Blue Goals - And Then Some! DVD

Fremantle Media FHED 1622
67 mins main feature, 14 mins extras

Following the success of the Back to the Premiership 2001-02 season review on DVD, this is one of two DVDs in line for the Christmas market for any City fan. The 3-1 victory against those from Stretford will of course be an essential, but will this be one also to savour?

A couple of points to note: firstly, for some reason Fremantle's distribution for online outlets has failed miserably. While the other Manchester City DVDs are freely available, this one is not - neither Play nor Blackstar even had it in their catalogues. A pretty poor show, especially for those City fans abroad who wish to order such titles online. Eventually I managed to locate a copy at Tesco.com for £15-99 plus postage, which made it about £17-50, if you buy two the postage cost works about £1 each, so it'll be £16-99. Still cheaper than the shops, but a bit of a pain to try and locate it when it shouldn't be.

On the plus side however, the DVD is region 0 PAL, so as long as your television can play PAL signals, or your DVD can do NTSC-PAL conversion on the fly (if it requires it) then you will be happy to know this, no multiregion hacking required!

The DVD starts up with a nice little menu, allowing you to select the whole thing, the chapter select or the extras. While the menu is playing, it displays a selection of goals from Berkovic, Dickov, Tueart, Goater et al for about a minute before looping, which does add nicely to the presentation.

So, to take it all into consideration, here we go with a chapter by chapter analysis first of all, and of course as this is DVD, you can easily skip the bits you don't want to watch, so:

1 - Keegan's Maine Men 1
The first minute or so are the same goals as on the menu! After this, it has an interview with KK about the start of the season, and there are some goals from the opening games, including Newcastle and Everton at home and Arsenal away. As these will be on the end of season 2002-03 review, most of us can quite happily skip this chapter and go to..

2 - Flashback: 60s and 70s
Some nice old footage is here, which is always pleasing to see, particularly an Alan Oakes cracker from the black and white TV days, along with plenty from Lee, Bell, Summerbee and so on. What's also good to see here is plenty of goals against Man U as well, which is nice to see, especially Neil Young's header at Old Trafford in black and white. The quality is of course only as good as the TV coverage of the time, but thankfully it seems a pretty clean transfer. You will also note the Gerald Sinstadt commentary for the most part, probably culled from Granada highlights. Peter Barnes skinning Alan Hansen before passing to Joe Royle to score - now that is a classic.

3 - Cup Classics
City's cup goals feature here, and thankfully the winning 1969 FA Cup, 1970 European Cup Winners' Cup and League Cup goals are featured. (The 1976 League Cup is in the next chapter, so it isn't here). You also get Paul Power's free kick in 1981 and some of the final goals, but none from the earlier rounds :( And then many years are skipped until we get to 1994! This is pretty poor, really, it would have been nice to see some of the 80s cup goals here. And I wouldn't call goals against Wycombe and Barnet classics either, although Rösler against The Scum is always good to see. Spot Berkovic in a West Ham shirt as Kinkladze skins him ;)

4 - I Swear I Was There! 1976 League Cup Final
The first of such features on the DVD, this features our last trophy win. And now the celebrities start to talk about games, with the likes of Kevin Kennedy, David White and Ian Cheeseman of GMR talking about it. Good also to see Peter Barnes' goal as well as the classic Dennis Tueart overhead kick, which he himself talks about along with Noel Gallagher, Mike Pickering of M-People, Chris Bailey of the MUEN etc. Cue Brian Moore: "WHAT A GOAL!". Couldn't have said it better meself, mate.

5 - Tueart
The first special on a City player, this one is well deserved, after all more than 100 goals for City says it all over the years. Tueart himself talks about his times as a player and how the City fans love attacking football, with goals from the man himself which are all pretty well hit, especially an overhead kick against Aston Villa in the Embassy kit similar to our away kit now ;)

6 - Middle Class
This section features the goal scoring midfielders over the years, and is a perfect opportunity to show the many wonder goals from Kinkladze over the years, and thankfully his epic goal against Southampton is here for everyone to enjoy. Unfortunately it intersprses these with goals from McMahon and Flitcroft that I certainly wouldn't consider classics. And goals from the 2001-02 season are not needed either, most of us will already have them.

7 - 80s Flashback
There are some memories here of some games, and a few goals against Man U, with MecKenzie and Tueart scoring against them. There's hardly anything between 1983-89 though, even though there's many David Phillips classic goals in the 1984-85 season in particular. The Trevor Morley equaliser at Bradford is here, and the ten against Huddersfield as well tries to re-dress the balance, but it's somehow not enough. However, the next chapter is something to forgive this for...

