Manchester City
Crest
about the team
In 1880, a rector's daughter named Anna Connell started a football team at St.Mark's Church to foster community spirit and to give the deprived young men of West Gorton a sporting outlet for their passions. Over the next decade, the club went by Gorton AFC, then Ardwick, before, in 1894, settling upon Manchester City, an inclusive name deliberately chosen to give all Mancunians, regardless of social status, a team to root for.
It’s fitting the club was founded by a rector’s daughter because following Manchester City has been a religion for generations of Mancunians. They have witnessed miracles (the 4-3 final day victory that clinched the 1968 championship), worshipped gods (Lee, Todd and Bell) and sometimes flirted with eternal damnation (relegation to English football’s third tier). Through it all their faith never wavered. Contrary to their own anthem “Blue Moon”, these fans do have a dream in their hearts and a love of their own. Blue are ya.
Honours
Football League 1936-37, 1967-68; FA Cup 1904, 1934, 1956, 1969, 2011; League Cup 1970, 1976; European Cup Winners' Cup 1970
Finest Hours
The first great City side scored a remarkable 107 goals on their way to the 1937 league title. Peopled by characters like Twinkle Toes Toseland and Peter "The Great" Doherty, this was a team of entertainers that set a standard for all their successors. The club's second title in 1968 was achieved in similarly swashbuckling style. Under the stewardship of Joe Mercer and Malcolm Allison, a partnership combining traditional values and innovative thinking, an outfit built around the attacking triumvirate of Mike Summerbee, Colin Bell and Franny Lee won the league, the FA Cup and the European Cup Winners' Cup in successive seasons.
Folk Heroes
Footballers’ rights advocate Billy Meredith scored the City winner in the 1904 FA Cup final-winning team, Frank “Frying Pan Hands” Swift fainted at the successful conclusion of the same game thirty years later, and Bert Trautmann, a German-born POW, cemented his cult status by playing the last 17 minutes of the 1956 decider with a broken neck. If Toseland and Doherty had been the obvious darlings of the thirties, the sixties’ side spawned a slew of other legends. Bell was the original King of the Kippax, barrel-chested Lee was known affectionately as Lee one pen, and Mike Doyle is still beloved as City’s hardest-ever player. In the lean years before iconic names like Robinho and Gareth Barry arrived to fire imaginations and to complement thrilling Academy products like Stephen Ireland and Nedum Onuoha, unlikely heroes such as Uwe Rosler (“Uwe’s granddad bombed Old Trafford” went the t-shirt), Shaun “Feed the Goat and he will score” Goater, and the mesmeric Georgian Georgi Kinkladze, delighted the Maine Road faithful.
Fans
Famously the most loyal supporters in English football, their devotion has never wavered even during the dark days of the nineties when the club briefly revisited the third tier of English football. The faith of the thirty thousand or so who stoically filled Maine Road back then has been rewarded as their team now stands poised to enter a new and potentially illustrious era in its history. City til they die.
All Time Best XI
(4-4-2) Bert Trautmann, Glyn Pardoe, Tony Book, Sam Cowan, Mike Doyle, Alan Oakes, Georgi Kinkladze, Colin Bell, Mike Summerbee, Peter Doherty, Franny Lee
facts
Founded:
1880 as St.Marks (West Gorton), renamed Manchester City in 1894
Nickname:
The Citizens, The Blues, City
Ground:
City of Manchester Stadium, capacity 47,726
Manager:
Roberto Mancini
League:
English Premier League
Top Goal Scorer:
Erik Brooks
Famous Fans:
Noel Gallagher (Oasis), Badly Drawn Boy, Mike Pickering, Kid British
Anthem:
Blue Moon
Kit:
Sky blue and white
Mascot:
Moonchester and Moonbeam
Motto:
Superbia in Proelio (Pride in Battle)
