DOWN THE KIPPAX STEPS

City and Barcelona have rarely crossed paths and never in a competitive fixture. The first clash between the two sides was back in 1952 but City can count three successes in the last three fixtures between the sides:

2nd June 1952. Les Corts (Barcelona).
BARCELONA 5 CITY 1
City: Trautmann, Branagan, Rigby, Westwood, Paul, McCourt, Meadows, Williamson, Smith, Spurdle, Clarke.Goals: Kubala (19’, 21’, 56’), Torra (20’), Gràcia (68’).

8th May 1957. Les Corts (Barcelona).
BARCELONA 3 CITY 2
City: Trautmann, Leivers, Ewing, Sear, Phoenix, Paul, McClelland, Kirkman, Johnstone, Hayes; Clarke.Goals: Villaverde (9’), Tejada (77’), Sampedro (78’).

12th November 1974. Camp Nou (Barcelona).
This match was to celebrate Barcelona's 75th anniversary, a favour finally returned when City opened Eastlands in 2003
BARCELONA 3 CITY 2

Barcelona: Sadurní, Rifé (De la Cruz, 46), Gallego, Marinho (Juanito, 78), Albaladejo, Migueli, Juan Carlos,Marcial, Heredia, Cruyff and Sotil.
City: MacRae, Barrett, Donachie, Henson, Clark, Oakes, Summerbee, Bell, Marsh (Leman, 46),Keegan, Tueart.
Goals: Juan Carlos (3’), Cruyff (53’), Marinho (59’).- Bell (?)


Rodney Marsh and Johan Cruyff swap pennants before the match

Colin Bell scores one of City's two goals

15th August 1986. Municipal Huelva. Torneig Colombino (semifinal).
BARCELONA 1 CITY 1 (City won 4-3 on penalties, then lost the final on penalties to Huelva)
Barcelona: Urruti, Gerardo, Migueli, Julio Alberto, Víctor (Pedraza, 70), Fradera, Carrasco (Clos, 80), Calderé,Robert, Hughes and Marcos (Esteban, 70).
City: Suckling, Reid (Brigthwell, 41), May, Clements, McCarthy, Redmond, Davies, McNab, Christie (Kinsey, 23), Baker, Wilson.
Goals: 1-0: Robert (16′). 1-1: Wilson (50′).

10th August 2003. City of Manchester (Manchester). Official Opening of Eastlands
CITY 2 BARCELONA 1
City: Seaman, Sun Jihai, Sommeil (Dunne, 74), Distin, Tiatto, Wright-Phillips, Bosvelt (Barton, 74),Sinclair (Sibierski, 74), Benarbia (Berkovic, 30), Anelka (Wanchope, 63), Fowler (Macken, 63).
Barcelona: Rustu, Puyol, Andersson (Gerard, 46), Reiziger, Òscar López (Ros, 83), Xavi (Márquez, 83), Cocu,Quaresma (Saviola, 46), Ronaldinho (David Sánchez, 83), Kluivert (Iniesta, 63), Overmars.
Goals: 1-0: Anelka (34’). 1-1: Saviola (58’). 2-1: Sinclair (67’).

The Guardian report from City's first ever game at Eastlands v. Barcelona

A very young Andres Iniesta pictured with Paul Bosvelt on the cover of the first home league programme ever produced for the new stadium, for the match with Portsmouth (1-1, David Sommeil)

__________________________________________________________________________________

19th August 2009. Camp Nou (Barcelona). Trofeu Joan Gamper.
BARCELONA 0 CITY 1

Richard Dunne lifts the Juan Gamper Trophy in 2009

Barcelona: Pinto, Montoya (Alves, 46), Fontàs (Henrique, 63), Puyol (Bartra, 31) (Piqué, 63), Maxwell (Muniesa,63), Touré (Thiago, 46), Sergio Busquets (Keita, 46), Gudjohnsen (Jonathan Dos Santos, 46), Pedro (Messi, 46), Bojan (Ibrahimovic, 46) and Jeffren (Gai Assulin, 54).
City: Given, Zabaleta (Garrido, 65), Dunne, K. Touré, Onuoha, Weiss, Wright-Philips (Tripper, 81), Ireland, Barry (Etuhu, 69), Petrov, Tevez (Bellamy, 64).
Goal: 0-1: Petrov (27’).

Below is the kind of welcome the Blues can expect at the Camp Nou...

You have an upgrade, Sir

We all remember what it was like to get our first glimpse of that impossibly green pitch as a youngster at Maine Road or in more recent times the Etihad, but what if the experience is gained in middle age? And what if your Mancunian host has had some ideas of his own about how to entertain you?

In this second part of his recent adventure, Cort McMurray tries to come to terms with the beauty and diversion of Manchester City.

In July 2010, in the swelter of an Atlanta summer, my son Noah and I made our first sighting of

fellow Manchester City fans. City were playing Mexico’s Club America in an exhibition match.

Club America was the big draw: Atlanta has a sizable population of Mexican expats and Los

Augilas are one of the strongest, best established and most popular clubs in La Liga Mexicana.

City? City was far enough under the radar that Noah and I were able to find the private school

where the team was based, wander into a training session and collect autographs, with nary

more than a bemused look from Roberto Mancini.

So a couple of hours before match time, running into a group of guys at the CNN Center, kitted out in City gear, was a bit shocking. They were from Manchester, sweating their way through City’s Tour of America. One of them, a gregarious railway engineer named Paul, asked for my

email address.

Over the years, we’ve exchanged emails. It’s been a cordial, but casual acquaintanceship.

****

A few months ago, as our family was planning a trip to England, I contacted Paul, and asked

him for help in securing tickets to The Etihad. His response was immediate: “Leave it to me,
mate. We’ll get you sorted.” He asked that Noah and I send him a photo of the two of us,

wearing City shirts. This seemed reasonable: He hadn’t seen us for more than five minutes,

and that was three years ago. The City shirt request seemed a little odd, but we complied.

Paul and his friend Ted were waiting for us at Manchester Piccadilly. We were greeted with

laughter and hugs and a hearty, “Welcome to your City!”

This was a recurring theme: at every turn, people we barely knew treated us like long-lost

relatives and reminded us that as City supporters, Manchester was our home. This wasn’t a

stretch for me: Manchester, great and grey and rainy, reminds me of Buffalo, New York, the

aging industrial city where I grew up. It felt familiar. It felt like home.

After getting us settled in at our hotel, Paul said, “Now it’s time to see the real Manchester.” A

few twists and turns down some dark side streets, and we entered the warm and ancient

confines of Mother Mac’s. Packed shoulder to shoulder with City faithful, Mother Mac’s walls are

plastered with faded photos of old City squads and assorted military memorabilia. Aside from

the video Pub Quiz machine and the flat screen tv hanging on the wall, it might as well

have been 1948. Paul introduced us to a bunch of his friends – “we’ve been going to City
matches together since we was lads” he explained – and we got to know one another. A

burning question: Why can’t Americans cook a proper piece of bacon?

Noah and I quickly learned that the Full City Experience is lubricated by copious amounts of

beer, glass upon glass upon glass of it. All of this lager posed a problem for me: I don’t drink.

It’s a religious thing. Wrapped in the warm embrace of dozens of happily quaffing City fans, I

felt a little out of place, delicately sipping my glass of tonic water.

One of my new friends offered quick reassurance. “Ay, Cort, ye haven’t touched a drop. It’s like
we’re with Cloudy-O Rrrrreyna!” This was the first time I’d ever been compared to the former

City midfielder and it made me feel a little less self-conscious.

A rather harrowing cab ride and we arrived at Sport City. I keep an aerial photo of Maine Road

on my office wall, its lovely, ungainly mess of architectural styles wedged into the row houses of

Moss Side. Sport City is nothing like that, at all. The Etihad looms, all smooth lines and

spotlights, like a freshly landed spacecraft. Parking lots, practice fields and chain-link fences

effectively sequester the stadium from the rest of the world. This isn’t Maine Road.

Still, it works. City have done a very good job of bringing festivity to what could be a generic,

even antiseptic environment. There are bands and canteens selling hot dogs and pies and beer. It is, as Lyle Lovett sings, “an acceptable level of ecstasy.”

Paul, who is to City what the Apostle Paul was to early Christianity, didn’t give us much time to

soak in the atmosphere. “Come on, mates. There’s something you need to see.” He led into

the upper floor of the enormous City gift shop, where we met a man who looked official. “These
here are all the way from Texas,” Paul told the man, who shook our hands and handed us a

couple of match programmes. An envelope poked from the pages of one of the programmes.

“Welcome to Manchester,” the man said, and disappeared back into his office.

Paul was grinning. “Take a look on page 52.” There was the photo Paul had requested, Noah

and me posed in our City best, with a caption welcoming us to the Etihad. “Now look in the
envelope.” Our tickets had been upgraded to VIP “Platinum Box” status.

Entering the VIP area at the Etihad is a little like arriving at the gates of the Emerald City, except

everything is sky blue, not green Everything is covered in white twinkle lights, and your ticket is

verified by a cadre of very lovely young women, dressed in short hemmed great coats and

imitation bearskin hats. “Welcome to the Ethidad,” they cooed.

Inside, there were statues of Colin Bell and Bert Trautmann, and a few live, in the flesh lesser

City idols. “Dad,” Noah hissed. “That’s Stevan Jovetic! Dad! That’s John Guidetti!” In a

hallway, we passed an impossibly large, impeccably dressed man, talking with a couple of other

fellows. My son’s eyes bulged. “Dad, that’s Patrick Vieira! Patrick Vieira!” Have you ever stood

arm’s length from Patrick Vieira? There is only one word to describe the man: regal. And we

were sharing a hallway with him! I would have taken a photo, but taking a photo of Patrick Vieira

without his permission felt wrong, and actually speaking to Patrick Vieira seemed an endeavor

beyond my meek and lowly station.

There was yet another surprise. At halftime, the club sent Ian Brightwell and Richard Edghill to

visit and pose for photos. Both are friendly, classy gentlemen, fine representatives of City.

In the midst of all this, there was a football match. Kun Aguero converted a penalty, and fine

scoring strikes from Nasri, Negredo and Eden Dzeko overcame both Plzen’s scrappy attack and

their leather-lunged fans (seriously, the good people of Plzen are insanely loud).

As we left the stadium, it was more backslaps and hugs, more laughter and friendship. We left

Manchester, lovely grey Manchester, the next morning, with a sack filled with City souvenirs,

and a deep appreciation for the generosity and kindness of our new friends.

