Our reporters have chosen their top three goals scored by the clubs they cover and over the next three weeks, will be writing a piece on each of them. When they have finished, The Athletic wants you to vote for your club’s favourite and discuss what we got right/wrong…
Long after Manchester City had left the area, long after their historic Maine Road home was reduced to rubble, there was red brickwork in the narrow streets and alleyways of Moss Side spattered with white paint saying, simply, “5-1”.
No explanation was needed. Everyone, red or blue, knew to what it referred. September 23, 1989, a date etched on the memory of every City supporter of a certain age – the day of what became known as the “Maine Road massacre” or, as Sir Alex Ferguson would later call it, “the most embarrassing defeat of my managerial career”.
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It was a time of change, a time of excitement. Football-wise, it had been a grim decade in the city but Manchester was in the midst of a resurgence. The “Madchester” music scene had taken off, even if the vibe on the terraces at Maine Road was characterised by inflated bananas rather than twisted melons.
On the pitch, there was a growing feeling that there were better times ahead. United had just lavished an extraordinary sum of £8 million in the transfer market, encouraged by the flamboyant businessman Michael Knighton, who had launched an ill-fated takeover bid a month earlier by blowing kisses to the Old Trafford crowd. City, who had been relegated, promoted, relegated and promoted again over the course of the decade, also had dreams of a brighter future.
City’s promotion-winning team was built around a core of local lads who had started in their 1986 FA Youth Cup triumph: Steve Redmond, Andy Hinchcliffe, Paul Lake, Ian Brightwell, David White and Paul Moulden. They had made names for themselves but they were back in the big time now and this was a derby. City had not beaten United since 1981. Lake recalls driving to Maine Road that morning and seeing a City fan at a bus stop, pressing his palms together as if in prayer, and mouthing the words “Please, please, please”.
It was one of those days — so rare in the years before Sheikh Mansour’s takeover — when City’s prayers were answered. It was a match that went far beyond their wildest dreams. They began nervously but an eight-minute stoppage in play after crowd disturbances in the North Stan saw them re-emerge from the dressing room with a renewed sense of focus. It was a different game after the restart.
By half-time, City were 3-0 up with goals from David Oldfield, Trevor Morley and Ian Bishop, the third of them a superb diving header from Oldfield’s cross. United’s defence was all at sea. Gary Pallister, who had just arrived from Middlesbrough in a British record £2.3 million transfer, was having a torrid time. Paul Ince and Mike Phelan, another couple of expensive new additions, were being overwhelmed in midfield by Bishop, Brightwell and Lake.
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Mark Hughes reduced United’s deficit with a spectacular volley early in the second half. “And at that point, being City fans, we were all nervous,” says Dr Gary James, lecturer in sports history at Manchester Metropolitan University.
They need not have worried. Oldfield made it 4-1, exploiting yet more wretched defending, and then, on 62 minutes, came the piece de resistance.
The move started midway through the City half, where Brian Gayle, an uncompromising defender, bundled a young Lee Sharpe off the ball. Bishop exchanged passes with Morley on the halfway line and checked back, away from Phelan’s tired-looking challenge, before spreading a raking ball out towards White on the right-hand side.
Those diagonal balls out towards White seemed to be a tactic for Mel Machin’s team that day. Their first and third goals had come down the right-hand side, exploiting Mike Duxbury’s discomfort at left-back for United. Bishop’s ball was met first-time, on the half-volley, by White. It was a perfect cross, met with a bullet header from Hinchcliffe, marauding forward from the left-hand side of defence. To quote Clive Tyldesley’s commentary on Granada TV, “Early cross… chance at the far post… Hinchcliffe… That’s just marvellous stuff.”
One of Man City's greatest Derby days & one of United's worst. Andy Hinchcliffe scores as they win 5-1 in 1989. Love David White's cross on the run #mcfc @YourMCFC pic.twitter.com/QcPFKf4zJS
— @forgottengoals (@forgottengoals) November 11, 2018
It really was. White, a lifelong City supporter, said in his autobiography “Shades of Blue” that it was “one of the best team goals that Maine Road had ever seen.” The football writer Tim Rich, in his book “Caught Beneath the Landslide: Manchester City in the 1990s”, drew parallels with the great AC Milan team of that era and said the goal was “as good as anything seen at San Siro. It was a counter-attack launched and finished off in seconds. It was made and scored by White and Hinchcliffe, from Urmston and Hulme, talents the club had fashioned itself.”
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What really sums up that goal is the sense of timing — not just within the context of the game, crowning an unforgettable victory, but the timing of Bishop’s pass, White’s cross, Hinchcliffe’s header. “Where did Hinchcliffe come from!?” Tyldesley asked in the commentary. “He’s the left-back, remember.”
Remember?
“I’m thankful for TV replays because I can’t remember too much about the specifics of the match,” Hinchcliffe said in “Manchester: The City Years”. “Even my goal takes some believing. I don’t know why I set off when I did and when I see it, I realised how great the build-up by the entire team was. I suppose it was instinct because I still couldn’t tell you how it happened. I don’t remember heading the ball but I do remember the feeling when it went it. It was an exhilarating experience.”
Hinchcliffe was not one for grand gestures but he waved a clenched fist at the United fans in the Platt Lane stand before holding up five fingers. “I know that has become a defining moment to some supporters,” he said. “I didn’t plan it, of course, but I’m glad I did it and I think it helped my relationship with the supporters. I’d always been a blue and that was my way of showing how much I cared. We were a team of lads who had played together since the age of 11. We simply played that day as though it was an under-12s game. Everything just clicked for us.”
That was the theme of a remarkable day, a largely homegrown City team sweeping aside what looked, at that time, like an expensive bunch of misfits representing United. “They had gone into debt to buy all these players,” James says. “They had a manager (Ferguson) who had been there for three years and the majority of their fans wanted him out at that stage. And City had all these players from their youth team and, while it sounds like a cliche, it really did seem like our players wanted it more on the day.”
For United, it was a humiliation. Ferguson wondered whether it was the end. Years later, he recalled that, upon getting home, still in disbelief, he “went straight to my bed and put my head under the pillow. Cathy (his wife) came in and asked what had happened. I could hardly answer. I was in total shock and completely gone. But you have to recover from these things.”
That took months. United spent much of that season languishing near the relegation zone; it was the season of the infamous “Ta Ra Fergie” banner—– “Three years of excuses and we’re still crap” — but somehow, from that desperate position, they recovered to win the FA Cup and of course the rest is history.
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As for City, it was the perfect definition of a false dawn.
“Not long after that, we were thrashed at Arsenal (4-1) and Derby (6-0),” James says. “But on their day, that team was incredible. It was 5-1 against United that day but it could easily have been six or seven. We had waited nearly a decade to beat United. And, okay, it fell apart after that. The 90s. But we lived off that for years. For a City fan, there was no better feeling.”
Not for another two decades, anyway.
(Photo: E Graham/Mirrorpix/Getty Images)
Before joining The Athletic as a senior writer in 2019, Oliver Kay spent 19 years working for The Times, the last ten of them as chief football correspondent. He is the author of the award-winning book Forever Young: The Story of Adrian Doherty, Football’s Lost Genius. Follow Oliver on Twitter @OliverKay
