Here There And Everywhere – Tommy Booth

Tommy was certainly a crowd favorite during his career (spanning three decades) at City and certainly no one was happier in a City shirt than Boothy.

Tommy had been watching City before signing as an amateur on September 11th 1965 and turning pro two years after that in August 1967.

Although he did appear in the League Cup fixture on September 2nd 1968 his league debut happened 43 years ago today in a draw at home to Arsenal. He didn’t have to wait long for success either as the following April, with THAT Neil Young strike, he would be lifting the FA Cup trophy.

In actual fact it was his lone strike against Everton that sealed City’s place in that Final. The next season he was a regular fixture for the starting eleven and help lift another trophy, this time the League Cup, beating West Brom in the Final.

In fact he would feature in 5 Cup Finals for City and only was on the losing side once.

He was in line for the 1981 Cup run but sadly missed out on the Final against Spurs, although he did help City get there with the only goal in their early round game against Peterborough. Five games into the 1981-82 season Booth was sold  to Preston almost exactly 13 years to the day after his debut.  He was a player that lived and bled for the club and was one of Joe Mercer’s favorite players.

Malcolm Allison was also a fan, talking before the 1969 FA Cup Final he said of Booth (aged 19),’The most promising center half in the country. He has superb control, good all round skills, is commanding in the air and possess two great feet – how can he be faulted?’

From Preston he moved into management but had little success and to be fair it wasn’t through his lack of skill. He only lasted nine months in charge due to bad results and a money shortage. Football is funny and his successor was now City Assistand Brian Kidd who lasted even less time and three months of his tenure was to be all she wrote.

When retiring from football in the mid 1980’s it was very rare for a player to have amassed a great fortune unlike the players of today and so he had to look for ways to make a living.

He initally set up a Sports Trophy business with his brother but found that he was more interested at winning trophies than any other aspect. Three years on he was employed by a television company, as a TV, Satellite and video engineer.

Although he stayed there for many years his heart is still Blue and returns to the Club he loves for appearences and Boothy is still popular with the fans that had the privilidge of witnessing what happens when a guy that has a teams passion in his blood, gets to pull on the famous sky blue shirt!

PACityboy