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With the City surviving by a point the previous season Cantwell knew that a big improvement was needed so the same would not happen again.
The team was begining to take shape.
Glazier in goal,young full backs in Coop and Cattlin,and defence in the shape of the now fit again Curtis,Brian Hill and Jeff Blockley,who was another product off the City's youth developement scheme.During the season they would blood youngsters,Graham Paddon,Trevor Shepherd and Blockley.
Midfield they had Machin,Carr,Clements all of whom missed only a handfull of games between them.Up front Hunt,Gibson and Martin,although Martin was injured early on in the season his replacement Tony Hateley played his part but missed more than he scored.
The season started with three defeats then a 4-2 home win against West Brom gave encouragement,and the next few games City proved they could hold their own and were winning with style and when losing it was by the odd goal.The only hiccup was a 6-1 defeat at West Brom this was mainly due to an injury to defender Brian Hill early on and substitute forward John Tudor was forced to play at centre half.Old boy Ronnie Rees scoring one of the goals.Inconsistant was the word,a good win would be followed by string off poor performances,then the last 16 games saw 6 wins including a run of three straight wins at home,scoring 24 goals and conceeding 21.
Although goals were hard to come by they had 13 different scorers.
The game of the season was played on April fool's day and you would have been a fool to miss it.It was a bottom of the table clash against Leicester City at Highfield Road.With Cantwell's old mate Frank O'farrell coming up against his friend of over 20 years.
In front of over 41,000 and Glazier in goal playing out of his skin and a young Peter Shilton doing likewise up the other end it was end to end stuff.
With only 2 minutes left on the clock Sky Blues full back Mick Coop put over a deep cross which was misjudged by Shilton and Neil Martin fired in the volley for the only goal of the game.The fans went wild and ran onto the pitch at the west terrace to celebrate with Martin.The result that in the end meant going down or staying up.City took only five points from last six games even though they only lost one game.They finished with two less points than the season before but more than Leicester who went down.
Leicester would also lose the FA Cup Final to Man City.
Although finishing 20th City had started to put together a team capable of much more.
NEIL MARTIN
Ian Gibson Scoring Against Spurs a match that was featured on ITV 's Star Soccer on a Sunday afternoon
Tony Hateley signed from Liverpool and brought his 16 year old Mark to Highfield Road to join the City 10 years later.