There are not many times when you’re able to give one of your kids a truly unforgettable

experience. Thanks to Paul, and the people at City, I had that privilege.

I am not Mancunian. I am a stranger, an outsider. But Paul is right: Manchester is my City, and

Noah’s City, and it will always be.

You can follow Cort on Twitter here

*adopts weighty tones of David Coleman*

***

"Craven Cottage, a real traditionalist's venue, welcomes a rampant Manchester City side, for whom coach Manuel Pellegrini makes a number of changes, some enforced others not. The beanpole Bosnian Dzeko replaces the injured Aguero, whilst the Chilean will be hoping Gael Clichy reveals a hitherto undiscovered right foot..."

***

"And the little magician waved his wand and left the crossbar twanging like a simple elastic band. City centimetres from taking the lead..."

***

"One-nil! It's there. And. What. A. Strike. It. Was. The big Ivorian seems to own that top corner..."

***

"It's in! And Kompany leads the way in a true captain's fashion. He was there to pick up the crumbs and that's what makes a champion's feast..."

***

"And. You. Cannot. Defend. Like. That. City undone down the flanks and Richardson pilfers a goal like a petty thief..."

***

"It's there! Two-two!. City unravelling before our eyes and it's the captain undoing all his good work. The ball just arced over Hart in slow motion. What a game we have here now..."

***

"3-2!! Fulham undressed by the speed of Navas and the sheer speed of thought of little Silva. A goal crafted in Iberia. Wonderfully worked by the darting Spaniards..."

***

"And. What. Can. You. Say. About. That?! There's just no accounting for that pass from Negredo. He hit it with the outside of his boot and it just flew into the path of Milner. Skill and impudence will bring its reward and City are coasting now..."

R.I.P.

As 1980 turned lethargically into 1981 I and a lot of other Manchester City fans could have been forgiven forthinking the good times had finally arrived. It had been ten years since the club’s golden age had disappeared over the horizon and the years in between had produced what could quite easily have been called scarce pickings. At least in those days, that's what it seemed like to a young lad that missed out on the glory of Franny lee and co by a season or two.

Admittedly, City had reached two League Cup finals in the 70s, one a sloppy, unnecessary defeat to a Wolves side playing a jittery reserve in goal (the totally unheralded Gary Pierce), the other a vibrant defeat of flu-ridden Newcastle United. City v Newcastle in a Cup Final. Until three years ago, the prospect of that would have brought the house down. Given the Geordies' present set-up, it still might.

January 1981. City are in a state of flux. Just for a change. Big Mal has gone for a second time, this time leaving many disgruntled with what he failed to achieve. The stars of Tony Book's 1977 side have been sent packing, replaced with roosters and cobblers. Where once Dave Watson and Peter barnes trod, we now gaze down upon Dave Wiffill and Paul Sugrue. Mal has been replaced by the equally flamboyant John Bond. City have started a long run from the bottom of the table and, after thrilling December wins over Everton and Wolves, plus a last gasp defeat of a Leeds side who come to Maine Road and spend eighty minutes passing back to keeper John Lukic, Bond's side are finally showing signs of heading away from danger. At the same time a League Cup run has been taking shape after wins over Stoke and Luton under Allison are trumped by a 5-1 beating of Notts County (Dennis Tueart nabbing four) and an unforgettable quarter final win over West Brom at Maine Road which take City to the last four.

A semi-final at last. That stage of the tournament when you hit the limelight, smell the Wembley turf and start to quake in your boots.

Lining up in the League Cup semi finals are distinctly beatable West Ham and Coventry, who of course draw each other, with City's two legged barrier to the final coming in the invigorating shape of all conquering Liverpool, a threshing machine that has been devouring Europe for years. The feeling is nevertheless of high hopes for advancement, given the upsurge of form under the new manager. The weeks running up to the game are spent in high anticipation. At last that gut wrenching dread that accompanies a match that really means something.

***

Those hopes were dashed, partly because the referee for the first leg at a steaming Maine Road was a fellow called Alf Grey, an upright sort of man who liked the sound of his own whistle. He had already blown it a couple of times when, in the 2nd minute of the match Kevin Reeves leapt like a salmon to put City ahead. The place was in tumult, the heaving Kippax terracing a swaying livid morasse of cavorting bodies. Then Mr Grey took another good long blow on his whistle, proclaimed that Reeves must have fouled hapless Liverpool keeper Ray Clemence to have been so much higher in the air than the man in green, and promptly put an end to all of our dreams. Liverpool steadied their early nerves and won the game with a late strike from Ray Kennedy.

Liverpool would scrape through to the final on aggregate thanks to the slimmest of margins, in fact that one goal scored by Kennedy, after a brave second leg performance by City at Anfield saw the width of the crossbar prevent Dave Bennett’s header from putting the Blues through 2-1. That City again stood at the gates of Wembley a matter of three short months later was scarcely believable. What a season of passion and vivacity new man Bond had conjured from the ashes of Big Mal’s second coming. Thousands and thousands of City fans descended on Villa Park, in those days a fine and traditional venue for such a match, for the much awaited FA Cup semi final against favourites Ipswich Town, still going strong on three fronts under the late great Bobby Robson, who had the Suffolk side punching well above its weight. Ipswich were fighting Liverpool for the title and heading towards a UEFA Cup final with AZ Alkmaar and were thus seen as a step too far for Bond’s patched up City.

But City prevailed with a dramatic extra time free kick winner from captain Paul Power and would then be the sacrificial lambs on Ricky Villa’s FA Cup final barbecue, a terrible swerving slalom goal imprinted on our memories for evermore.

And then a curious thing happened.

Manchester City and cup semi finals ceased to be an item. They ceased to be a topic of conversation. They went off the radar completely. FA Cup semi finals were for teams like Wycombe and Watford, Plymouth and Wimbledon. they were for Coventry and Sheffield United, Sheffield Wednesday and, bless them, Newcastle.

In the intervening years City would even find themselves playing the likes of Halifax and Darlington in the Cup’s preliminary rounds, as a member of the third tier of English professional football. The game with Halifax, won 3-0 before a sparse crowd thanks to the less than obvious talents of Craig Russell, would even bring

memories of one of City’s most embarrassing outings in the competition, when Malcolm Allison’s expensively constructed side went down in a quagmire in West Yorkshire to a goal from Paul Hendrie. Legendary defeats to Shrewsbury, Oldham, Forest, Brentford, Blackpool, Chesterfield, Brighton and even to a loose balloon at Sheffield United seemed to tell City fans that the romance of the cups had become the sole property of others, especially any smaller brethren who happened to be playing the Sky Blues in direct combat.

Between the 1981 semi final win over Robson’s Ipswich Town and City’s appearance in the 2009-10 League Cup semi finals with arch rivals United, nearly 30 years passed. Now, never let it be said that Manchester City fans of a certain vintage are impatient, but some may have been pretty sure that they were unlikely to ever need the cardboard FA Cup covered in tinfoil again. That mouldy old 1969 rosette could be safely boxed too.

In those two cataclysmic matches with the arch foes in 2010, City lost out narrowly on the chance to get to Wembley. Five games into Roberto Mancini's reign as boss, Cty fielded a side from which only Micah Richards, Pablo Zabaleta, Vincent Kompany and Dedryck Boyata survive. Richards and Boyata are seldom seen near the first eleven these days. Interestingly, the side put out by United that same night has only lost two of its performers, keeper Van der Sar and Wes Brown, a sign perhaps of why the Reds suddenly find themselves in a state of serious decay.

City were growing fast in 2009-10. Since that semi-final disappointment, we have begun to get a taste for these occasions.

16th April 2011 FA Cup semi final
City 1 Manchester United 0

11th January 2012 Carling Cup semi final
City 0 Liverpool 1

25th January 2012 Carling Cup semi final Liverpool 2 City 2

14th April 2013 FA Cup semi final
City 2 Chelsea 1

Now, the West Ham that City would have played in the League Cup final all those years ago but for Alf Grey's penny whistle, travel to the Etihad for another grand occasion.

After taking failure for granted for 30 years, City now guard against complacency as they face a side thrashed by second tier Nottingham Forest in the FA Cup last weekend. May it be a long time before the rest of us get so used to these tense affairs that we take them for granted ourselves. As beleaguered United boss David Moyes will tell you, success can disappear from the agenda just as swiftly as it appeared there in the first place. Fate is always watching, always waiting, as those on the Kippax in 1981 will confirm.

Kevin Reeves steers in at Anfield, League Cup semi-final 2nd leg (1-1)

It would be an interesting exercise in patience and anger management to cut and paste the opinions of the great and good this morning, regarding City's hard fought and ultimately successful encounter with Newcastle on Sunday. A match that historically often supplies plenty to talk about yesterday turned nasty. From the moment Newcastle's Tiote had his bullet shot disallowed, some of the Newcastle team and, lamentably, some of their staff, lost their self-control, with the almost inevitable conclusion of serious injury, serious malpractice all over the pitch and utterly uncouth behaviour from the home manager.

Whether having three players offside (technically) when the shot was delivered and one (Gouffran), who had to bend his body to avoid being hit by it, adds up to enough for the referee to disallow seems to have carved the football gliteratti right down the middle. I cannot respond objectively as it involves Manchester City, but Gouffran's position and movement away from the arc of the shot surely effects the goalkeeper, who will have to prepare for two possibilities: a shot rocketing in a straight line past him into the far corner or a ricochet into the near post side of his goal. These are normal callibrations that a goalkeeper must make at every free kick and set play, Hart was making them about Gouffran, who was in an offside position. Thus, whilst not obstructing the goalkeeper, he is affecting Hart's decision-making process from an illegal position and thus having an influence on the proceedings. Having said that, goals like this often stand. City alone fell to at least three borderline legal goals in the early season games with Cardiff and Aston Villa, but little steam was let off then. What is good for the goose is good for the Pardew.

Strangely for most of us, City, suddenly accepted as part of the elite, are -it should be said at this point- getting many more favourable shouts than would have been the case five or six years ago. What the Kippax faithful always bleated about the top teams getting many more borderline decisions in their favour appears to be at work in the opposite direction at last.

From this point on, referee Mike Jones had only flimsy control of the match. Samir Nasri's injury came about through a clumsy challenge from yet another player losing his self control. The ball had left the scene, the usual shirt and arm tugging had proved ineffective in halting the departing Nasri, so Yanga Mbiwa chose to swing a petulant leg at Nasri's knee. As it is ridiculous to issue a red card for the resultant harm done, yellow sufficed, but red was certainly the colour of the mist that was descending all around us. The foul was not a bad one, but it mirrored beautifully the lack of control, the lack of respect, the lack of grace that was by now all around us.