8 - I Swear I Was There! - Man City 5 Man Utd 1
This, I believe, is the first time that the five goals have appared on DVD. And not before time - the whole game needs a re-release on DVD format soon, I think. What's especially nice to see is an interview with Paul Lake throughout, who for me was man of the match that day - he destroyed the defence and understood the importance of it all. It was drummed into them by their coaches, and you could tell even now how much pleasure Lakey has talking about that game - the Hinchcliffe goal of course just has to be remembered - "I was knackered and he flew past me!". Absolutely brilliant.

9 - White
A nice feature on David White, although no one was ever sure if he was right wing or striker. It's good also to see him interviewed now as well as his many goals against Liverpool - not least the one off the crossbar that Everton Wellbiased whinged about for ages, and all four of his goals at Aston Villa - possibly his best ever game in a City shirt. It's nice to see him talk about it and enjoy looking back at his playing days.

10 - Eat My Goal
"City Specials" it describes, and some of these are some real sublime efforts and total power drivers. Alan Kernaghan's solo run and 40 yard lob is one example, as well as some SKH specials, Niall Quinn's volley at Luton, Clive Allen at Chelsea, etc. There's also some goals caused by some classic defensive errors, which balance things nicely, and the Law backheel, and the Brightwell goal at Old Trafford! Oh yes :)

11 - Rösler and the 90s
As the 1990s seemingly didn't show that much footage, instead Uwe is featured a lot here. Ricky Hatton rightly says about his goals and how passionately he celebrated, even demonstrating one of his celebrations! There's some great moves with the likes of Beagrie, Walsh, Quinn etc culminating in goals for them and for Uwe. The nice thing is that it shows his classic strike against Man U when he came off the bench, and it was some strike, too! Now, how many of you remember Mikhail Kavelashvilli?

12 - I Swear I Was There! - '99 Play off Final
More memories than anything else, with an anecdote from Noel Gallagher about how he and other fans managed to get back into the stadium after leaving 2-0 down. Although most of this was more than adequately covered on the City Are Back! video, it is nice to have Dickov's goal on DVD. I just think this would have been better elsewhere apart from this DVD - say a "history of Man City" or something.

13 - Feed The Goat
More a magazine style interview with Shaun Goater, with contributions from KK, Darren Huckerby and David White. DW is particularly right when he says that The Goat won the fans over, and kept going with a high level of professionalism and hard work. It's also nice to see The Goat praise Nicolas Anelka and be objective in his assessment. Not that many goals from The Goat on here :(

14 - I Swear I Was There - Ewood Park 2000
Wasn't this done to death on the "Over The Blue Moon" video? Only worth featuring for the interviews with Ricky Hatton and Noel Gallagher speaking about their experiences of the game. Otherwise, just skip this.

15 - Keegan's Maine Men 2
If you have the 2001-02 review, you can stop the DVD player now. You won't need to watch any of this. It has a selection of last season's crackers from Berkovic, Wanchope, SWP etc. Still, pointless for it to appear here.

Extras
The DVD has some extra features, to sum up they are:

Blue Goals - A Different View
About four minutes of some of City's goals on the DVD taken from different camera angles. It's quite a nice idea and works quite well on the whole, although too many of the goals are from 2001-02!

Meet Nicolas Anelka
A five minute interview with the Elk, who seems to be quite laid back when being interviewed here.

My Favourite Goal
Note: the DVD menu spells favourite the American way, which is sloppy. Some of the celebrities remember their favourite goals as well as KK and Kevin Kennedy nominating Berkovic at Ipswich, Mike Pickering nominating the Law backheel (that's the spirit!), Ian Cheeseman and Ricky Hatton picking Kinkladze against Southampton, and so on. Interesting feature - should have been developed more though.

Player Profiles
Profiles of some of the main scorers on this DVD.

Overall
Well, there's high points and low points. The high points have to be the many classic old games featured here, with good quality footage and archive restoration that brings memories for many fans. However, the low point has to be placing the 2001-02 stuff on the DVD which many of us may already have. That either showed a lack of foresight, or they were worried about the running time. And indeed, the running time for some may be a little bit on the short side. I am sure there are many missed eras from the 80s and 90s which would have made for interesting viewing to accompany the many goals here.

So, should you buy it? Yes, just about, mainly for the older footage, the 10-1 and the 5-1, although I would suggest that next time such a DVD is going to be compiled, the fans are maybe consulted more to see what goals from the archives they'd like to see available. That would probably make a much more complete edition.

Warren's rating: 59%