'CITY DAYS WERE DISASTER BUT I LEARNED LOADS!'

GED Brannan be a manager but don't try telling the might first-time new Morecambe boss that he lacks experience.

- Chris Dunlavy

"How many games have I played?" retorts the 51-year-old. "How many coaching sessions have I seen? How many dressing rooms have I been in through the years?" The answer to all of those questions is a hell of a lot. Born in Liverpool, Brannan was a product of the Tranmere youth system and spent seven years at Prenton Park before embarking on a colourful odyssey throughout the domestic game.

Stints long and short at Motherwell, Wigan, Dunfermline, Rochdale and Accrington were bookended by several years in Non-League and perhaps most notably a disastrous 14-month spell at Manchester City.

The club Brannan joined in March 1997 for the princely sum of £750,000 was light years away from the global behemoth City have since become.

Farcically relegated from the Premier League a year earlier, the expected promotion push failed to materialise.

By the time Brannan made his 43rd and final appearance a year later the me - and they were probably right! "But it wasn't just me.

You looked around that dressing room and there were good players everywhere, on good money. It just felt like everyone the club signed at that time got worse.

Terrible

"It's funny because you say you played for Man City and people associate you with what they are today.

"Don't get me wrong - it was still a huge club back then. But the place was a mess, a million miles from what you see now.

Our performances were terrible. We got relegated, as everybody knows. It was a disaster from start to finish, really." And a lesson learned. Brannan had come from the Tranmere of John Aldridge, a tightknit dressing room bound by an underdog spirit that propelled them to the cusp of the top flight.