1990-91 Season Review

By Jim Brown

The season started with John Sillett talking of championships – and ended with him out of a job and City finishing in the bottom half of the table. It was an eventful season of sackings, controversial trans­fers, blazing rows, injuries, highs and lows, and an end-of-season thrashing.

Transfer activity in the close season was thin. Sillett ignored the cries to bring in a midfield general and bought central defender Andy Pearce from non-league Halesowen for £15,000. Long-serving defender Greg Downs moved on a free transfer to Birmingham. The manager was confident that his existing squad could arrest the slump at the end of the previous season and push for a top six finish.

That notion was shredded in the first weeks, with lacklustre performances at Old Trafford and Villa Park. Sillett turned to the Continent for inspi­ration, at a time when it was not yet fashionable to do so. Hungar­ian international winger Zoltan Czucsansky came for a trial, but was injured after seventeen minutes of a friendly. With Emerson and McGrath still unfit, Sillett borrowed the talents of Uruguayan captain, Jose Perdomo, on loan from Italian club Genoa. There was no doubting his talent but his fitness was in doubt and he couldn’t speak English. He showed a delightful touch, playing a holding midfield role and on the six occasions he pulled on a Sky Blue shirt proved himself to be a superb passer of the ball. Sadly, Sillett was unsuccessful in his attempts to sign him permanently, and Perdomo returned to Italy, before signing for a minor Argentine club.

Controversy reared its head minutes after the home Rumbelows Cup-tie with Bolton in September. David Speedie, who after a poor start to the season had been axed from the side, clashed with a club vice-president with whom he had apparently been engaged in a long-running dispute. The Scot was fined two weeks wages. The tabloids got wind of the story, which hit the front pages of the Sun, and Speedie wisely went to ground as speculation over his future intensified. 

Pressure on the beleaguered Sillett increased following home defeats by Southampton and Arsenal. Not even Speedie’s return could prevent the side slumping to sixteenth. And then, all of a sudden, Sillett was gone. The club denied that he had been sacked, but intimated that he had offered to step down at the end of the season anyway. As the board were not prepared to wait, the unwell Sillett found himself out in the cold, learning of his dismissal from his sick-bed.

The signs were that the board had been scheming for Sillett’s departure, for behind the scenes Poynton had been negotiating with the big-name manager he coveted, Rangers and England centre-half Terry Butcher. But Butcher had never managed anyone and was still a first-team regular at Ibrox. He therefore arrived at Highfield Road as a designated ‘player-manager’. Nor did Butcher come cheap. Rangers demanded a fee of £400,000, not to mention the huge salary he commanded at his new club as both player and manager. Butcher’s appointment was to prove an expensive mistake for Poynton and Coventry City. 

Butcher’s baptism was not the stuff of dreams, rather a home defeat by Liverpool, but the players looked fired up and Butcher lent a steadying influence to the defence. Eleven days later Butcher enjoyed the result of the season, possibly the decade, a 5-4 victory over Forest in the Rumbelows Cup. City led 4-0 at half-time, thanks to a Gallacher hat-trick and despite Forest pulling level Steve Livingstone grabbed the winner in a thrilling classic.

It would take another month before Butcher recorded his first league win, over Tottenham on Boxing Day, but by this time relega­tion clouds were hovering. The New Year was no time for celebra­tion. Wigan forced a replay in the FA Cup, and another humiliation looked on the cards until City rolled up their sleeves and pulled through. Soon afterwards youngsters Livingstone and Tony Dobson were controversially sold to Blackburn for a combined fee of £750,000 to help fund the purchase of Ray Woods from Wigan for £200,000 and reduce the overdraft. 

In one particularly memorable week, though for all the wrong reasons, Second Division Sheffield Wednesday ended the Rumbelows Cup run, and with eight players on the injury list the FA Cup campaign was brought to a shuddering halt at the Dell in a replay.

Speedie’s season had staggered from bad to worse. He had been sent off at Crystal Palace in November. He and Butcher did not always see eye to eye and Speedie looked set to join Aston Villa until Kenny Dalglish came in at the last minute and signed him for Liverpool for £675,000. Poynton later disclosed that Speedie had repeatedly asked for a move away from Highfield Road, and the club did not want to keep a player whose heart was not in the club. 

With relegation looking probable rather than possible, Butcher rang the changes. His former England team-mate, Kenny Sansom, arrived from Newcastle for £100,000, and midfielder Stewart Robson came on loan from West Ham. Suitably refreshed, City strung together a run of ten games with only two defeats, hauling them­selves up to ninth place before sliding back to sixteenth by the close. Two defeats in the last three games was not a glorious finale, especially as City were reduced to being the sacrificial lambs in their final match, away to champions Arsenal.

Of the players, Kevin Gallacher adjusted well to the switch from winger to central striker, scoring sixteen goals – the best haul by a City player since Terry Gibson in 1984-85 – and deserving his recall to the Scotland squad. Michael Gynn also chipped in with eleven goals. Cyrille Regis was again superb, and although he didn’t score many goals supporters were aggrieved when Butcher announced he would be releasing Regis at the end of the season. Robert Rosario arrived from Norwich for £650,000 with the aim of replacing Regis, and he faced a tall order. 

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