Tommy Booth is one of Manchester City’s unsung heroes.
While Colin Bell, Mike Summerbee, Neil Young and Franny Lee are often lauded – and rightly so – players like Booth, Pardoe and Oakes sometimes slip below the radar.
Sometimes, it can because of the position they play in or maybe even because they are a homegrown talent, but they deserve the spotlight as much as anyone, even if they don’t seek it.
Booth represented City in three different decades – that is a heck of a claim for a club like ours.
He made 491 appearances for the Blues, scoring 36 goals and won five major trophies during his 13-year spell in the first team.
As Mancunian as Vimto, Booth arrived unheralded and left quietly – but what he did in-between was magnificent.
A true loyal Manchester City servant – his boyhood club, in fact.
“Harry Godwin scouted me when I was playing for Middleton Boys,” said Booth who celebrates his 75th birthday on 9 November.
“After this particular game he said, ‘Do you fancy coming to train with Manchester City?’
“He told me it would be on an apprentice professional basis, but when I tod my dad, he said, ‘No, you need to get a trade behind you and if it doesn’t work out at City, you’ve got something to fall back on.’
“I was like, thanks for the vote of confidence, dad! I didn’t speak to him for the next six months!
“Every time I played on a Saturday morning for City as amateur, all the other lads were telling me they’d seen Colin Bell or Mike Summerbee that week, but though I was playing for the City youth team, I only trained Tuesday and Thursday nights so felt I was missing out.
“I took a position with an engineering firm called Mather and Platts in North Manchester and was there for about a year and during that time, City said they wanted me to sign professional forms when I turned 17. Had I been an apprentice professional, I’d have had to wait until I was 18. I told my dad, and he said he’d know that all along – he hadn’t, the lying sod!
“This was 1966, we were still in the Second Division and had just signed Colin Bell with Joe Mercer and Malcolm Allison in charge and I would finally start training full-time.”
Typically, it was Malcolm Allison who spotted Booth training for the youth team and his interest was immediately piqued.
Booth recalled: “I used to play inside forward in the youth team and at one training session, Malcolm came to watch, and he asked my coach, ‘Who is the lad up front?’ He said it was Tommy Booth and Malcolm said, ‘Listen, next time play him at centre-half.’
“So, the next game, my coach said, ‘Tommy, Malcolm Allison wants to try you at centre-half’ and I was like, ‘Centre-half? I’ve never played there in my life!’ He asked me if I knew what I needed to do, so said I sort of did and that was the start - things took off from there. Twelve months later I made my first team, debut against Arsenal in October 1968 aged 18.
“I think Malcolm saw that I liked to bring the ball out from the back, play one-twos and was always looking for passes. In his eyes, it made perfect sense because I was tall as well and I slotted into a back three alongside Mike Doyle and Alan Oakes.
“Malcolm was an innovator, and we had three centre-backs who were good footballers as well – something most teams didn’t do back then because the majority would have a couple of tough, gnarly central defenders and two full-backs.
“There was a great camaraderie among the lads, and they included me in everything. I was going to places I’d never been, flying here there and everywhere and just talking it all in.”
If Booth had quietly slipped into the first team, he hit the headlines in March 1969 when his late goal secured a 1-0 win over much-fancied Everton in the FA Cup semi-final at Villa Park.
Suddenly, everyone knew about City’s teenage centre-half, though Booth says – jokingly – that goal almost cost him his life.
“I remember the ball coming across and Doyley headed it down, so I thought I’d have a swing with my left-foot. Neil Young shouted for me to leave it, but I just thought, ‘Leave it?’ so I connected well, and it flew into the net,” smiled Booth.
“Immediately after I was thinking I’d just scored this huge goal, and now I’m going to die because the lads just piled on top of me, and I couldn’t breathe. What a way to go – I shouted for them to get off and finally got up and celebrated properly.
“I told our forwards afterwards that I’d taken the shot on because they wouldn’t have hit a barn door in that game given the chance.
“That sent us to Wembley to play Leicester and I remember walking out at the start, and it was just deafening. Everywhere I looked I seemed to recognise someone in the crowd, and it brought it home to me that we’d better not mess this up. Fortunately, we didn’t.
“Alan Oakes was the one lad who used to have a go at me and would chastise me if I did anything wrong – he was a great bloke and was looking out for me, but he’d let me know if I did something he didn’t think was right.
“It was a great time. We were in Europe and in 1970 I was flying everywhere with the team and were well looked after wherever we went. I was seeing new cities, countries and for a lad of 19 or 20, it was a dream come true and everything seemed to be going my way.
