CITY 2 LEEDS UNITED 3
League Division 1
12th November 1977
Attendance 42,651
Scorers
City Channon(37), Barnes(?)
Leeds Jordan(55), Graham(57), Hankin(65)
Ref G Flint
City Corrigan, Clements, Donachie, Doyle, Watson, Power, Barnes, Channon, Kidd, Hartford, Tueart – sub Royle(unused)
Leeds Harvey, Cherry, Gray, Lorimer, McQueen, Madeley, Harris, Hankin, Jordan, Flynn, Graham – sub Currie
MICK CHANNON IS CONGRATULATED ON HIS GOAL
FROM THE PRESS BOX
CITY IN FLUX
PAUL FITZPATRICK WRITING IN THE MANCHESTER EVENING NEWS FOOTBALL PINK FINAL 14TH NOVEMBER 1977
Manchester City’s possession of a large and powerful squad, after Liverpool arguably the largest and most powerful, appears to be undermining the club’s challenge for the First Division championship rather than strengthening it. One wonders if, in his search for the perfect machine, Tony Book has not messed about with parts that would have been best left alone. Any more tampering and City, two miserable points taken from the last ten, could find their ambitions reduced to an untidy heap of disconnected parts.
Book’s latest manoeuvre is to drop Owen, restore the transfer-listed Tueart, and employ Kidd in midfield. It seems strange that a club can possess the most gifted young midfield player in the game and condemn him to the Central League side. Still that is Book’s prerogative. More pertinently, practically every department of the team has been, is being, fiddled with and Saturday gave perhaps the most convincing evidence yet that the manager’s anxieties are transmitting themselves to the players. During that wretched period in the second half when Leeds moved from 1-0 down to 3-1 ahead, the City defence resembled men who had been pushed out to sea in a sieve.
It would have done Ron Greenwood’s peace of mind no good whatsoever to have witnessed the unsuccessful, floundering efforts of Dave Watson to solve the ground and aerial threats posed by Joe Jordan; for that matter it would have been no comfort for Ally McLeod to have watched Willie Donachie attempting to suppress the enterprising, vigorous running of Carl Harris. McLeod’s eyes would however, have opened wide at the performance of a rejuvenated Peter Lorimer, giving the Leeds midfield an inexhaustible supply of energy.
There is really very little wrong with this Leeds side, a well organised, skilful, combative, refreshingly positive outfit…
… At the interval City were just about value for the lead that Channon had given them in the 37th minute; no suggestion then of the calamities to come. By the 65th minute, however, Leeds had scored three, all of them the result of defensive work varying from weak to execrable, through Jordan rising at least at least two feet higher than any City defender to head home Lorimer’s free kick, Graham an Hankin’s goals followed shortly after. Barnes’s goal came early enough to encourage City’s hopes of achieving a draw but not, as it proved, early enough to unsettle Leeds’s now massive assurance.
