THIRTY years ago today a slightly surreal massacre took place at Maine Road, Manchester, and for Blues who were lucky enough to be in attendance its memories will remain enshrined and vivid until our minds slip with age.
Manchester City 5, Manchester United 1. It’s a scoreline that seems perfectly plausible now with the club’s statuses having shifted substantially but back then it was a ludicrous notion that the big bad wolf who resided down the road could be so comprehensively slain. And in such style too because if the result was sufficiently surprising that it could have legitimised the ‘five’ being spelled out capitalized in parenthesis on the BBC vidiprinter, it matters also that three of the goals were sweeping moves that stunned the Kippax for a split second apiece until bedlam ensued. Two of them ended with headers so picturesque they adorned bedroom walls for a generation.
Granted, this famous afternoon, that to fans of a certain vintage bows only to Sergio’s title decider in its cherishment may not have been achieved against the all-conquering United that soon after hoovered up silverware in abundance but some context is required here. Three years into the job and three years away from a Premier League pipedream becoming reality, an under-pressure Alex Ferguson had spent his summer spending, indulging in an expensive last roll of the dice that broke transfer records and brought in a small collection of England internationals that cost close to £9m all told. By contrast, that season’s champions Liverpool laid out £700,000. By contrast City would soon bestow their wonderful young talent Paul Lake with the captain’s armband and when he posed for cameras outside the ground to commemorate the event a club employee never left his side. “Paul, we need the shirt back mate, for the shop.”
Even more pertinent than the considerable financial divide was the chasm in perception. United had not won the league for 22 years and the previous campaign saw them finish 11th yet they were just as much the media darlings then as they would subsequently be. The name and club was revered as Hollywood royalty despite the fact it was now mainly knocking out b-movies. Their fans meanwhile were as entitled as always.
As hard as it was living in their shadow when they were great, it was exasperating doing so when they were ordinary.
That is half the context, the other lay with City, who that summer had achieved promotion courtesy of a last-gasp equaliser at Bradford. Despite the need to bolster a return to the top flight their transfer outlay was unsurprisingly modest and consisted of players who would now form tricky quiz answers while in charge was Mel Machin, a man whose flat Staffordshire twang made it impossible to determine if he were happy or sad.
These were peripheral figures however to the team’s nucleus of exceptional home-grown talent who had emerged from the academy almost full formed with promise to spare. All five of Ian Brightwell, Andy Hinchcliffe, David White, Steve Redmond and Paul Lake gained England caps at under 21 level. All but one was Manchester born and bred.
Three years earlier they had won the FA Youth Cup by beating their local nemesis and now here they were lining up against the same foe but on an infinitely bigger stage. Collectively they were confident and individually they were brilliant but given this was a derby their other contribution that day was perhaps even more decisive: They knew how it felt to be City; they knew how it felt to be small.
On the morning of the gam,e unquestionably the most gifted of the quintet was driving through Longsight when he stopped at traffic lights. At a nearby bus stop a Blue spotted him and put his hands together in prayer. “Please Lakey, please.” Andy Hinchcliffe later said this: "We were a team of lads who had played together since the age of 11 and we simply played as though it were an Under-12 game.”
Time has reduced the game itself to moments, treasured and familiar. There was the break in play early on, with the players taken off the pitch as violence descended on the North Stand. Seemingly every protagonist wore stonewashed jeans and sported Kevin Webster ‘taches. There was Lakey dancing around opponents on a whim and Ian Bishop spraying forty-yard passes around like the superstar he could have been. There was Stevie Redmond strolling out of defence a la Beckenbauer and David Oldfield tormenting the priciest player in the country Gary Pallister. There was the second goal coming so soon after the first that it didn’t give us time to find our breath or feet. There was Bish’s diving header that propelled us into a fantastical fantasia.
And yes there was Mark Hughes’ superb trademark bicycle kick and that can be given due credit here because after City restored a three goal margin the best goal of the game arrived to cap off a thoroughly extraordinary occasion. A searching ball out to David White, a first time cross, and then bang, Andy Hinchcliffe thunders in with a bullet header. Where did he come from? He’s the left-back remember.
A few short months later Mel Machin was gone, sacked supposedly for lacking charisma, while Alex Ferguson, against all the odds, stayed. We all know how those decisions ultimately played out. We all know what happened next.
But for a single, sunny afternoon on September 23rd 1989 City were magnificent and United crumbled, and a memory was made that will last a lifetime. It was too a glimpse into a future none of us could ever imagine existing.
