Manchester City v Southampton 1971/72

southampton home 1971-72
CITY 3 SOUTHAMPTON 0
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League Division 1
.
25th September 1971
.
attendance 27,897
.
scorers Lee(14), Bell(23), Davies(63)
.
ref Pat Partridge
 .
City  Corrigan, Book, Donachie, Doyle, Booth, Jeffries, Summerbee, Bell, Davies, Lee, Mellor – sub Johnson(79)
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Southampton Martin, Kirkup, Hollywood, Fisher,McGrath, Byrne, Paine, Channon, Davies, O’Neil, Jenkins – used sub Stokes
.
southampton home 1971-72 lee 1st city goal
The Maine Road faithful were thoroughly entertained by The Citizens, despite The Saints tough tactics, in a game that Peter Gardner writing in The Manchester Evening News, described as ‘A slaughter of the not-so-innocents.’
Southampton, totally dominated by City, resorted to hacking the Blues’ forwards at every chance and the result was the withdrawal of Colin Bell with a cracked bone in his ankle.
City’s twin wingers of Mellor and Summerbee tore Southampton’s defence apart, however it was a cross by Mike Doyle to the far post, where Wyn Davies headed the ball back to the edge of the six yard box where Francis Lee smashed in a volley to put City 1-0 up.
Then Davies nicked the ball off the Southampton defence 35 yards out and gave the ball to Summerbee, another mazey dribble saw him into the box and pulled the ball back to the oncoming Colin Bell who smashed the ball home from 20 yards.
southampton home 1971-72 l davies 3rd city goal
The Blues went into the break 2-0 up but it could easily have been more with long range efforts from Summerbee and Jeffries going close.
The third goal in the second half came after some measured passing on the edge of Southampton’s box, then Mellor played an incisive ball through to Davies whose ten yard shot was too hot to handle for Martin and he couldn’t stop the ball bobble over the line into the net.
It should have been 4-0 late on in the game when Francis Lee hit the bar from eight yards when it looked easier to score.
After the game captain, Tony Book commented “For me this was our finest all-round team performance since the day we won the League Cup” .

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