THE OFFICIAL REVIEW OF MANCHESTER CITY - THE 1995/96 SEASON

TITLE:          The Official Review of Manchester City - The 1995/96 Season
PUBLISHER:      Visionsport International
                96 High Street
                Marlow
                Bucks SL7 1AQ
RUNNING TIME:   Approx 80 minutes
PRICE:          £13.99

A video for masochists? Not really. The publishers have tried to make this as palatable as possible by not including clips from matches City lost, with the strange exception of the F.A. Cup and Maine Road derby games. Add to this a short section at the end showcasing player-of-the-year Gio Kinkladze's skills (he's also the player featured on the cover of this year's video) and you have quite an upbeat production which almost leaves you wondering how we managed to get relegated. That, for me, is the problem with this video, but more of that later.

So what do we get for our money? It mostly consists of highlights shown previously on Match of the Day and/or Sky, goals and near misses. There are also some clips from post-match interviews, again originally from broadcast television, though there were a couple I hadn't seen before. Included amongst these are Alan Ball's "he can do that" description of Gio's wonder goal against Southampton and Niall Quinn's touching apology to the fans after the final game which saw City relegated. The last few minutes of the programme are dedicated to the skills of Georgiou Kinkladze, showing a variety of clips of him from this season's games, though unfortunately there's nothing from the legendary video which apparently inspired City to buy him in the first place.

Another important question is: what do we not get? As most of the defeats are missing, the answer has to be "quite a lot!". We don't see Immel's heroics at Newcastle which kept the score respectable, we don't see Nick Barmby's offside goal at Maine Road, nor the ridiculous sendings-off of Ian Brightwell at Forest and Michael Frontzeck at Everton, none of the ten goals scored by Liverpool in their footballing masterclass at Anfield in October (which were a major turning point in the season), and, the most significant omission of the lot, Gio's first solo spectacular goal at Middlesbrough, which doesn't even make it into the special section at the end. We also see nothing of the game at Blackburn, which will live long in the memory of all Blues that were there, nor Niall Quinn's exquisite late volley at Upton Park, nor the defeat at Wimbledon or the draw at Bolton which are really the games which cost us our place in the Premiership. How can a review of the season miss these things out?

Just who is the video aimed at? People wanting an uplifting experience, something to enjoy watching, would be better off with the Lee/Bell/Summerbee video or maybe the 1988/89 promotion campaign video. The reason I buy these videos is to act as a record of the season - the whole season. There has not yet been a season review video which has clips from all first team games (League and both Cup competitions) which is a shame. When I look back at the season, I want a "warts and all" view. I want to see just how bad/unlucky/robbed we were. In future years when City are dominating Europe, nay the world, I want to be able to look back and say "I was there when we were this bad..." It's not something that this video will help with.

There are one or two other little things I noticed, like some of the highlights being shown out of order. An example is the win at Elland Road, where Uwe is shown hitting the crossbar (first half) after Gerry Creaney had scored the only goal of the game (second half). At least we get a decent commentator this year, with Clive Tyldesley making a good job of sounding like he was at the games. Compare and contrast with Brian Clarke's monotonic utterances on the 1988/89 promotion video (which is otherwise a fine production).

In summary, if you want a resume of most of the best City highlights of the season and don't want to be reminded of the bad times, this could well suit you. If you want a comprehensive review of the season, you'll be disappointed.