Pellegrini: Old even when he was young

Alan Pardew, not a man who has built up any great reputation for civility, exploded towards an alarmed Manuel Pellegrini with the kind of language you might expect to find on the night streets from kebab addled drunks. His words were vicious, obvious and disgusting, these days perhaps small trifle in a world of abject loathing and disrespect, but still abhorrent to witness in this or any other context. Pardew later apologised, the very least he could do, but what lamentable shabby goings on these were.

As the match drew to a tired but compelling close, the steaming, snorting indignation of the Geordie Nation flowing in rivers off the terraces, one knew the resilience and spirit shown by City to depart this venue with the points would be buried beneath the carping and bubbling that these days traditionally follows such an encounter. That the home side had produced such an impressive performance themselves will also be lost in the thud of expletives that followed. City had been battered in more ways than one: by a resourceful and willing Newcastle side playing good flowing and aggressive football, by a wall of indignant noise from the Gallowgate choir and by a running succession of petulant unpunished fouls. The gifted Cabaye managed to remain on the pitch only because referee Jones had done enough damage to Newcastle self esteem for one afternoon. Constant transgression by this player in particular during an ill-mannered second half, each foul followed by the raised arms of the innocent and the mock frustration at the fouled player's seeming play acting, seemed to go wholly unnoticed by the referee and his by now flummoxed assistants. Add to that a yellow card for Zabaleta, who swung at Santon, missed so completely as to be laughable, only to see the Italian flip himself onto the grass three paces further on and we had been treated to a little bit of everything by the end.

Battered and bruised, City make for the top of the table, a sterling and professional performance overshadowed by the ugly, the wretched and the foul-mouthed.

Much has been said about City's potentially record-busting afternoon against Cardiff City, but slightly less air has been heated on the subject of how difficult the Blues have found the Welsh side to beat down the years. Here are one or two memories.

This season's slightly surreal match aside, City and Cardiff have met only a handful of times in the modern era and the majority of those matches hold sour memories: In 1983-84, fresh from the ignominy of that Luton-soaked relegation, City opened with a defeat at a tatty and violent Ninian Park in the second game of the season. A real awakening for both players and the supporters, who made the long trip to swell the crowd to nearly 9,000. The enclosed report mentions an error by Alex Williams letting the hosts edge into a 2-1 lead, which they held onto through to the end of the match.

By the time the sides met again in March, City's dreams of promotion were fading. Indeed a wretched 1-5 reverse at Craven Cottage the previous week had underlined the sparse nature of Billy McNeill's squad. Cardiff arrived with the atmosphere beginning to turn sour at Maine Road, a particularly vitriolic welcome awaited Paul Power, whose stuttering progress down the left flank was followed by unfavourable noises from sections of The Kippax. That City dragged two points from a limp performance was down to the unlikely match winner, David Johnson, one of a string of free transfer additions to the ailing City squad. With early season hot shots Parlane and Tolmie wilting badly after Christmas, Johnson was one of several ageing strikers tried in an attempt to bolster forward impetus.

Paul Power promises to fight on to get fans back on his side

The following season, City again found the Bluebirds tough going, but at least managed a much more positive result from their early season visit to the Valleys, coming away with a 3-0 win thanks to goals from Gordon Smith, Clive Wilson and the new goal-scoring sensation Tony Cunningham. Again, the return game at Maine Road fell late in the season, as the promotion race again looked to be getting too much for the Blues. After leading two nil through the impish skills of youngster Paul Simpson, City fell apart, surrendered the lead and almost lost to the division's worst (and last placed) side. It was at this moment that Billy McNeill realised just what he had taken on at City.

City get a second half "towsing"from the visitors

Before any of these painful second tier encounters, City had played host to the Welshmen in the 3rd round of the Cup in 1981-82. This was to be the season City repeated their glorious journey to Wembley from the previous season, but with a happier final outcome. This match hinged on a robust challenge from the usually targeted Tommy Hutchison, whose lunge put Cardiff's main danger man Wayne Hughes out of the game. In a lively encounter, City progressed 3-1 only to be dumped out in the next round by Coventry City at Maine Road, the infamous game that put Peter Bodak on the map and on John Bond's radar.

As proved the case earlier this season, Cardiff City were a tough nut to crack and, on more than one occasion have refused to crack at all, leaving City with shattered teeth instead.

Goals that were and goals that weren't

It could reasonably be said that both Watford and Manchester City have come quite a long way. Not just in terms of history, for, wait for it, all clubs have a bit of that, but in terms of evolution.

Mention Watford to anyone of my generation and they will regale you with various stories from the late seventies and early eighties. This was a time when Great Britain was gripped by the iron fist of Margaret Thatcher and the football played on our sceptered isle dwindled to the entertainment value of a gecko’s elbow. Some of us, more foolhardy than intelligent, continued to go, week in week out, home and away, building up memories of things, the worst of which should perhaps go unmentioned in delicate environs like this and at best, will be handed down as a badge of honour to any sons, daughters, nephews and nieces foolhardy enough to show willing in the “new age” of corporate plastic.

The FA Cup in the mid eighties was still a thing of thunderous and quasi-mythical beauty, a cup that shined and glimmered and seemed, to most City supporters, to be so far away as to be ephemeral and dreamlike. City’s reveries had long since turned to nightmares in those days of thud and blunder. There was Shrewsbury Town, with their quaint little stadium called Gay Meadow, backed by a vigorously flowing river, where, if Paul Futcher happened to be playing, a man in a coracle, employed to fish errant clearances out of the reed beds, would be paid overtime. Apparently this fellow, already a wheezing octogenarian at the time, was tasked with this job every weekend, paddling emphatically from left to right and back again, retrieving miss-kicks, slices and wayward corners.When City visited in the 4th round of the Cup, David Coleman was beside himself.

There was Halifax Town, with their stadium called The Shay, which resembled an allotment after a steady three week downpour of icy rain. Officionados should reach for the YouTube button and type in “Halifax Shay Manchester City 1980” and sit back and take in the full glory of what that jumbled conglomeration of words actually means. It is ok for us to mention these places, these teams, these long lost games, but to be there, to feel the icy wind of despair, to hear the locals braying, to witness the mudbath deadzone in real time, well let’s just say it tends to age you a little.

City, scarred from these terrible places and awful occurrences, drew Watford in the 3rd round of the FA Cup in 1985-1986. It seems strange to relate now, but at the time, the home side were unstable and as fragile as freshly whipped meringue, whilst the visitors from Hertfordshire, backed by the untold millions of popstar chairman Elton John, were brutal and ultra effective in their Graham Taylor inspired route-one football. Taylor, later to take charge of England in one of the national team’s many forgettable periods, was a straightforward gent, who believed in getting the ball as swiftly as possible to the point of greatest danger. This meant that his Watford side quickly built a reputation for itself as a no-nonsense, up and under football team that the so-called purists hated to play against. Far from being anything approaching purist, City went into the game with hopes high that something positive might transpire.

What followed was a series of three bitterly contested cup ties, where the two teams fought tooth and nail for supremacy. In the opening game, watched by 32,000 at Maine Road, City took the lead through the unlikely pairing of Mark Lillis and Gordon Davies, City’s slowest ever front pairing but, comically, one that I remember with the greatest pleasure. Lillis cantered down the right wing, swung in a cross that invited the lumbering Davies to meet it with a glancing header, which sailed past future City keeper Tony Coton for the opening goal. Watford were to level later when referee Heath, tiring of seeing the ball heading in one direction, offered the visitors a penalty after Mick McCarthy looked at Kenny Jacket in a funny way. (In those days, penalties could be given for the most obtuse of reasons).

One-one it ended, meaning a replay at Vicarage Road. We travelled more in hope than expectation, as always in those testing times, but were surprised to be rewarded with a steadfast defensive display (an element missing from the majority of City performances in this decade) that kept the usually prolific home side at bay. The forst had given way to slush and mud in Hertfordshire, making the difference between City's sky blue and Watford's traditionally garish red, black and yellow minimal.

Nil nil and what in those days was called a second replay beckoned. This was a complicated affair that needed the backing of travel weary supporters, fit and able police forces and willing administrators. Once these traditions were extinguished, football people could simply ask if it would make them any money or not.

But, in the days when these strange things still existed, it would be back to Maine Road for the third game. A second replay. Televison schedules and our busy lives do not allow for such niceties today, but rest assured these events were often high on tension and excitement. It was a dark and snowswept scene that met fans arriving at the ground that night and long queues to get into the Kippax terraces meant that many, including this correspondent, did not see any of the match before the 20th minute. As was often the case in those fabled times, the hope built up over two rugged and evenly contested games that this could be the “year we went to Wembley” soon disapated as Watford scored three and City managed just one. My lasting memory of this deflating experience was the sight of a small Jack Russell terrier scampering onto the snow-clad playing surface and avoiding the desperate arms of Mark Lillis.

City were out of the cup for another year and there was a hairy quadruped making fun of our main striker. All we had outside was a blizzard, a long wait for the bus and a fight against relegation.

Mark Lillis seems unprepared for the late tackle that is about to be carried out

How times have changed.

This article first appeared on the pages of ESPNFC.

Could it be that the tide is beginning to flow in a different direction?

José Mourinho, the latest manager encharged with derobing City, has filed various quotes in the run up to the game, each one slightly more ridiculous, slightly more transparent than the last. Chelsea cannot match City’s spending, he moaned, like a man with a pet hippopotamus that is jealous of the guy next door taking a shower under the trunk of his stoutly built elephant; Why does everyone hate Chelsea and not City, he asked himself out loud over the weekend. Firstly, it is in his interest that everyone hates Chelsea, so that he can continue to propagate the tired old chestnut that it is the world versus Chelsea. Alex Ferguson initiated the same us versus them mentality to great effect at Old Trafford for a generation.

In Chelsea's case this is clearly not true anyway. The West Londoners, like City, have been the target of sporadic jibes about financial doping – that most Wengeresque of terms – but little more than this. If there are those that are not so enamoured, then this is as a result of the borderline tedious power football that Mourinho espouses. It overpowers, it throttles the life away but it rarely entertains in the true sense of the word. Mourinho’s sides have seldom let themselves go, despite a row of more than impressive achievements over the years. He is a winner, first and foremost, a pragmatic tactician and agent provocateur secondly. His sides must function, must do what they were programmed to do. And that is simply, to win. Frills and fripperies he has always been happy to leave to others.

