When City Fell Foul of Edwardian Financial Fair Play

Part One: The Men Who Plotted City's Downfall

23 April 1904. Manchester City captain Billy Meredith—the greatest player of his generation—is presented with the FA Cup.

As he stood before the assembled dignitaries, he would have had little idea of the contempt they held for his club.  

You think modern-day football authorities have it in for City? Well, times that by a thousand and you’ll reach the level of animosity this lot held for us. 

So… time for some introductions. 

On the left of the picture is Arthur Balfour (next to his sister), who had been British Prime Minister since 1902 and MP for Manchester East since 1885. Educated at Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, he was a member of a group known as the “Cambridge Souls”. Balfour was also one of the world’s richest men, having inherited £4million when he was eight-years-old (the equivalent of around £11 billion today). He also owned 87,000 acres of land in Scotland that came with the title of 1st Earl of Balfour.

City had been instrumental in his rise in politics, and had invited him to be guest-of-honour for a home match the day before the 1900 General Election.

Standing to Balfour’s right was 57-year-old Arthur Kinnaird, 11th Lord Kinnaird, who had been FA President since 1890. He was also educated at Eton, and graduated from Cambridge’s Trinity College the same year as Balfour. Kinnaird, who had played in nine of the eleven FA Cup finals between 1873 and 1883, was a fervent social campaigner. As president of the YMCA, he saw sport as a way to instill Christian values in young men. 

He was appalled at how his beloved game had been taken over by working-class professionals (as late as 1918 Kinnaird and his fellow FA councillors were plotting to abolish professionalism in football). And as treasurer of the National Vigilance Association, a social reform group that campaigned against drinking, gambling and vice, he had a grim view on the affect the national game was having on morality. 

Presenting the trophy is Colonial Secretary Alfred Lyttelton, the youngest child of 4th Baron Lyttelton.  

You can probably guess where he was educated.   

Lyttelton, a lawyer who had defended Balfour in a 1892 Manchester court case when he was accused of election fraud, was also a “Cambridge Soul”. A noted amateur sportsman who kept wicket for Middlesex and England, Lyttelton had also been a team-mate of Kinnaird’s in the Old Etonian side that played in the 1876 FA Cup final. And like Kinnaird, he would have been appalled at the way the game had developed. 

Standing closest to Meredith was Balfour’s Postmaster General, Lord Stanley, who would soon inherit 69,000 acres of land in Lancashire and Cheshire as the 17th Earl of Derby. The 39-year-old was MP for Westhoughton and Grand Master of East Lancashire Freemasonry.  

The Stanleys were the real-life Lannisters, from HBO’s Game of Thrones. The first Earl of Derby came over with William the Conqueror in 1066, while the 15th (b.1826–d.1893) was Prime Minister on three occasions between 1852 and 1868. The family were also influential in the world of sport. Lord Stanley’s father, the 16th Earl (1841–1908), created the Stanley Cup, while the face of his uncle, the 14th Earl (1799–1869) is engraved on the Lancashire FA Challenge Trophy. 

But it was horse racing where they had the deepest ties—providing yet another reason to hold City in disdain. The Epsom Derby was named after Lord Stanley’s great-great grandfather, the 12th Earl (the use of the term “derby” in football also probably originates from the family name), while The Oaks was named after the 12th Earl's house near Epsom.  

City chairman Edward Hulton, a press baron who began as a racing tipster, represented forces the horse racing elite were trying hard to keep at bay. In 1901 Hulton’s newspaper group was prosecuted for running a £260,000 a year (around £160million in today’s money) horse race betting operation from the Chronicle’s Manchester offices. After being found guilty, the company was fined just £50—and continued their betting activities. Hulton’s newspapers also ran the earliest version of the football pools, and offered cash prizes for correctly guessing the cricket scores. In fact, there was little in the world of sport that Hulton hadn’t turned into a gambling competition. His Athletic News had even run prize competitions to guess which clubs the FA would nominate to enter the FA Cup. 

By 1904 the spread of unregulated gambling had now reached the FA Cup final. Outside the Crystal Palace ground there were

‘Tipsters haranguing the circles of waiting ones, dubious ones risking the policeman by tossing small coloured bricks on to a part-covered mat while knots of gamesters backed their favourite in colour.’ 

The Cup final weekend had been a raucous affair. On the Friday night around 16,000 northern working-class fans had arrived at London’s Euston station, where they partied into the early hours. As one newspaper reported,  

‘Each little party seemed to have brought their own stack of provisions for the weekend. Nine gallon barrels of beer, stone jars of whisky and big baskets filled with ‘baggins’ were almost as plentiful as blackberries in autumn.’  

Inside the ground the assembled dignitaries would have watched this mass display of drunkeness and gambling with grim faces, particularly as the ‘feminine element was well represented’ among the crowd. Another newspaper noted, 

‘It was evident that many of the ladies, the majority of whom supported light-blue colours, were prepared to shout quite as heartily as were their masculine escorts.’ 

A scene from the 1904 FA Cup final

Their beloved FA Cup final had become a common carnival, typified by the Athletic News’ hot air balloon, piloted by a correspondent known as ‘Balloonatic’, crash-landing as Meredith scored the winning goal. Drunken singing, course language and a pitch invasion merely confirmed that this was no longer the sport they had pioneered. They would have been truly appalled. 

And of all the clubs in football, City was the one that appalled them the most. 

Run by a man who used his popular newspapers to promote sports-related gambling, their ground was filled with bars built by the club’s majority shareholders from the brewing industry, while their officials made little effort to disguise their disregard for the rules on payments to players. They were corrupting women and corrupting the young. And probably worst of all, their chairman, manager, and most influential director were all Catholics. 

In the eyes of the FA, not only were City ruining football, they were actually damaging the moral fabric of the country.

But powerful as they were, taking on a press baron was a risky business. Fabulously wealthy and well-connected, press barons also had an agreement to protect each others interests (one that is still in force today).   

However, the FA were about to get a lucky break—and its secretary Frederick Wall, the son of a servant, was the man to do their dirty work. 

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Part Two

Part Three

Part Four

Part Five

Part Six