Manchester City v Wimbledon Full Members Cup 2nd Round 1986/87

CITY 3 WIMBLEDON 1

Full Members Cup 2nd Round

4th November 1986

attendance 4,914

Scorers
City Moulden(29 & 89), Clements(67)
Wimbledon Downes(46)

Ref K Barratt

City Suckling, Clements, Wilson, May, McCarthy, Redmond, White, Moulden, Varadi, Grealish, Simpson – subs Barrett(unused), I Brightwell(unused)

PAUL MOULDEN GRABS ONE OF HIS TWO GOALS

From LETHAL, THE EXTRAORDINARY LIFE OF PAUL MOULDEN
I was named in the starting XI  to face the crazy gang, Wimbledon, in a home Full Members Cup tie in front of around 5,000 Maine Road fans. It would end up being an eventful evening and something of a learning curve for me as I received the biggest bollocking of my life.
I would score two goals in a 3-1 win, the first a diving header and the second a bicycle kick that flew past Dave Beasant into the roof of the net. I put in a good shift, but I should have had a hat-trick as I had a good chance late on, but I was knackered and, as the ball came to me, I reckon my mum could have hit it harder in her stilettos. After that, Wimbledon immediately went up the the other end and almost scored themselves, but we kept them out.
At the end of the game as I started to walk off the pitch, some of our fans on the Kippax had started singing my name, so I acknowledged them by clapping back at them as I headed towards the dugout. As I looked at our bench, I could feel Tony Book’s eyes boring into me and I was thinking, ‘What the hell have I done here?’ The look he gave me was one of utter disgust and disdain, so I knew I was in for it, but for what, I had no clue.
In the dressing room, Frizz gave his post match talk and when he’d finished, Skip just looked over at me and said, ‘You,’ I thought, ‘Here we go.’ After a Lancashire League game against Chester the year before, the whole team got a royal bollocking from Skip that we later called ‘The Carlsberg Bollocking’ because it was probably the best bollocking we would ever have!

So I thought, anyway. By the time Skip had finished ranting at me, the rest of the players had washed and left, so the captain Kenny Clements came over and said, ‘Skip, leave it. You’ve said enough now.’
I don’t think Skip could have said anything more in all honesty, but the gist of his anger was that I’d taken a shot instead of running the ball into the corner and keeping possession. He said the worst thing I could have done was to take a shot because, within three passes, they’d had a header on our goal.
His main beef, however, was me clapping the Kippax. So, I’d gone from scoring two goals, missing another, and then clapping the fans and in the space of that one minute, all my good work had been undone in his eyes.
Skip was so big on managing egos and us not getting ahead of ourselves, and he said, ‘When you’ve played 250 games for this club and scored 200 goals, then you can clap the Kippax. Until then, I don’t want to ever see you doing that again.’ That was me told.
He was, as always, bang on and I respected him. He’d taken maybe 20 minutes too long to tell me, but I knew why he was doing it.

KENNY CLEMENTS SCORES A RARE GOAL