City meanwhile, led by the non-plussed, seen it all before, Manuel Pellegrini, seem ripe to enter a whole new phase. The scintillating beauty of their football, the efficacy of the four, five, six and seven goal slaughters may become tedious to some, but to many others a bright new dawn is appearing over the distant hills. A new club, led by the on-pitch ethic of play and entertain, score one but don’t stop there, concede three then score five, has risen from the charred ashes of Alan Ball and Peter Reid, of Sam Ellis and Phil Neal. Where Mourinho applies the brakes and reorganises, Pellegrini’s folk continue to pile forward in an avalanche of fearless attacking football.

Whatever one's feelings are about buyng success and about super rich club owners, few people rail against football played in this manner. The feeling is that a team that will be remembered as one of the country’s greats of the modern era has been constructed and is strutting its stuff in Manchester right now. That the arrival of such deep pleasures for the now tediously monikered long suffering City fans (yes it was a long nightmare; it got a bit frantic and airless, but we survived, we're still here, the suffering has long ceased, so all is well) comes at precisely the moment United are imploding under the alice in wonderland leadership of David Moyes, only heightens the sensation of new-found glee.

It is not just this, however. A new slant on City can be sensed in the press too. In the last week a number of long pieces in praise of the club have appeared. If Martin Samuel has long campaigned against the lunacy and false morals of FFP, he has now been joined by a varied bunch of football watchers and protagonists in their praise for City, a growing group who appear ready to acknowledge what is by far the most important aspect of all this: the football being played out there on the pitch.

"The tide is turning. Keep your eyes on the horizon and the pounding waves will carry in your dreams..."

Daniel Taylor in the Guardian in his “Changing Skyline of Manchester” article (...”if it is a deception, apologies in advance for being reeled in” he says) and Paul Hayward in The Telegraph have both opined that we are on the brink of seeing something truly special emerge, a footballing ethos that blows away petty squabbles over finance, that makes one forget about the nasty mud throwing being carried out by the small-minded of the football community, that warms the heart on these cold, wet, blustery winter evenings. With FFP being tackled – to a fashion – and a muddy building site around the ground delivering greater definition to City’s future prospects by the day, the growing conviction is of a serious power base being readied for years to come. Football dynasties come and go. The last great one, over the border in Salford, has been dismantled in such rude haste that it will take a little more time for most of us to become accustomed to searching for United in the section of the table where Newcastle andSouthampton sit. A 25-year stranglehold released in the space of half a season of muddling slapstick. Of all people to fill the sudden void, it is the team dubbed in fearful haste as the Noisy Neighbours, who in fact bray little these days and are more than happy to let their feet do the talking instead.

Vanquished Tottenham boss Tim Sherwood called City the “best team on the planet” after the Blues had added five to a previous six against Spurs this season. Ian Holloway and, most amazingly of all, Alan Hansen have been heard to utter similarly high praise over the last few days. Barcelona tweet constant updates of what City are doing, whilst the Spanish press have named City as exactly the draw Barcelona did not want in the Champions League. Where Jason van Blerk once trod, the great and good of the game fear to walk.

City are breaking new territory, winning new hearts and minds with this cavalcade of beautiful football and, in a world where this sport of ours is dismantled on a daily basis into its tiniest, most grubby parts, it is this, the football, that has always mattered most.

Modern football is simultaneously a spectacularly feathered bird of many interesting hues and

an oddly hyper-reactive chicken pecking furiously at its own back end.

The inevitable fall-out to a lively encounter between City and Chelsea, with the spoils of war rightfully carried off by the visiting Londoners, has been interesting to say the least. From the home fans self-combusting with ire that this that and the other was done incorrectly and that the end of the world must be nigh, to the soothsayers returning José Mourinho to Mount Zion and the Pantheon of Football Genii, the air has been thick and acrid with loud words and big ideas.

As ever, somewhere in amongst all the froth and the bluster lies the truth.

Only twice under the still fresh reign of Manuel Pellegrini have City looked hopelessly exposed, against Bayern Munchen in the Champions League and in this latest enthralling encounter with Chelsea. On both occasions, City remained steadfast in their belief that two upfront is the answer to all questions, whether they are being put to them in guttural Bavarian German or with a hybrid Cockney/Portuguese accent. On each occasion, City’s middle orders gradually became swamped and the home side were given a severe to medium run-around.

Against Chelsea the effect was worsened somewhat by the absence of the metronome Fernandinho, his replacement the pedestrian Martin Demichelis starting competently enough with some nice touches and clean tackles, but soon after midway through the first period, becoming more and more isolated as Yaya Touré believed himself to be the evening's superhuman. The Ivorian may have had good reason. With Chelsea beginning the game cautiously, City had a number of chances as the Elephant of Bondoukou arrived snorting a nd steaming at the edge of the box and traversed into it on a variety of dangerous forays that could have brought the opening goal. Had he managed to get a studded boot on to the end of a remarkably accurate Aleksander Kolarov cross, it would have been City in the lead and perhaps a different game unfolding.

This did not happen and, as Chelsea realised there was space to move into, so they occupied it. The midfield five, including an impressive threesome of ex-Benfica men in David Luiz, Ramires and a very mobile Matic making his first full appearance, did their job of harrying, closing and breaking at speed and in numbers excellently well. With Hazard’s poise and Willian’s thrusting energy, the away side’s middle orders possessed every element needed to pick City’s pockets with relative ease. Bayern had done the same to even greater effect at the tail end of 2013, their movement and drive too much for an understaffed City midfield.

The naysayers and wall beaters, in the calmness of daylight, might well want to review the fact that, even on what was obviously an off day for the home side, despite bars and posts being hit with worrying frequency by Chelsea, City were within two magnificent Peter Cech saves (from David Silva’s free kick and Stevan Jovetic’s piledriver) from drawing a late equaliser from the game. As undeserved as it would have been, the Blues would have come out of the match battered but intact and we might have been spared some of the masterful press headlines of exploding title races and blasted certainties. Whoever clears up the mess after a title race has exploded, has his work cut out this morning, that's for sure. It's everywhere. Up the walls. Everywhere.

Chelsea now return to the capital with renewed hope and belief that they can compete on an even keel for this hotly disputed 2013-14 title. Mourinho, master of the quote, purveyor of the look, flapper of the arm (more imaginary cards than your local paper shop) and waver of the leg, will wake this morning knowing that his amusing side show has once again had a meaningful effect, despite the rudimentary aspects of its introduction and the base form of its utilization. For beneath that scowling palid exterior that he seems to have fostered since he was last on the touchlines of Old Albion (how can a spell in Spain make one go pale?), aside from the unnecessarily disrespectful soundbites about Scottish kitmen and their garbled team talks, lies a sharp tactical brain that has soaked up the lessons of working with some of football’s greatest managers.

Whilst Pellegrini continues to play a straight faced straight bat, it is time now for City to show their mettle. With Fernandinho, Nasri and Aguero absent and Negredo nursing a damaged shoulder back to life, City need to push on as beatable middle order opponents line up for the upcoming fixtures.

The next league fixtures involve Norwich, Sunderland, Stoke, Villa, Hull and Fulham in that order. Although the small matter of a League Cup Final with Sunderland, a 5th round FA Cup match with Chelsea and a Champions League Round of 16 game with Barcelona must all be played amongst these league fixtures,there is every chance that City will emerge at the top of the table by mid March.

As the temperature rises and the doubters’ voices become ever more shrill, the quiet Chilean will again be confronted with quotes about being the “nearly man” in possession of the “near-empty trophy cabinet”. City were never infallible and are not now suddenly broken, just as Chelsea have always been a contender and are not now anything different. Football’s twenty-four-seven circus will see to it that more gas and hot air is spent over the next few days concerning this smoke-filled, dangerously unstable title race .

We will watch and read and cogitate with interest.and when the beast has ceased to peck furiously at its own behind, we will once again sit back and admire its beautiful feathers.

A version of this article has already appeared on ESPN's pages

Cort McMurray takes a look at how perceptions of the Blues are changing and how we need to change with them:

Yesterday, I watched the Super Bowl. I am not a fan of NFL football – it’s a brutal, pointless, mind numbingly dull game, an opinion that has nothing to do with my miserable and failed career as a Little League offensive tackle, I promise -- but I’m an American.The Super Bowl in America is like Christmas in Britain: even if you don’t believe in it, you put up the decorations.

Part way through the game, a brutal, pointless and mind-numblingly dull evisceration of the Denver Broncos by the Seattle Seahawks, the cameras flashed on celebrities in the crowd, witnessing the spectacle.There was Kevin Costner, wearing a black turtleneck with what appeared to be a gray shawl, looking dour and imperial, like Dame Judith Anderson with a manly haircut.There was Hugh Jackman, fashionably unshaven and jovial.

And there was Paul McCartney.

No longer one of the Four Lads Who Shook The World, Super Bowl Paul is wrinkled and jowly, his hair dyed an unnatural orange, glumly gumming a slice of pizza while a young woman I can only assume is his personal nurse stands by with his heart pills and diabetes medication.

This depressed me no end, this silent, sober reminder that nothing in our uncertain world is constant.Bright brilliant youth slumps into high trousered dotage.Things fall apart.Everything changes.I want the Paul of my childhood, jamming with the band on London rooftops and shearing sheep on the Mull of Kintyre. I want Paul the way he used to be.

Paul, Linda and a young Alan Kernaghan

Which brings me to the Premier League.

City’s recent rise to prominence, fueled by Chilean strategy, a United Nations of talent and several shipping containers of Abu Dhabian cash, has prompted much comment, most of it scathingly negative.It’s not mere criticism.Let’s face it, some things that have happened in the club’s last decade – City’s brief, uncomfortable association with a southeast Asian strongman, for starters – have been worthy of criticism.This more recent vitriol is beyond criticism.It’s ad hominem and angry and frequently scatological.And surpassingly ignorant.

It boils down to this: “City have always been A Certain Type of Club.How dare they change?”City aren't that club, anymore, no matter what twitchy Internet posters want.The change is confusing and uncomfortable, and it’s hardly happening only to City. Just like seeing a septuagenarian Sir Paul forces everyone to consider their own mortality, a rampant, world class Manchester City forces fans of other clubs to recognize the fundamental changes happening throughout the Premier League: Twenty years ago, English football clubs were mostly managed by Englishmen, and mostly stocked with Englishmen, and mostly owned by Englishmen.They were essentially Mom and Pop operations, where even the biggest, most successful clubs had their shirts sponsored by the local newspaper or an automobile glass repair outfit.

