Manchester City v Carlisle United 1984/85

CITY 1 CARLISLE UNITED 3

Canon League Division 2

9th February 1985

Attendance 21,374

Scorers
City Phillips(2)
Carlisle Poskett(9 & 83), Bishop(59)

Ref Ken Baker

City Williams, McNaught, McCarthy, Phillips, Smith, Baker, Melrose, May, Power, Wilson, Kinsey – sub Reid(52)

Carlisle Blott, Haigh, McAughtrie, Ashurst, O’Riordan, McCartney, Hill, Shoulder, Poskett, Bishop, Rushbury – sub Halpin

FROM BILLY MCNEIL’S PROGRAMME NOTES, PUBLISHED IN THE CITY PROGRAMME 22ND FEBRUARY 1985
We all sat down and watched a horror film on the television last week It was the team performance against Carlisle United, courtesy of the B.B.C.’s coverage of the game for their Match of the Day programme. lt had given me nightmares even before l sat down with the players 48 hours later to watch the play-back, but it was important that we all viewed the performance not only to pinpoint the things that went wrong but to remind everyone that we cannot afford to be as bad again.
Identifying reasons for the uninspired City display which led to a 3-1 home defeat were far from easy. The flair was not there, there was a little in the way of detemrination and the overall effort was puny and deserved the punishment it got And what a shocking way to send home our fans after they’d braved a bitterly cold day to give a boost to our fine recent promotion run.
Out of everything bad you must look for something good. Well, nothing can disguise the disappointment of the day but it was probably inevitible that at some time we would drop points after a powerful run of 15 League games with only one defeat and it’s better to fall from grace against a team that has no promotion pretensions than one of our keenest rivals at the top of the table.
lt is possible that the nasty medicine meted out to us by Carlisle may be the stimulant to rouse our performances for the future. When we went out of the FA Cup at Coventry it was a huge blow because we’d done enough to win the match. But the team, to a man, rolled up their sleeves and achieved some excellent displays in the run of matches which followed. I can sense that the Carlisle result, while brought about by entirely different circumstances, has had a similar effect and the lads can scracely wait to get back in match
action and remedy the faults. They know they can do so much better and have shown it.
So many players had an off-day against Carlisle that it struck me as pointless in making the inquest a major issue. l have made my displeasure known to everyone, ensured that all those players involved have sat through the misery which the fans had to endure on the Saturday aftemoon, and have warned in the strongest possible terrns that l cannot allow it to happen again without taking firm action…