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Manchester City were Clive Allen's seventh professional club after a
much travelled career which included spells at several London clubs -
Arsenal, Crystal Palace, Spurs, QPR (twice) - before an aborted spell at
Bordeaux in the French First Division from which he arrived at Maine
Road. Allen was signed by Mel Machin for £1.1m in the close season of
1989/90 and came to City with the reputation of being a lethal penalty
box predator. Clive had maintained a 1 in 2 strike rate throughout the
course of his long career and was voted as the Sportwriter's Player of
the Year in 1987 after scoring a remarkable 49 goals in one season for
Tottenham Hotspur.
The season was City's first back in the top flight
after a spell in Division 2 and Allen was bought to provide the
experience in Machin's youthful City promotion winning team which
contained several emerging talents including Paul Lake and Ian Bishop.
Unfortunately, the start of Allen's City career was plagued by niggling
injury problems. Machin's young team struggled to adapt to life in the
top division and by November had slumped to bottom of the table with
only the remarkable 5-1 derby victory over United to cheer the City
faithful. Machin was eventually dismissed following a string of poor
results and Allen warmed to life under his successor Howard Kendall,
scoring 10 vital league goals that helped City to safety and an eventual
league finish of 14th.
However, worse was to follow as Kendall
abandoned Maine Road in the 1990/91 season for his first love of
Everton, and Clive was frozen out under his successor Peter Reid.
Although Allen remained a favourite of the Kippax during Reid's reign,
he was restricted to a handful of appearances before he was eventually
offloaded to Chelsea for £250, 000 in the 1991/92 season. (Mark Alaszewski)
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