Today, foreign tactics and foreign players dominate, fueled by scads of foreign money.It’s different.For some, it’s uncomfortable.That doesn’t alter the facts: the League isn’t Mom and Pop anymore; it’s a sophisticated cartel of multinational entertainment conglomerates, dealing in staggering amounts of money and exerting its influence in a dizzying number of countries.That may rankle the northern sensibilities of your typical Newcastle supporter, but it doesn’t change the reality.

Manchester City’s chief offence seems to be that, unlike, say, Cardiff City, or Hull City, it had the great good fortune to get foreign ownership who understands the supporters’ connection to their club, and actively works to both “grow the brand,” and nurture good feelings in the City community.That’s what generates the viciousness, the bitterness and the rancor: the change happened and other clubs got stuck with carpetbaggers and confidence men. And we got lucky.

There have been missteps – Gary Cook was a mistake, and tossing over Umbro for the fleshpots of Niketown strikes a false note – but they have been few and fairly minor. The Impeccable Sheiks seem genuinely committed to protecting and preserving City’s unique flavor.There have been no uncomfortable ad campaigns, in which the Starting Eleven was made to tout fried chicken, no outrageous replacement of team colors, no crest changes, aimed at improving souvenir sales in the crucial Asian markets. It’s a newer, bigger, brighter Manchester City, but it’s still City. The Family Mansour has done right by the club and its supporters.

They have also positioned City beautifully to take a place on the international stage.Their “City in the Community” project has built soccer academies in underprivileged neighborhoods from Los Angeles to Miami, quietly establishing bastions of City supporters across North America, and their heavy investment in the MLS club New York City FC automatically makes the United States’s economic capital the club’s second home.Humanitarian efforts have raised City’s profile in Africa and Asia. And of course, they play an inventive, exciting, deeply entertaining brand of football.While the London clubs bicker and snipe like the intermarried potentates of fading 16^th century monarchies and the rotting empire in Salford slowly descends into mob rule and madness, City’s brain trust is quietly, competently gaining strength and influence.

Not tonight, City are playing

All of this is hard to take for the people who want everything to stay the same. This is even true for City supporters.You cannot be City if you don’t love the underdog, don’t have a heart tuned to the irony of it all, don’t appreciate that sooner or later, Life will break your heart. That is who we are.Winning trophies will not change that.But we aren’t in Moss Side anymore.Those days, those wonderful days, have gone. Different days await. If Maine Road was Our First Love, all scraped knees and grade school gangle, The Etihad is Our Grown-Up Romance: a tad frosty perhaps, but dazzling with sophistication and endless, elegant curves.It’s like we went away to University, and ended up dating a young Catherine Deneuve.Out of our league?Maybe.

But how do you say no to a young Catherine Deneuve?

Sad little Kippax, before he ate FineDope (c)

This is the story of a little donkey. The donkey’s name was Kippax and it lived on a farm with a herd of other donkeys. Kippax would spend its days wandering around behind the other donkeys, minding its own business, eating grass and producing medium-to-large amounts of methane, like little donkeys are wont to do. Kippax’s flatulence was never a real issue, but, you know, there was always plenty of hot air. As Kippax grew up, it became a fully fledged member of the herd, neighing and cavorting, even occasionally gamboling, with the others. The donkeys would race to the far gate to see who would be first to get his head in the trough when cruel Farmer Hardaker put the hay and fodder out for them. Sometimes Kippax would win the race and get to the hay first, but often it was beaten to it by bigger stronger donkeys. Kippax did not mind this because it felt natural and normal. In fact it became known as the natural order of things amongst the donkeys.

One day the farm was sold to a new farmer, called Farmer Murdoch. He quickly began sprucing the place up, painting the stables and straightening the pigs’ tails. Farmer Murdoch didn’t much care for ambling donkeys. He was keen to see something a little more dynamic, something that might attract visitors to his farm or investment in his outbuildings, so he encouraged the bigger donkeys to be greedy and to take all the hay for themselves. He put obstacles in the way of the other donkeys, so that they wouldn’t win any of the races. As the bigger donkeys began to win the daily races to the hay troughs, they got even bigger and stronger, some of them expanding to the girth of a medium sized Conservative politician. The same magnificent donkeys would be taken to the annual agricultural fair, where they would win sundry prizes and gain great fame and fortune. Some would then go on take part in the Grand Donkey Derby an event that took place abroad, where they would often make fools of themselves, but occasionally come back with a rosette and a big bag of feed as a special prize. Even when they lost the Donkey Derby, they would always be well fed, making them stonger than ever for the race across the field when they got back home.

The other donkeys stayed at the farm. Some, like Pompey and Shaggy Bates, became lame and were put down, whilst others hobbled on in their own haphazard way. Kippax grew thin and pale, wandered the field’s very perimetre and produced stools of an unusual colour and terrifically vile odour. He never won the race across the field, finding the ground cut up by the magnificent hooves of the quicker donkeys. At one point his groom, Master Pollock, very nearly killed him altogether when he left a rake on the floor and it twatted him full on the hooter.

Highland Fergus, Âne + José Burro enjoying the high life

Children who visited never chose to ride on Kippax, as he smelled off and looked awful. On more than one occasion the Farmer thought about calling in the vet to administrate, but something always stopped him. Meantime, the other donkeys that had grown fat and strong from winning all the races, amongst them Fergus the irritable highland donkey, Âne the French ass and José Burro, a noisy braying Portuguese Wild Ass, wore fine coats of thick lustrous fur and had pretty ribbons and garlands festooned around them. Visitors came from far and wide to watch these magnificent creatures whilst nobody took any notice of Kippax and the other bedraggled specimens at the back of the herd.

Then one day, somebody did take a look at the other members of the group. A man in a strange outfit arrived with a big bucket of ultra quick donkey feed, called FineDope (c), apparently manufactured in a laboratory in Abu Dhabi, as he saw this was the only way to build up the poor wretched Kippax quickly enough to be able to enter the Donkey Derby always won by the big powerful animals. Fergus and Âne and José Burro got very angry at this and pushed and nuzzled their way to see what was happening. When they saw one of the bedraggled specimens was growing strong like them, they began to bleat and neigh to such an extent that nobody got any sleep for weeks. José Burro made a whining sound like an animal being lowered into a mincer, despite the fact that he had often eaten FineDope (c) himself in the past. The noise became so great that police arrived from foreign fields, amongst them a Very Special Constable called Michel.

Michel had strict ideas about how laws work and thought it unfair that the big fat dominant donkeys, who he thought had grown strong by their own careful ways, should now be challenged by one of the dirty ones with matted fur. He told the farmer that he would not allow any donkey that had been given FineDope (c) to show at the fair. “Eet ees unfair for zees lurvly durnkyes to ‘ave thees durty wurns stand in zer way. Zees wurns must nurt enter to ze Donkey Derby. Eet ees only for nice donkeys wiz good fur.” he said and spoke to all the donkeys warning them not to eat odd food given to them by strange foreigners wearing frocks, even if they were starving hungry. “But we are dying of hunger,” said one of the other donkeys, Old Villa, and was soon joined by Fat Ash (who was in fact as thin as a hose pipe by now) and Toffee. “If we don’t eat, we will surely die. It was the same for Kippax and now he’s a big strong boy.” they neighed.

Fat Ash wearing thin

Bu the special constable had other ideas and aimed his gun at Kippax. “If zees one comes to zee Donkey derby after eating FineDope (c) ze end will be sweeft” he shouted. But Kippax had already buried the sacks with FineDope written on them and was now strong enough to run with the others to get to the hay. He could run as fast, if not faster, than the three big donkeys and did not need anymore FineDope (c). But when he ran for food the next day and, getting to the hay first, began to tuck in, Special Constable Michel rose from behind the wall. “Zees,” he said, holding up a sack of FineDope, “just zees!”. But when he opened it, he found only normal hay, the same hay that all the other strong donkeys had been devouring over the years. The big donkeys were dismayed and even some of the starving donkeys, being animals with limited intelligence, felt sad too. When they saw Highland Fergus and José Burro unhappy, they automatically felt unhappy too, although they weren’t entirely sure why. That’s donkeys for you.

By this time Kippax was a strong and succesful donkey, easily winning the races across the field and beating Fergus and José Burro to the continental shows, where he preened and posed alongside donkeys from neighbouring fields, like Klippety Klopp and Frank Ribery. One day Special Constable Michel looked down at his feet and found that Kippax had delivered a rather large steamy dollop to his shiny policeman’s boots. It was a kind of metaphor, but none of the donkeys understood because they were all as thick as pig shit.

It is well documented elsewhere in these pages how Malcolm Allison, dubbed the Original Special One, was responsible for planting some of the early seeds of José Mourinho’s interest in and indeed enthusiasm for football coaching, but many overlook the possibility that Big Mal, the irrepressible larger-than-life character, who took City to hitherto unscaled heights, may also have been responsible for kick-starting the young Mourinho’s penchant for mind games, that most tedious of modern managerial tools to unsettle the opposition staff and fans. Mourinho’s recent outbursts about West London ponies and Arsene Wenger being a “master of failure” have both an unsubtle and a nasty streak to them. Allison, however, preferred good old ridicule and twinkle-in-the-eye provocation.

In an era where these things were novel new tricks, Allison was the master. Already responsible for innovative ideas in team formation, diet, exercise and match preparation (Allison introduced dance and yoga sessions for City’s players to improve their poise and balance on the field of play and was experimenting with what was called his “O System” which left the midfielders to interchange their positions and switch with the forwards leaving a hole – or “O” – in the middle, an early forerunner of Rinus Michels’ Totaal Voetbal, which would woo the world at the ’74 World Cup Finals in West Germany. Mike Summerbee still maintains to this day that “the Dutch learned that from us”), Big Mal was also at home winding up the opposition, particularly when it happened to be Manchester United.

Whilst younger fans of the game think English football’s new era was wafted gently in by the arrival of Arsene Wenger from Japan with his cunning plan to ween Tony Adams and Kenny Sansom off their ten pint lunchtime habit, Allison and City were ushering in these new regimes thirty or more years earlier.

