Niall Quinn Credits Howard Kendall's Man-Management for City Career

As he turns 60, former Manchester City striker Niall Quinn recalls the table tennis and Budweiser session Howard Kendall used to lift City clear of trouble in 1990.

Niall Quinn says Howard Kendall's skill with people, more than anything he taught about football, shaped his seven years at Manchester City. Speaking on the Official Man City Podcast as he celebrates his 60th birthday, the former striker credited the manager's man-management with making him a better player and said it distinguished Kendall from others he played under.

Kendall brought Quinn to the club in March 1990. The Irish center forward announced himself with a goal on his debut and, over the seven seasons that followed at Maine Road, went on to record 244 appearances and 77 goals for the Blues.

The episode Quinn recalls most vividly came near the end of the 1989/90 season, with City stuck in the bottom three and nine matches remaining after Kendall's arrival. A couple of wins gave way to a defeat, and Quinn admitted he expected the manager to come down hard on the squad.

Instead, Kendall handed out a day off, ordered everyone to leave their cars at home for Monday — bringing one meant a fine worth two weeks' wages — and led the players downstairs in their tracksuits. There they found a table tennis table, two bats, a ball and crates of Budweiser lined up in every corner.

The drill required each man to keep the ball bouncing, sprint away to grab a half bottle of beer, rejoin the queue and finish the drink before his next shot. With three lives apiece, the game ran for about an hour and a half and ended with the whole squad laughing.

A battered old team coach then carried the players to Burns' Fish Restaurant in Didsbury, where a meal and several drinks turned rowdy and the squad was nearly dancing on the tables by seven or eight in the evening. Kendall closed the outing by sending everyone home for two days with their families, with the players due back Thursday to work for him.

For Quinn, the day summed up how the manager lifted morale. Kendall never instructed him on what to do with the ball or where a center forward should move, yet left him believing he could achieve anything — an effect Quinn puts down entirely to how Kendall handled his players.

City stayed up, finishing 14th, and delivered on the assurance Kendall gave when he took over that the team would survive and grow stronger the next year. After starring for the Republic of Ireland at Italia 90, Quinn looked ahead to a second season under the manager, but just four months into the 1990/91 campaign Kendall resigned to take the vacant post at Everton.

Quinn heard the news while away on international duty and found it hard to accept. He responded with 22 goals that season, a figure he never matched again, as City climbed to fifth under Peter Reid, and he believes Kendall's emotional tie to Everton drove a return to Goodison Park that proved a bad move and simply did not work out.