The Remaster: 100 Owners, Number 96 - Peter Swales (Manchester City)

The rental king of the north-west of England went from the non-league game to the very top of the Football Association.

This morning, for paid subscribers, another of the 100 Owners series, this time focussing on the king of the combover, Manchester City’s Peter Swales.

On the 5th May 1996, Manchester City drew at home against Liverpool and kissed goodbye to their Premier League status. It was the third time that the club had been relegated from the top division of English football in the previous thirteen years, but this was different; the beginning of the darkest period in the clubs history, a four year spell of misery and anger which saw it drop two divisions before fighting its way back to the top flight.

Before the kick-off that day, however, the crowd at Maine Road fell silent to remember a man who came to embody the two decades of decline that had preceded that win or bust game. Peter Swales didn’t live to see his club’s fall from grace. Three days earlier, Swales, reportedly a man left broken by the coup which had ousted him from the clubs boardroom two and a half years earlier, had died at home from a heart attack at just sixty-three years of age.