| CITY 3 LEICESTER CITY 1
League Division 1 29th April 1959 attendance 46,936 Scorers Ref P Brandwood |
City Trautmann, Leivers, Branagan, Cheetham, Barnes, McTavish, mCaDAMS, Barlow, Johnstone, Hayes, Sambrook
From TRAUTMANN THE BIOGRAPHY by Alan Rowlands
50,000, the largest crowd for months, turned up at Maine Road to watch the last game of the season.
…Manchester had to win by 4-0 to avoid the drop while Aston Villa, playing at West Bromwich, needed to win 1-0 to stay up.
Leicester scored within 10 minutes before City, urged on by the huge crowd, scored three.
Trautmann had kept his team in the game with a number of marvellous saves, but even he could do nothing about the score from the Hawthorns.
“The Villa game started at 7-15pm and ours started at 7-30pm. The noise from the crowd was deafening and there was the most awful groan as the news came through that Villa were winning 1-0. We were pounding away at the Leicester lads but as the game went on we were becoming more and more fretful.
The spectators behind my goal kept shouting to me news about the other match, and I was finding it difficult to concentrate.
About 15 minutes before the end of our game the most incredible roar went up from the crowd and people kept shouting “Bert West Brom have equalised”. I saw big Bill Leivers jump into the air with delight and we managed to hold on. At the end the crowd surged on to the pitch and carried us off to the tunnel.
I think the noise and emotion of that night will be an abiding memory of how much a crowd can encourage a team and also how much the intense loyalty of the Manchester supporters meant.”
50,000, the largest crowd for months, turned up at Maine Road to watch the last game of the season.
…Manchester had to win by 4-0 to avoid the drop while Aston Villa, playing at West Bromwich, needed to win 1-0 to stay up.
Leicester scored within 10 minutes before City, urged on by the huge crowd, scored three.
Trautmann had kept his team in the game with a number of marvellous saves, but even he could do nothing about the score from the Hawthorns.
“The Villa game started at 7-15pm and ours started at 7-30pm. The noise from the crowd was deafening and there was the most awful groan as the news came through that Villa were winning 1-0. We were pounding away at the Leicester lads but as the game went on we were becoming more and more fretful.
The spectators behind my goal kept shouting to me news about the other match, and I was finding it difficult to concentrate.
About 15 minutes before the end of our game the most incredible roar went up from the crowd and people kept shouting “Bert West Brom have equalised”. I saw big Bill Leivers jump into the air with delight and we managed to hold on. At the end the crowd surged on to the pitch and carried us off to the tunnel.
I think the noise and emotion of that night will be an abiding memory of how much a crowd can encourage a team and also how much the intense loyalty of the Manchester supporters meant.”
.