Allison’s tactical meandering knew no bounds when he took on the City job, again mirroring the acute awareness shown by Mourinho in his ability to react to the way powerful sides set up against his own. Even before his arrival at City, where he gradually had access to a better quality of playing staff, Allison had experimented with unusual tactics and formations at Plymouth that had started to get him noticed. Once at Maine Road he completely flummoxed stuffy BBC commentator Kenneth Wolstenholme by playing Tony Book as a sweeper. The BBC man repeatedly referred to Book as a “kind of sweeper-up” in his commentary and was enthralled to find Allison was playing Glyn Pardoe at right back with the number nine on his back in “City’s rather strange format”.

For the mid-sixties, this was space age stuff.

It was a chance meeting with United’s pugnacious midfielder Paddy Crerand at a North West sportsman’s dinner that may have started what was to become a systematic United-baiting habit. Crerand, wallowing in the pain of City’s lowly status (it had not been long since the infamous Swindon game in Division Two had attracted an all-time low attendance of 8,015 to Maine Road), had had a bet with Allison that they would never again attract a crowd of over 30,000.

“....I loathe the bumptious patronising tones of some of their players, their hangers-on and some of their supporters...” – Malcolm Allison referring to Manchester United in 1967, again well ahead of his time!

Allison would take Crerand’s sneering to heart and never forget it. When, a few seasons later, City were riding the crest of a wave, back in the top flight and already matching United’s crowds and glamour, Allison would take it upon himself, sensing the right pre-match moment when the ground was practically full and the atmosphere bubbling, to stride out onto the pitch and walk to the Stretford End to a hail of boos and insults. Loving every second of it, Allison would raise four fingers to show the gathered Unitedites what he felt the scoreline might be that afternoon.

He was at once a showman and an arch wind-up merchant. In the championship winning season of 67-68, before the antagonism had taken root, Allison sent his whole team out to warm up in front of the Stretford End. As the City players carried out Allison’s orders to conduct a team wave to the ranks of United fans, he was pleased to note with suitable understatement that “an atmosphere of agitation” had been created.

He even allegedly hired a steeplejack to scale the roof at Old Trafford one night and pull the flag down to half-mast. Imagine Mourinho attempting to pull that off at White Hart Lane.

"3-0 to us this time, lads!"

Earlier, when he had teamed up with Joe Mercer and the pair were attempting to build a decent side, Allison famously watched Colin Bell at Bury, loudly deriding the future City and England ace as slow and unable to either pass or tackle, in the hope that other clubs’ scouts would report back that Bell was indeed rubbish.

When scouting for a new goalkeeper, Allison instructed Joe Mercer to bid for Leicester’s Gordon Banks. “Ring up Leicester and tell them we’ll do a deal for 50,000 pounds,” he told his colleague with typical bravado. Leicester turned the bid down. Later an incandescent Mal discovered that the penny-conscious Mercer had only bid 40,000 and Banks had instead gone to Stoke, who had bid the correct amount.

Allison’s later years at City and then Crystal Palace involved the development of the Big Mal persona, featuring regularly on London Weekend Television’s Big Match with Brian Moore and on ITV’s first ever World Cup panel in 1970, where his outspoken comments made him a godsend to the new format.

That he would later coach Vitoria Setubal, where Mourinho Felix was his goalkeeping coach, was apt. Mourinho's son, José, watching interestedly from the sidelines, would one day emulate Allison’s gamesmanship himself, using word and gesture to wind up the opposition before important games. That he doesn’t quite carry it off with the panache of the champagne swigging Allison should not be held against him.

Big Mal, after all, was always the real benchmark for all would-be agents provocateurs.

"Will I see you at Half Time? I never make plans that far ahead"

Whilst the battle rages for the hearts and minds of the City faithful (“Ollie” Holt doing a particularly snazzy job of demolished flattened City and plucky oh-so-close Arsenal in his fabulous Mirror pieces this week– (am I going nuts? No, really, somebody please help me with this), the real Champions League pressure test on Tuesday night was being enacted in the full and unforgiving glare of the strip lights and crepe curtains of the Mancunian Suite.

Here amongst the squadrons of trembling acne-clad teenage waiters and the phalanx (phalanx? Oh, yes, that’s definitely a phalanx) of mini skirted, Cossack-hatted hostesses, the talk was of “dying for the company” and “taking one for the marketing team”. Our table, populated by sales figure masseurs and global double digit profit enhancers, hummed to the sounds of fall-out from last Wednesday’s emergency sales meeting and the new directives from that “big nosed oaf” in the Paris office. Every time I initiated a conversation about Vincent Kompany’s hamstrings or, God forbid, the tao and te of Martin Demichelis, I was shouted down by a tall woman whose look for the evening had been constructed by teams of experts from Barrett Homes and TarMacadum. She was alternatively “so excited to be here” and also “deeply worried about last month’s figures”. She had both had her photo taken “downstairs” with Patrick Vieira and been talking to Maximilian from the Brussels office. The excitement and the confusion was at once palpable and ever so slightly ridiculous. The former was all hers, the latter mostly mine. You could, in fact, already cut the atmosphere with a knife.

Behind me, a fellow with a Mancunian accent was timidly embarking on free discourse about Clive Wilson. Looking around from time to time to check he hadn’t been rumbled, I caught his eye and winked. It gave us both strength to continue.We were not alone. Not totally alone, but damn near it.

Meanwhile on our table, Jean Luc was taking one for the wine waiter, a short, bespotted boy with unfeasibly slick hair, who was nervously attempting to nudge napkins into position whilst attempting to be absolutely invisible to the naked eye. An upbringing on the mean streets if Timperley might have helped him in this. His vitally important guest ignored him completely but I for one felt his uniquely terrible pain. Another charming young girl passed with a visiby wobbling bottle of Perrier atop a small tray, nay tablet, and stopped to ask us who we supported. I coughed a piece of mini spiced pretzel across the lush carpet and refused to answer what I have come to consider an obviously unnecessary question. Would I look as sallow and harassed as this if I supported Barcelona, for God's sake? The girl continued, nervously trying to pronounce Fernandinho whilst smiling, welcoming, gesturing and pouring at the same time. I got the water in my lap (it wasn’t even meant for me, I’m a strictly as much alcohol as possible man at City games, always have been, since the age of six and the unfortunate Barney Daniels Incident) and a nervously giggled let’s hope “Fernushkambranca” does play anyway! Will there be anything else?!”

David Silva’s non-smiling face looked out at me from the cover of my free programme.

"Barman. Two pints of Dizzy Lady and a finger dip"

Alongside him, a friendship scarf sat on my side plate like a big loud raspberry to my partisan hatred of anything that might attempt to get in the way of my City winning this game. I pushed it under my posterior in an attempt to be high enough to meet the towering gaze of the marketing lady from TarMac eye to eye. She caught me stuffing the ungodly garment under my buttocks and shot me a gaze of puzzled interest. I felt like sending off one of my best Rick Blaine lines from Casablanca. "Honey, it doesn't matter a hill of beans what you just saw. This could be the start of a beautiful friendship....". Instead I removed the half and half scarf and waved it at her, to prove that i had not been foraging in the back of my trousers for anything else. Her smouldering eyes told me she was impressed.

As we had only been drinking in town since midday, it was easy to sit and refocus for a minute, as the troop of helpers assigned to our eight person table hovered, dillied, dallied, bowed and scraped. I had not started the day looking like a high powered member of upper management and was damn sure my afternoon activities had not rendered me any more business-powerful, but still they came, still they called me “sir” and smiled. Their unswerving dedication to the cause was noted with humility and gratitude and a certain amount of dribbling.

So I skipped and hopped my way through the salmon escabeche (“hey, it’s not cooked in the middle” – “Shall I get you another one?” – “It’s suposed to be like that you arse”....), the Salted Catalan Cod lying in its own bed of sorry excuses and the Seville Orange Crema Catalana, apparently flambéd orange flavoured egg custard (“you’d think the bloody thing would melt, wouldn’t you...?).

Having fallen victim to the wooziness that comes from adding white aperitif wine, bottles of Moretti and a flaggon of red wine to the afternoon’s six pints of Stella, I breezed the breeze and gulped in the fresh air of a cool Mancunian evening outside. My seat, padded to the density of a

My empanada, showing French teeth marks

small prince's bed made from the feathery down of a thousand migratory Barnacle Geese accepted me with an embrace not unlike Aunty Edith at Christmas: too deep, too warm and eerily sticky. The dreaded plastic sheeting was everywhere. We were to be part of themosaic, a marvellous continental invention which is made for television, but not for those in the ground.

In your living room you see hitherto unimagined scenes and unexpectedly touching choreography, a swelling performance of artistry and syncronisation from 46,030 people. In the ground, it stops you clapping and hollering, it comes off on your hands (if you are part of the 97% of the stadium holding up “bits of black” and it prevents you from seeing the, er, fantastic display being put on for the good people in their living rooms. Still, unlike those poor souls on black, I later discovered that my white plastic sheet meant that I and other like.minded folk around me had been holding up the European Cup!! Or the Champions League Trophy, if you are new age. Inadvertently, me and Jean Luc and the inevitable small family party of Japanese that had by now appeared at our side, were to be the chosen ones, who got closest to the cup with the big ears this season. Closer than Vinnie, closer even than Michel Platini and his mates, probably now supping pints of Lambrusco with the Gallagher Clan downstairs. Vive La Belgium, I was tempted to shout in all the excitement but felt it might be grammatically corrected by Jean Luc, who had at last joined us from the bosom of next years Grand Plan du Marketing and was busy scooping hungrily at the last fragments of flambéd crema Catalana on the front of his Vanessa Paradis Trenchcoat.

(....First half ...)

Ah, half time. Wonderful. A time to be back inside again. Amongst friends and colleagues, but mainly colleagues. My menu card (which was so large you had to stand up and edge away from the table to read it, unless you wanted to take someone’s eye out or flip the masses of glasses over) read “HALF TIME: Spicy beef empanada with garlic aioli”. Now I cannot quite remember whether I was ready for such a treat. Quite possibly not. The afternoon Stella(s), interacting nicely with my salted cod and crema Catalana, were making me feel like a mobile Quatermass experiment, but still the sight of Jean Luc, with his immaculately straight blue tie and his side parting and rows of identical sales figures, eating a second beef empanada (there were 4 in the little presentation dish. There were 4 of us there to scoff, er consume, them. Thus ONE EACH) set the tone, I now realise, for the beginning of the second half, where yours truly behaved, as the FA Disciplinary Hearing I should have been called to might have put it, in a way utterly unbefitting a marketing executive of Giant Rollover PLC.

