…I’ve not been to Tranmere for years. I remember a couple of trips there in the second tier back in the mid 1990s, one time for a playoff semi-final as half of Leicester travelled up the M6. I don’t remember the game much, I just remember having stones thrown at us by youths at the end of the match (although knowing me back then, we probably deserved it).
Then there was the League Cup Final in 2000 at Wembley where Rovers were the better team despite being a division below Leicester. It was a struggle to beat them and a weird feeling after the game, where we should have been pleased at winning a trophy (and the first time we’d ever won one at Wembley) but it felt very anti-climatic as we were expected to win and only just scraped by. Former City striker David Kelly played in that game at the twilight of his career and looked world class.
My main memories of Tranmere in my youth apart from City based stuff are as follows:
1: They always seemed to play on a Friday night, along with Stockport County.
2: On one version of Championship Manager, they had a whopping transfer budget of £27,000,000 for some reason.
3: John Aldridge and Pat Nevin had great spells there at the end of their career.
4: The only reason I knew where the Wirral was came down to them being sponsored by their own council.
Whenever I gig in Liverpool you can get a laugh out of “proper” scousers by insinuating that people from the Wirral are quite posh. I’ve never had that backed up, but it’s amazing how different it feels to the rest of Merseyside just because of being separated by a tunnel…
Jim Smallman - The Football Neutral 