CITY 0 WOLVERHAMPTON WANDERERS 0
League Division 1
6th March 1971
attendance 24,563
Ref Leo Callaghan
City Corrigan, Book, Towers, Doyle, Booth, Oakes, Summerbee, Carrodus, Lee, Young, Jeffries – sub Bowyer(75)
Wolves Parkes, Shaw, Parkin, Walker, Munro, McAlle, McCalliog, Hibbitt, Gould, Dougan, O’Grady – sub Hegan(40)
FROM THE PRESS BOX
City’s display against Wolves emphasised that they are still a long way short of that old flair. They looked stale, even jaded and could not shake a Wolves defence that hinged on the mastery of centre half Frank Munro. Mike Summerbee, back after an injury that had kept him out of five matches-posed the main threat to Wolves. He was able to work his way round the defence, but team mates failed to use his crosses.
With Summerbee back, but Bell absent, Manchester City were still way below their fluent best in a match which never reached the standard to be expected from teams in the top half of the First Division. There was too much niggling and fiddling, not enough finesse and finishing power by both sides.
City, whose success story has been built round their high-scoring forwards, have suddenly struck a goal famine. One ray of hope showed through this dismal display. Mike Summerbee returned to the top flight and showed all his old menace.
It would be dangerously glib to excuse Manchester City’s latest blunders on the grounds that their thoughts were flying ahead of the plane to Poland. The goalless draw against Wolves covered too much familiar ground.
Joe Mercer’s honesty is like the confidence of Cassius Clay and the momentum of Ole Man River ; it just keeps rolling along, and on Saturday it lapped gratefully around the performance of teenager Derek Jeffries. Manchester City’s pungent boss, as appalled as anyone by the grey wastes of the 0-0 draw with Wolves put it simply enough “In football when things have gone badly you always know that if you look hard enough you will come up with some consolation. And you didn’t have to look hard today to see Derek Jeffries”.