We are of course there to set an example. We are there to show the younger ones which knife to start with (always work in from the outside, kids), how to drink bubbly water without provoking a giant coughing fit and a spray-filled replica of the Iguazo Falls, how to tuck in your napkin and double knot your half and half scarf. Well, they were there for that. As an imposter, a non-board member, a non executive and indeed a non-conformist, this gesture of empanada theft, my empanada, by a Frenchman of all things, helped to push me, if not over – that would be in the capable hands of Mr Jonas Eriksson of Sweden-, then towards the very edge of the precipice.

I had been walking a tight –and somewhat swervy- line for some time already.

He didn’t even ask. He did not ackowledge his sudden bout of the Les munchies du mi-temps. He did not apologise. He did not treat us to the rogue grin of the Mange TousHorrible. He just launched himself at it, his second don’t forget, taking a giant, finger-including scoop of the spicy mayonnaise (this is what they mean by garlic aioli I was informed by a culinary insider) and – and this was the defining moment of my forthcoming surge of table rage – continued to pontificate in a French accent about his sales team’s otherworldly performance. I could see small bits of my empanada going around in his mouth, fragments of my soul being crunched and lubricated and suffocated and smashed, utterly smashed.

My empanada alongside Jean Luc's, before he ate both

I thought of Napolean and went back outside. What happened next sealed it for me completely. It was a good six or seven minutes into the second half and the defining moment was already about to fall. My night was about to be complete. With the play ebbing and flowing, back came the seven man Japanese party, one by one with an interval between each nodding member just long enough to allow you to sit down again before the next one arrived, bowing and clearing bits of, what, empanada!!!, from their lips. Darkness closed in around me, a fog descended, I took to my feet and I began to shout at nobody in particular in the loudest voice I could muster. Mists seized me, as did a large man with onion breath and a walkie talkie.

I looked him full in his one good eye, took a good grip of his lapels and said, "Of all the gin joints of all the towns in all the world, you walked into mine ...."

Darkness.

Cort McMurray looks for some positives from Tuesday's result.

“Clockwise” is a minor John Cleese classic, a cinematic study of a man named Brian Stimpson who, through a series of small misjudgments, sees his moment of triumph dissolve into chaos. At his lowest, sprawled on a country lane and dressed for reasons too complicated to explain here in a stolen monk’s cassock, Stimpson exclaims, “It’s not the despair…I can stand the despair. It’s the Hope!”

Today, I embrace my inner Brian Stimpson.

"yes yes the tackle was late, I know"

The despair is easy. Same Old City. Shackled to a Small Club Mentality, they had their Big Moment, and self-destructed. And their True Colors showed after the match, when The Engineer turned into The Whinger. Did you really expect anything more from this bunch of Hessians, this cadre of well-compensated mercenaries, this public relations tool of the Emirate of Abu Dhabi?

I don’t buy it. I will not slip into the sticky sweet poison of such negativity. The way I see it, we’ve got ‘em right where we want ‘em. I believe that with all my heart. And that’s the agony of being a City supporter: it’s not that’s I’ve given up; it’s that I still hope.

Without our best striker and with a back line that has been suspect all season, Barcelona required a penalty, a forty minute man advantage and some seriously suspect refereeing to manage a victory. When the clubs meet again, Kun will be healthy, which will completely change the way Pellegrini manages the match. And the defense? Somehow, someway, Pellegrini will sort things.

Speaking of Pellegrini, his post-match comments were not the unseemly ravings of a man out of his depth; they were part of brilliant strategy to preserve his squad’s focus and self-confidence. Had Pellegrini meekly embraced the popular cant – Demechelis had no business on the pitch; YaYa was too passive; Barca is a Big Club, and City is a mere pretender – or worse yet, said nothing at all, his players would have headed to the Camp Nou with all the sunny optimism of an out of favor member of the North Korean ruling family.

Like any good engineer, our Chilean mastermind crafted a simple, elegant response to a vexing problem. His message to a reeling squad: “It’s not your fault. This was a fluke. These Catalan guys are beatable. Beatable? They needed referee collusion and a man advantage to hold their own with you!” City will head to Barcelona with confident hearts and minds bent on revenge. Camp Nou’s considerable mystique will not overawe a club convinced that they were robbed in their own stadium. Emboldened by their manager’s confidence, bolstered by the return of their leading goal scorer, what else can City do but rattle off a 3 – nil victory in Barcelona? It’s a done deal, un fait accompli, as they say.

Hope. It is a terrible thing.

You and I are in a state of considerable flux, aren’t we? We’re still not sure if this is meant to be or not. All these wins, all these goals, all these people liking us from afar and hating us from up close. It never used to be like this, in the cosy days of failure and flotsam. The days when Peter Swales talked us up to allow for an even bigger fall. In the days when Tony Book’s flares whipped in the wind like all our lost hopes, when the buzz was about Garry Flitcroft’s hair and Nigel Gleghorn’s goalkeeping gloves. When there was nothing else but Liam Gallagher and Richard Jobson.

Sunderland. Full of the passion of the underdog. Just look at them, lapping it all up. That should be us. That IS us. Only it can’t be anymore. We have left all that painful introversion behind in a cloud of Lamborghini dust (driven by five star clean as you like Abu Dhabi gasoline). We are no longer able to cavort around owning up to tied stomach muscles and lack of sleep. We cannot quote the law of the inevitable cock-up. We cannot stare wistfully at posters of Ken McNaught and Steve Kinsey and say, here come raggle-taggle City for their once in a lifetime tilt at glory. We cannot shout and scream like the eternal underdog, because we aren’t anymore. It was easy to flood through the opened gates and wait for hell to break all over us. Now a different hell awaits us.

Gone are the Roger Palmers. Ten-to-two feet and all. Away with your Graham Bakers. Chubby cheeks all gone. Gordon Davies no more. All those little wafted back post misses from three centimetres. No longer.

Kun Aguero. Yaya Touré. David Silva. Smooth as silk. One two three.

So, now, brave friends, we must descend upon Wembley Stadium, our Wembley Stadium, and show the rest how it is done. Manchester United, Stoke, Chelsea, Wigan. Wembley Stadium. Again and again and again. The Green Man. Those little meeting points. The same bar staff, winking their hellos. The waves of recognition. The nods, the grins. The casual use of the London underground. Whatever happened to getting out by mistake at High Barnet and asking passers by where Wembley was and being told you were almost in the Midlands? What ever happened to travelling with maps and plans and packed lunches in case we went the wrong way yet again? What happened to the old Wembley, the only focal point we had? Full Members Cup in the grey incessant drizzle. Third Division play off final in the grey incessant drizzle. Wembley meant tension but it meant embarrassment too. Gillingham, for Christ’s sake. Chelsea with the prizes handed out by Dickie bloody Attenbrough. 5-1 down with two minutes to go. On a bloody Sunday. A day after the Manchester Derby. At Old Trafford. No royalty for City’s Wembley efforts. No royalties. Just Dickie Attenbrough in a flat cap and a long trek north with our tails between our legs, where they truly belonged.

Now the tail won’t sit down. It’s excited and wags like a Jack Russell in sight of its first chicken dinner.

Wembley meant Keith MacRae’s gingery bonce. It meant Rodney Marsh flicking the ball into John Richards’ path with the back of his heel. It meant bearded Ricky Villa and well spoken Garth Crooks and that damned awful Chas and Dave ditty with Ossie’s doleful cod-English. Wembley meant Tottinghem. In the Cap. In de cap. For Tottinghem. Tears and anguish, like it was always meant to be. Hope dashed, squashed and

Marsh: Heel of destiny

strangled at birth. The departure, energy sucked out of us, faces drained of blood, to search for coaches and trains and cars and the slog home in silence but for the occasional “not again, City, bloody hell”.

So where do we go from here, us lost souls, us drifting bits of anachronistic malcontent? Where do we take our long held doubts, our heaving unhappiness now? What do we do with our gallows humour and our belted songs of attrition? How do we hold onto that magical keep-going-and-be-damned attitude that saw us through disaster after disaster when the disasters are thin on the ground and all the world expects?

Not easy is it?

Manchester City runaway favourites. Manchester City the royal family’s team. Manchester City a dominant force in the Premier League. Manchester City, Champions League regulars. Manchester City, Wembley tenants. Manchester City this and Manchester City that.

So, this is how it feels. This is what we have been waiting for. The glittering football, delivered by a squad of global superstars (and Jack Rodwell), the pristine pitch, the flashlights, the screams of little people, the prestigious people, the friendship scarves with Barcelona and Real Madrid. A scarf, half Real half City! Half Barcelona (Barça to the regulars) half City. What a thing is this? What of our ski hats in 1983? Sat forlornly over our Morrissey quiffs and our Bunnymen side burns, our half Rangers half City tributes to tribal nothingness. Where are they now in this maelstrom of Champions league bric-a-brac?

We groan at Javi Garcia and Martin Demichelis, nod knowingly as Micah flies though the air again, tut at a wayward pass from Gael Clichy, which fails to glue itself to Silva’s heel. We turn and ask our neighbours if 24 million pound Stevan Jovetic will ever be fit for purpose and what the actual use of that kid from the Ivory Coast is. We, who hold the dark secrets of Kenny Clements in our souls, who remember the silent anguish of Geoff Lomax and the wordless agony of Tony Cunningham. We cover and cower and turn away. The shame of it all is ours.

We are surrounded by kids with tatoos, kids with scarves, kids with phones. The gay abandon of youth, the free clear air of the unknowing. We do not burden them with Billy McNeill, or John Maddock, or Ian Davies, or Peter Bodak. We mention not the night we launched police crash barriers after Coventry or Oldham, or the afternoon we urinated on the torn down fences at Meadow Lane and screeched and bayed for blood until our faces looked like Roy Keane. We whisper the tales of Cold Blow Lane and Stamford Bridge (not the one of today with its high sides and five pound hotdogs, the old one with its painted barbed wire fences and twenty

No more of this

metres of sand pit). We don’t talk about carrying a giant inflatable banana to Stoke (not the new *pretty* Stoke but the old Victoria Ground, with its sloping crumbling terraces and its flying bricks welcome) or freezing to the point of no return on the terraces at Grimsby and Middlesbrough (not the new *pretty* Middlesbrough but the old corrugated iron, barrel roof Ayresome Park, with its ramshackle pub on the corner and our blood spattered Pringle jerseys. We mouth sweet nothings into the wind. That’s all gone. It’s better that way.

So, we nod to the past as best we can. We stand upright in the present as best we can. We open our wallets towards the future as best we can. Silently, guiltily, we know the truth. There is no going back. What once was can never be again. Where we once strode, immaculate and proud, primed and set with the steely look of the terminally haunted, we now walk the walk of the unconcerned, nonchalant, self-confident, content. Bloated on our success, slow moving in our middle days, replete with days of glory to wash away the lifetime of hurt.

