I always think greatest ever team line ups are essentially flawed. Players represent the era they are from and what was incredible in 1986, may well not be in 2025 as time has changed. However the player from the first era didn’t have half of the technology or advancements in football to help them.. what if they did? Would they hack the more technical and scientific approaches to football now? Would this improve them beyond ways we can fathom? The questions are endless and they don’t really have answers, just opinions and speculation.
I guess the legacy of say Chris Chilton is that he was City’s greatest ever goal scorer and forward and his record transcends any of that conjecture, the same can probably be said of Dean Windass and his place in our history, I don’t think you could realistically withhold his name from a City all time eleven, and the news in the last few weeks of his dementia diagnosis was incredibly sad, I hope he’s well and wish him the best in the months ahead.
The rest though, they are all up for debate and often the first discussion that I’ve often had with fellow City fans is, who is our greatest ever keeper? It usually boils down to two different players in two different eras in Tony Norman and Bo Myhill. I think my heart says Norman, but my head increasingly says Myhill, however the very fact he’s so prominent in that conversation is a measure of just how special he was and that most (you never know with our fans) would put him above such names as Allan McGregor, Alan Fettis or Billy Bly really does show you how well he’s remembered by the fan base.
One of several players that the incredible Peter Taylor brought in during his early years at the club, Bo cost the princely sum of 50k from Aston Villa, City deciding to bring him in, knowing that Stockport (where he’d been on loan) were preparing to buy him too. He came in generally replacing the popular Paul Musselwhite and like most 21 year old keepers he had his ups and downs. He was clearly a better athlete than the older and more experienced pro however he could be a little more risky and less consistent.
Taylor was (like he was on most things football related) proved completely right however and Bo was a large part of the climb up the leagues city quickly navigated at the start of the early two thousands. Like Ashbee, Dawson and Barmby he’d simply adjust to each new level and kick on effortlessly, all of them were way above the level we started at. I do think it’s fair to say however that once we were up the second level of English football again for the first time in more than fifteen years, we began to see the absolute best of Bo.
We were no longer the big fish and if you go back to 2005-6 the general consensus amongst the stuffier and more arrogant fans of the championship were that we’d soon be gone and weren’t good enough for that level. It was a slog and at times we had to steal points on the counter or hang on for some results, which wasn’t what the fanbase had got used to.
This is where Bo comes into “GOAT” territory for me, he literally won us points and games where we could and (some would say) should have been beaten comfortably with sheer genius. I’d encourage you to watch the highlights of the 3-0 away win at Stoke in 2006 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hSiP1DlX_L0 where he saves not one but two penalties, the first a great low stop to thwart I think Liam Lawrence (help me stattos) and the second as he completely outthought Luke Chadwick who hit the ball straight down the middle only for Bo to have stood upright and make the simple save. (also watch the highlights for a fat lad from Barnsley looking like prime Bergkamp with his turn and finish)
Bo had moments, moments where you know he saved us and got us over the line. That’s what makes him stand out in my eyes…. Bo won matches. His save in the first leg win at Watford is one of the most incredible reactions we’d ever witnessed as he claws out Matt Sadlier’s volley even though Wayne Brown’s massive bald head clearly unsights him. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YkkvEONZEc By the end of the second leg we’d ran away to comfortably win but that save you felt broke Watford and that’s what he did, he broke other teams wills.
But there’s good, there’s really good and then there’s the single greatest goalkeeper performance I’ve ever witnessed. A City side, low on confidence and without an away win all season went to Spurs to get paggered, and they did…. in everything apart from the score. Bo saved everything and anything that came his way and Spurs simply could not find a way past him.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LlqHwj7pL6c
In truth that performance was other worldly, I don’t know if we’ll ever see the likes of that again, you’d hope to be honest we wouldn’t need to as letting someone would have six clear chances to win isn’t exactly sustainable. It’s without doubt the best I’ve ever seen a goalkeeper play in our shirt and I can’t imagine it’s about to be beaten anytime soon.
Right at the end of the play off final where Bo, Sam Ricketts, Michael Turner, Wayne Brown and Andy Dawson seemed to have turned on some sort of force field to repel the ball, there’s one last cross put in by Lee Trundle at the very end of injury time, if I was watching by then through my fingers I could see the large figure of Bo pluck that cross out of the sky (it’s here as if you didn’t know https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M7ghb4J_yOo) Wayne Brown jumps on Bo’s back and slaps his shaved head, because he knows, like we knew, that was it. We’d broken through the glass ceiling and achieved something nobody thought we could. Really fitting that his intervention was the last moment of that game.
After we were relegated two years later Bo left in the great fire sale of 2010 for a measly 1.5 million pounds and played a further hundred games at West Brom and Birmingham City. Things would not be the same again keeper wise for many years. I don’t keep up with who is in or out of the hall of fame for us, I’m presuming he’s not in yet? If so then that needs rectifying sooner rather than later. Because Bo Myhill was an absolute larker and did as much for this club as any keeper in living memory. Thanks Bo.
UTT.