CITY 2 WEST HAM UNITED 2

Canon League Division 1

21st September 1985

Attendance 22,001

Scorers
City Lillis(10), Melrose(50)
West Ham Cottee(7), McCarthy(41 og)

Ref M Robinson

City Nixon, May, Wilson, Clements, McCarthy, Phillips, Lillis, Power, Melrose, McIlroy, Simpson – Sub Tolmie(unused)

West Ham Parkes, Stewart, Walford, Gayle, Martin, Devonshite, Ward, Mcavennie, Dickens, Cottee, Orr – sub Goddard

FROM THE PRESS BOX

PETER GARDNER WRITING IN THE MANCHESTER EVENING NEWS 23RD SEPTEMBER 1985
Manchester City are fighting desperately to secure a First Division future.
Nine games into the new season and they are already struggling to cope with greater big-time demands and pressures.
Sad to say, one point from the last 12 is relegation form.
It’s perhaps too early to talk about the Blues going down. There are more than a handful of poor teams in the top flight although the fact that City are one of them should not be overlooked.
They certainly cannot continue in the present careless mood of defensive indifference if they are to clear the clutch of clubs currently assembling for what will be a Spring scramble to beat the drop.
Blunders at the back were the sole reason for Saturday’s 2-2 Maine Road draw with a West Ham team who are among that group.
Clive Wilson, for the first goal, and Mick McCarthy, putting through his own net for the second, unfortunately over-shadowed the fact that the Blues at last finally found a bite of their own in front of goal.
Mark Lillis, bravely playing desoite a mid-week operation for a broken nose and cracked cheekbone, in harness with Jim Melrose, proved manager Billy McNeill’s most successful front-running partnership so far.
Both players provided the antidote as the Hammers twice took the lead in a game remembered more for its mistakes than for attractive and eterprising football.
Said McNeill: If you score two goals at home you have every right to think that should earn you three points.
Instead McNeill had to dwell on mistakes that handed the initiative to the opposition, saying: “For once I would like to see people beating us rather than us beating ourselves.”
City are becoming irratatingly consistent at handing their opponents an early lead and creating an uphill battle fom the outset.
The result is that the defence retain the jitters, the midfield face a mountainous task and the front-runners are provided with little scope to claw their way back.
Yet both the tenacious Lillis and terrier-like Melrose still achieved the seemingly impossible with the team’s first goal in four games…