Matchday Memories: On This Pre Season Day 2000 – See Strachan’s Sky Blues Flourish At Fairford
Gordon Strachan -City’s ‘gaffer’
On this day (24th July) in 2000 the Sky Blues under Gordon Strachan (now a CCFPA member) were in the early days of an encouraging pre-season as they prepared for another Premier League season (as it turned out, their last). Their warm ups had kicked off with a 3-0 victory at non-league Hitchin Town. City scorers in that game were (recently recuited CCFPA member) Laurent Delorge (58 mins), John Eustace (81) and Stephen McPhee (89).
Today, in their second game they travelled to Gloucestershire for a game against Hellenic League outfit Fairford Town and, as expected, handed out to them a footballing lesson in a 4-0 win, another clean sheet for the City. The crowd of 1,525 is still a record attendance for the non-league club! City chose to rest many of their senior players for this fixture and some of those that did play either didn’t feature in the first team during the full season and/or soon left the club (e.g. Normann, Hendry, Roussel and Bothroyd). WGS also gave game time to both his sons, Gavin Strachan (now also a CCFPA member) and Craig Strachan who were on City’s books at the time!
Cedric in the Sky Blue
John Eustace in the Sky Blue
The win was achieved thanks to goals from our Belgian striker Cedric Roussel four minutes before half-time, a brace from Cedric’s now fellow CCFPA member John Eustace netting two minutes later (to give the Sky Blues a 2-0 half-time lead) and again ten minutes into the second period. The icing on the Sky Blue cake was a last minute effort from young forward Jay Bothroyd.
A Vimeo video of the whole game can be found by clicking on the link or image below:-
The Sky Blues lined up as follows (CCFPA members underlined):-
Jay in Sky Blue action
Gary Montgomery, Paul Telfer, Runar Normann (Derek Hall -70), John Eustace, Colin Hendry, Richard Shaw, Laurent Delorge (Craig Strachan -72), Gavin Strachan, Cedric Roussel, Noel Whelan and Barry Quinn (Jay Bothroyd -62) Unused subs:- Thomas Cudworth, Barry Ferguson and Chris Kirkland (gk).
City’s third pre-season game against Division One Wolverhampton Wanderers at Molineux naturally proved tougher but they preserved their unbeaten status a clean sheet came away with a 1-0 win. Then things didn’t go so well with City only managing to win one of the remaining pre-season games (1-0 at Sparta Rotterdam) including losing their only home game at Highfield Road 1-3 against top Dutch club Ajax of Amsterdam.
CCFC 2000-01
The actual Premier League season started promisingly after a Highfield Road defeat to Middlesbrough by 3-1 on the opening day. Back to back wins at both Southampton and Manchester City (their first league wins away in 16 months) certainly boosted confidence. However all Sky Blue fans know that, despite numerous flirtations with relegation and last day heroics, the wheels finally came off the Sky Blue Express in the millennium season. After 34 years at the top (and 43 years since their last experience of this calamity) they were relegated in penultimate spot (19th) along with Bradford City and the ‘other’ Sky Blues Manchester City. Division One would be their home for next season and the desperately optimistic slogans at the time of ‘We’ll Be Back’ have yet to be realised but with City now consolidated in the second tier Championship we are again within touching distance!
Thanks to CCFPA’s Mike Young for sourcing the photos
