Denis Smith arrived at Bootham Crescent in March 1982 intending to spend just one month on loan. He was brought in by caretaker boss, Barry Swallow, to shore up our defence (and probably to further his education, in preparation for a planned career as a manager) after having spent his entire playing career with Stoke who at the tine were a prospering top flight club. He was a veteran of over 600 games and was well known as the man who’d broken just about every bone in his body, including at least 2 broken legs.

In May 1982, he returned to City as our new manager. He recruited an old buddy, Viv Busby (hyperlink), as his assistant and rebuilt the team based around former colleagues. Roger Jones was in goal, Chris Evans and Alan Hay at full back and Sean Haselgrave in midfield.

Along with a couple of other signings, all free transfers, we didn’t start the 1982/3 with any real confidence. Only Keith Walwyn, in his 2^nd season with City, stood out as a player to be feared by the opposition.

However, Jones, with Ricky Sbragia and Smith transformed our defence. The coaching skills of Busby transformed John Byrne from someone who we couldn’t give away on a free transfer into a confidence laden striker, the artist to Walwyn’s brawn.

A run of home victories propelled us up the table. With Smith coming to the end of his playing career, he signed John McPhail on a free from Sheffield United. The jigsaw was complete, but just too late for the 1982/3 season. Only poor away form kept us out of the top 4 and promotion.

1983/4 (hyperlink) saw us sweep everyone aside as we ran up a Football League record 101 points, winning promotion from the bottom flight by a record margin.

City made a good start to the 1984/5 season to be among the promotion contenders. In October, John Byrne left for QPR, then a top flight team. He made his Eire debut later that season. We struggled to replace Byrne, we paid a club record £50,000 for Dale Banton, an intelligent footballer, he never really gelled playing second fiddle to Walwyn, his best City days were after Walwyn left. An earlier Smith signing, Keith Houchen (later to star for Coventry in their 1987 FA Cup triumph) and Martin Butler also had mixed success alongside Walwyn that season.

Our best form was reserved for the FA Cup. We beat Arsenal on an icy pitch and then held the mighty Liverpool to a 1-1 draw. A 7-0 replay defeat doesn’t really tell how well City played, they would have beaten many better teams than City by 7-0 that night. The cup games caused a fixture backlog, and coupled with an injury to Keith Walwyn, our season petered out.

The 1985/6 season followed a very similar pattern, good early season form, FA Cup 5^th Round appointment with Liverpool. Again, we drew the game 1-1 and went to an Anfield replay. This time, Liverpool needed extra time to secure a 3-1 win. Alan Hansen and Mark Lawrenson will tell you that it was their hardest game on their way to lifting the trophy. To this day, no one can explain why a Keith Walwyn goal was disallowed, it would have given us a 2-1 lead with 20 minutes to go when we were completely outplaying Liverpool.

Smith’s plan was simple. Solid defence and solid strike force built around players who he knew from the past. His press statements invariably absolved players of any blame or criticism ("the ref gave a penalty and it was outside the area" and "I got the tactics wrong" are 2 quotes that I can still recall). Looking back, in some ways he was the Mourinho figure of his day, taking the pressure off his players. He was a young manager always ready with a thought provoking quote, unfortunately it was in an era just before the blanket coverage of televised football.

After 4 seasons, his magic was on the wane and coupled with John McPhail’s departure, we struggled in the 1986/7 season. At the end of the season, he departed for Sunderland, whose first ever relegation to Division 3 shocked the club and prompted a change of approach following the McMenemy years of excesses and excuses. New club, new challenge, he gained immediate promotion, built largely around a new strike force, the veteran Eric Gates and a young Marco Gabbiadini who he signed from City. Having only made his City debut a few months earlier, his talent and pace were considerable but he’d failed to convert his chances, his head hung low and lacking in confidence as we struggled under Booby Saxton with a virtually new team.

At Sunderland, Gabbiadini immediately started scoring. Immediate promotion followed. Smith signed a new central defensive lynchpin, John McPhail, and soon Sunderland were back in the top flight. Gabbiadini’s £80,000 fee was quickly repaid and then repaid again as he moved onto Crystal Palace for £1.5m.

But once again, the Smith magic wore thin and he was sacked.

A new start and a new striker saw him revive Bristol City’s fortunes. He plucked Andy Cole out of Arsenal’s reserves and turned him into a prolific striker before Newcastle, Manchester United and England followed. He was sacked as Wrexham manager in 2007, some people had his ame I nethframe to replace BilyMcEwan back at City later that year.

Much of Smith’s success was built on players and coaches he already knew. He brought Viv Busby to City as his coach and they moved together to Sunderland, some would say that Busby’s acrimonious departure from Roker Park was precipitated by their board rather than Smith. After Busby’s departure, Malcolm Crosby took over as Sunderland’s coach, another person Smith had first encountered at City.

Whilst with City, and once Smith had established a winning team, one of his biggest failures was to promote young players from the reserves, although the likes of Mick Astbury, Andy Leaning, Martin Butler and Steve Senior all had first team opportunities, none could claim to have had a long and successful career with us. At a time when we were winning regularly, it should have been possible.

His failure to "repeat" his success, ultimately proved to be his undoing at City, Sunderland and Bristol City, which probably proves one of my long held theories that it is easy to motivate oneself once, but much harder to do it again.

Denis Smith is one of the rare breed of managers to have over 1,000 games under his managerial belt, so he must be doing something right. Incidentally, another manager with City connections to later join that rare breed was Neil Warnock.

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