“Years later, people asked me what it felt like to score in a semi-final and I would say, ‘which semi-final was that?’ I’d played in the League Cup semi-final in 1973/74 and scored in that game, too. People forget I scored in the League Cup semi, but I hadn’t! It was wonderful.”
In two years, Booth had played and won in the FA Cup final, the League Cup final and the European Cup Winners’ Cup final.
And the 1971/72 season should have brought him his first league title as the Blues led a group of teams with only a few weeks of the season left.
But the arrival of Rodney Marsh coincided with a poor run of results and City would miss out on becoming champions by one point as Brian Clough’s Derby County triumphed instead.
“Rodney was a great lad, but it was Malcolm who wanted him, Malcolm who bought him and Malcolm who put him In the team,” said Booth.
“When the season finished, Rodney said, ‘Look, it was my fault we didn’t win the league’ but it’s hard to blame one person. His style changed the way we played and slowed everything down, but he was a smashing lad. It was just that Malcolm was obsessed with him.”
Allison took over as manager for the 1972/73 season, but didn’t last long and Johnny Hart and Ron Saunders – “I didn’t get along with him at all and neither did many of the other lads and he didn’t last long, either” followed Big Mal’s exit before Tony Book took over.
But when a back injury became a chronic issue, Booth was advised that only surgery would solve the problem, and he agreed it was the only way forward – and wasn’t even sure he would play again.
“The club signed Dave Watson, effectively to replace me because I needed a serious back operation,” he said.
“It was so bad; I didn’t think I’d ever play again. I’d been having trouble for a while and eventually I had to have three discs removed. The pain was unbearable, and I didn’t think I’d ever walk again, let alone play football, but withing three months I was back in the team and playing alongside Dave. He still says I was the best defensive partner he had in his career, which is nice, because he was a fantastic centre-half.
“I came back and Colin suffered that terrible injury against United, so Tony put me in midfield because there was nobody else available. I’d be asked in years later what it was like replacing Colin Bell and I’d say. ‘It was fine. Everybody told me they couldn’t tell the difference between me and Colin!’”
City would miss out on another title by one point in 1976/77 with Booth and Watson among the best central pairings in English football.
In 1977/78, City would finish fourth, with Booth playing 49 times in all competitions – his most appearances yet.
His performances might have gone under the radar of the England selectors, but not under the man considered the greatest manager England never had – Brian Clough.
Clough had guided unfashionable Nottingham Forest to a first ever top flight title that season – and he had identified Booth as the player who could help his team triumph in Europe, too.
“Brian Clough wanted to sign me just after Forest had won the league,” he said.
“I went up to Nottingham to meet Cloughie and I spoke with Peter Taylor, and everything was all sorted bar the transfer fee.
“Cloughie walked in while I was talking with Taylor and said, “Has he signed yet? Hi Tommy, are you alright young man? You’re the missing part of my jigsaw and final part of my team.’ The trouble was, I was almost 30 and City wanted £100,000 for me. Cloughie said to City that it was my testimonial season and that he’d bring a team and play at Maine Road if we could strike a deal – he was trying everything as I don’t think they had that sort of money at the time. But City wouldn’t have it and ultimately, I felt I would end up losing a lot of money if I didn’t have my testimonial and so that was the end of it.”
Despite his love of City, Tommy will always wonder what playing under Clough might have been like.
Forest went on to win two European Cups, while at City, things were starting to fall apart as Malcolm Allison returned for a second spell at the club.
“Malcolm wanted to run everything,” he said.
“He brought in a load of inexperienced youngsters who he thought were better than the lads we already had – experienced internationals - and he started changing the formation and it just didn’t work.
“When he’d been with Joe Mercer, he’d always be coming up with new ideas and Joe would listen and then say, ‘no, we’ll try that on the training pitch’ or ‘no. we’ll do this or that instead’ – Joe had the final word.”
Though Booth survived Big Mal’s ruthless cull and played more games in his final full season than he had in his first some 13 years earlier, his time at City was finally coming to an end.
“Tommy Docherty came in for me when he was at Preston North End in 1981,” he said
“He called me at home, and he really made it clear he wanted me and said if I could get a free transfer, he’d really look after me.
“I did get finally a free and I enjoyed playing for him, but when he was sacked, the club wanted me to take over as player/manager and ended up taking the job for about a year or so.
“It was difficult because I had no coaching badges or anything, so I was in at the deep end so to speak and that was my last job in football.
“I worked hospitality at City for many years later on and I still follow our results closely and get along to game. I had the time of my life as a Manchester City player and wouldn’t change a thing.”
Happy birthday Tommy, and rock on indeed…
Words: David Clayton
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