guys next to me that kept abusing Kennedy and Edghill left when there was still 3 minutes to go. Might they not have shown up at all!

by Svenn A. Hanssen, svenn@hanssen.priv.no