scorers
City Lee(36)
Stoke Doyle(35 og) Ritchie(52)
Stoke Banks, Marsh, Elder, Bernard, Smith, Bloor, Conroy, Greenhoff, Ritchie, Dobing, Burrows – sub Skeels
FRANNY LEE SCORES HIS RECORD EQUALING GOAL
FROM THE PRESS BOX
STOKE CLOUD MANCHESTER’S VISION
TOM GERMAN WRITING IN THE TIMES 3RD APRIL 1972
Stoke City is a name to be whispered around Manchester. United know their qualities only too well, having departed both the League Cup and the FA Cup on trips to the Potteries. Now along come Stoke yet again to cloud Manchester’s visions upending City 2-1 at Maine Road on Saturday, just when they had convinced themselves that they had the easiest course ahead of all the contenders for the championship.
Not that it was all Stoke’s doing. A team with such overwhelming possession as Manchester City won for themselves, especially one with such attacking flair and an eye for goal, should have more to show for their dominance than defeat.
Summerbee, a jaunty cavalier, still cut broad swathes up the right flank whenever he chose. Doyle still strode forward, driving his side on, but Lee, Bell and Davies, flitting all over the park in the first half hour, now found the gaps much harder to locate. The expensive Marsh still seems to be seeking to establish precisely how and where he can function.
It still needed Banks’s reserves of brilliance to keep Manchester City out. Two second half saves. with City anxiously striving to remedy the injustice of a 1-2 scoreline, were outstanding. Stoke, though hard pressed, had gathered assurance by this time, with Conroy and Ritchie sometimes raiding threateningly as Manchester stretched themselves to save the match.
It was a prospect which once would have invited ridicule for anyone rash enough to express it. In the first half hour Stoke, their short ball game totally ineffective, chased almost in bewilderment as Manchester City swept the ball around and assailed them from all sides.
Incredibly Stoke survived and took the lead after 35 minutes, Conroy crossed from the left, Ritchie was given far too much room, and though his shot struck Healey, it rebounded on to Doyle’s chest, and over the line as he chased back. Immediately, Manchester drew level as the ball slithered away from Banks under Davies’s challenge, and Lee seized his chance. But seven minutes into the second half Burrows centred, Booth made a laborious hash of getting it away, and Ritchie again had a surprising amount of time to select his mark.
In those days, of course, City could not rely on the refs to lend them a massive helping hand in matches in which things were getting tough. How times have changed.