Catch a Falling Star

One of the most perceptive descriptions of Manchester City's play during their glory years was made by Manchester Evening News reporter Peter Gardner who remarked, "When Youngy plays, City play". For all the talk of greats such as Summerbee, Bell and Lee, it was the local lad made good who made the most impact when it mattered. Tall and leggy with a venomous left-foot shot, Young scored in every significant game for City in the late 60s. Scorer of two goals in the 1968 Championship win up at Newcastle, the scorer of the 1969 FA Cup Final winner and the first goal in the 1970 Cup Winners' Cup final, Young played a pivotal role in the success and style of the Mercer-Allison era. In 1972, just two years after playing a starring rôle in Manchester City's most successful team, Neil Young left his boyhood favourites for the final time. And, as the club began their now familiar relationship with underachievement and mismanagement, Neil drifted into relative obscurity, finally hanging up his boots just four years later. In Catch a Falling Star, Neil Young explains what he has been up to in the years since his sizzling shots stung the hands of the country's finest goalkeepers. Following his premature retirement from football, Neil's life has taken in tragedy in almost equal proportion to the glory he experienced as a player. Here, for the first time, he candidly discusses the depths to which he sank in the intervening years. Told with Neil's famed wit and laconic humour, Catch a Falling Star reveals how a star on the wane managed to mount a personal comeback as impressive as any achieved on the pitch by City's star-studded squad of the late 60s.

A tall, leggy striker with a venomous left-foot shot, Neil Young was a hero to City fans of the 1960s. Yet by 1972 he had been sold by the club and what followed was a personal decline even more dramatic than his football career. 'To Catch a Falling Star' is the moving story of a star striker's fall from glory.