English football grounds in the late 1980s could be grey and downbeat but that changed thanks to Manchester City fan Frank Newton

Amidst the depressing backdrop of hooliganism and the imminent threat of ID cards, grounds during the 1988–89 campaign could be downbeat, grey and sometimes largely deserted. On the face of it, life could have been especially grim for Manchester City fans, given that this was now the second consecutive campaign they’d competed in the Second Division.

But City still had the sixth-highest average attendance across the four divisions and, in their shiny sky-blue kit, had harvested a rich crop of English talent from their youth team, including lightning-quick winger David White, midfielder Paul Lake – tipped for an England call-up – and forward Paul Moulden, who’d plundered an absurdly high number of goals at youth-team level and was now scoring for the first team too. A year before, they put an eye-catching 10 goals past Malcolm Macdonald’s Huddersfield Town, with Paul Stewart (who was sold to Tottenham at season’s end), Tony Adcock and White each grabbing a hat-trick. But what also caught the eye was the fact that on the terraces, City fans really had gone bananas.