Now we are allocated pubs. Our pubs. City pubs. Blue pubs. In North West London. Time plays tricks on those of us who dinked and dived through the darkness of enemy territory, wondering whether the Dog and Crown or the Fireman’s Helmet would be a our last port of call. Wondering whether those dives on the way to Crystal Palace and that heaving place on a rocky desolate road outside Bradford would be the end of us. Just for the sake of an ill-needed pint and an ill placed flag.

Where we trod the mean streets of Wolverhampton and Derby and came away with our backsides tanned and our voices hoarse, now we sit in awe at the King Power Stadium remembering Weller and Birchenall and Lineker and twitch in a comfy row at Meadow Lane letting thoughts of Jimmy Sirrell and his loud hailer waft through our comfortable minds. No Lee Bradbury scuff, no Buster Philips trip can skew our confidence now. Steve Lomas moments are whispers in the wind.

No more of that. We mustn’t even mention it, for fear of tweaking the ire of the new age fundamentalists. No talk of that. No bloodshot eyes. No sweat stained shirts or ripped jumpers. No missing pin badge, simple, round, Maine Road maestros, yanked from its position by some eager beaver on the rainswept streets of Solihull or Huddersfield. No bleary yelling to the night sky. No never again Citys.

No, we embrace the new era, the dawn of prawn, the sun-up over SportCity, the ever-lasting glow of the wealthy, the healthy, the live-long-and-prospers. The sunlight gleaming off the glass sides of our palace reflects beaming faces, musicians and hand held mics. People jump up and down with their backs to the action where once we leaned forward to squint through the gales of attrition. Now we tread lightly the roads of combat, dancing, skipping, laughing, wearing painted faces and funny hats. Where once fear stalked, willing self-belief now reigns. No slinking down alleys, no peering around walls, no collars up, look left look right. No “where are you from, lads?”, no “what’s the time, boys?”, just backslaps, Opel Meriva hatchbacks and a light snooze and a pickled egg in the Family Stand.

And now Wembley beckons again, with its frills and its flapping hemline. It knows us now. Its comfy skyline of storage depots and ring roads embraces us. Welcome back, say the billboards and the off licences. Come on in and relax.

We can do this, can’t we? We should carry this off without too much problem, shouldn’t we? It’s horses for courses, isn’t it?

When the expectant noise of Sunderland wafts our way, will those once scorched lungs heave again? Can we make it matter as much as it matters to the men in red and white, whose place we occupied five short years ago?

Let us not ever forget who we are and how we came to be in this state. Open up your lungs, ladies and gentlemen and shout your pretty heads off for the mighty Blues, for, without the noise welling up from thirty years of foul failure, the feathery softness of this new comfort blanket will envelope us all.

If ever an attitude difference highlighted where City can take solace before the seemingly impossible task in
Barcelona, today it presented itself. There follows an excerpt from Sid Lowe's Guardian report on Barcelona's feeble display in losing to Valldolid at the weekend:

"At the end of Barcelona's defeat in Valldolid on Saturday afternoon, Víctor Valdés took refuge in the bathroom.(...) ...here, all was quiet. Valdés positioned his camera and filmed a video résumé of the game, a kind of selfie press conference with a wall of white tiles replacing the usual collage of sponsors. This was, he said looking at the camera, a "bad game." The video is 30 seconds long and towards the end there is a suspiciously familiar noise. It is the noise of someone flushing Barcelona's title challenge down the pan.
That, at least, is the way it was greeted, and not entirely without reason. Outside the stadium something was launched at Gerard Piqué; the following morning everything was launched at all of them. El Mundo Deportivo feared that Barcelona had left "half a league" behind in Valladolid. The only surprise was that they said "half." Others didn't; they insisted that the entire season had escaped. "The players threw away the league ... and we were ashamed of them," ran the headline in Sport, yellow lettering screaming out from a cover in funeral black. The following night, Real Madrid defeated Levante 3-0 at the Bernabéu. "Madrid break free," cheered AS.
Barcelona are only four points behind Real Madrid at the top, one behind Atlético Madrid in second, and there are still 11 matches to go. One of them is the clásico in a fortnight's time, the chance to take points off their rivals and close to within a solitary point. Afterwards, Tata Martino was talking about the maths; Barcelona would continue to fight for as long as the title is mathematically possible, he said. Which is fine but when you start talk about the maths it's never a good sign and the maths doesn't make happy reading. Here's one simple sum to start off with: Real Valladolid had won just four times this season before Saturday. Now it's five...."

Nobody needs reminding that the gap between leaders Chelsea and now-4th placed City is nine points, evidently an insurmountable canyon in Spanish terms. City are not even in the mildly disadvantaged chasing position of 2nd place. Here then is where City may just have a tiny chance. Despite the arguments over Pellegrini's penchant for Martin Demichelis's special brand of casual fouling at the worst possible moment, despite the distinct lack of goals where once there was a flood, despite Edin Dzeko conducting a personal pilgrimage to find the best way to miss an open goal from subbuteo distance, Barcelona are rattled and the press have their knives out and those little bits of stone to sharpen them on.

Manager Tata Martino is, we are reliably informed, not Pep Guardiola and the feeling is that anyone, whoever he may be, will now suffer by comparison. The locals have been spoilt and the slightly below par performance thus far is being greeted with growing amounts of howling and shrieking.

This, surely, is an opportunity for City to tear into their opponents on Wednesday night. Pellegrini's recent liking for slow, methodical starts to games is in stark contrast to the rampaging early periods witnessed in December and January, when time after time games were sealed and delivered before the half time whistle had even come out of the referee's top pocket. The question begs to be asked, do Barcelona feel more comfortable with a chess board opening half an hour or facing an apparently fearless opponent hell bent on carnage? The early goal, if it falls, will cement all of those doubts in the home players' minds and will have the whistlers and the handkerchief owners out on the edge of their seats on the steep slopes of the Nou Camp.

City saw from the first leg that Barcelona are not unbeatable by any stretch of the imagination. Even with a man less, the Blues carved out two or three presentable chances to equalise, before Danny Alves' late sealer. Valladolid, a pedestrian low lying team with hopes set only on avoiding annual embarrassment, have now proved it can be done relatively painlessly. There is enough here to work on, if Pellegrini is bold and returns to the ethic of those heady days before and after Christmas, when City's forward momentum was fearfully strong and coming in from all angles of the pitch.

Unfortunately, the contents of February and march mean that doubts have surfaced in Manchester too. Form has suffered. Key players have been injured. This is not the barnstorming City of two months ago, which would really have put the cat amongst the Ramblas pigeons, but there is still enough hope, still more than enough reasons to believe that Wednesday night can still deliver something memorable for Vincent Kompany and his men.

Balon. Meta. All you need to know.

We have come in our thousands to stand before yet another high altar of world football. We throng the tree-lined precincts of the Ramblas and Plaza Real with its gothic arches and extravagant Gaudi lamp posts. We cluster in expectant groups and drink in the sights, drink in the Volldam, the Cruzcampo, the Estreladam, drink in the wonderful warm sunlight. Cans litter the pavements where petals once fell. An Estreladam lorry trundles gently up the middle of the square just in case of emergencies. Plastic beach balls are kicked in to the majestic palm trees and flags announce our arrival from every pillar and post. Cafés disgorge aromas of freshly fried squid and great thighs of Serrano ham hang enticingly from every beam. We line their streets in our sweat stained polyester leisurewear where a thousand and one wool-clad hipsters have stalked moodily in their Pedro del Horno button downs. We fill their well-heeled alleys and terraces with the confident calls of Gorton and Collyhurst, Prestwich and Bury where the guttural shouts of Catalan and normally resonate. We drape little corners of this red and yellow striped city with the sky blue favours and prepare our gallows humour for the inevitable disappointment. A pasting? An embarrassment? A let-down? A near miss or a hard luck story? Few and far between are the voices expressing certainty of a two goal win and those that whisper it also slur it.

Where some decide it is warm enough to have a swim in the hotel’s roof pool (a rectangle of icy water, seven feet by nine feet briefly houses three grown men who should have known quite a lot better. The icy surface is only broken by several ill-timed and haphazardly constructed bellyflops), the rest of us make do with sunglasses and a read of the paper in the gentle spring temperatures of a city coming quickly into bloom.

Gaudi's lamp posts: droopy

Expectations get the better of us amongst the heaving mass of humanity edging its way up the Diagonalto the stadium. We, the scruffy mongrels, filled up on chick peas and pork and Catalan creme brulée are on our unsteady way to the Nou Camp for another kind of feast.

Outside the giant cliff face of Barcelona’s mythical home, quite a scene is developing as nearly 87,000 people make a concerted effort to gain entry to the same building. The ticket that has been in and out of my pocket all day, just to make sure it hasn’t melted or departed through a new method of osmosis through my pocket and out into the atmosphere, states somewhat precisely General 3 Graderia, Acces 19, Boca 533, Fila 0027, sient 0016. Even with a slow to stationary grasp of Catalan, I am onto it. Happily it also states “only for the visiting supporters”, which makes one feel kind of special.

Just how special Barcelona find us is to be revealed once we have climbed to the top of the mountain.

Do Michel Platini and his band of besuited canapé crunchers, being feted, wined and dined somewhere in the bowels of this cavernous stadium, know how far some of us have had to walk to get to our sients? And all uphill at that! Images of his face come to me, munching languidly on some thinly sliced salmon marinated in the juices of a million cadis fly larvae, as we haul our miserable corpses ever upwards. Only the secure knowledge that we are about to witness one of the crowning moments in City’s history drives us ever onward into the mists of a darkening Catalan night.

The Travessa de Les Corts, once jam packed with taxis, tooting cars and impatient pedestrians, all converging on the citadel, by now lies miles below us, its traffic thinning, its population emptying into the big building with the tall sides. The last flight of stairs becomes onerous and slow, as lungs fail and a queue forms to get back out into the open air. A steward appears, jolly of face, dapper of bib, to wave us on. “Go, vale, vale!” he shouts and gestures that it would be wise if we continue to climb to a section that appears to be full already. All those little numbers printed carefully onto our tickets suddenly mean nothing. Nothing at all. It is like boarding the late Ryanair from Magaluf, but with 5,500 other happy souls who have been at the trolley service all day.

Our sometimes jovial, sometimes serious, but mostly tremendously apprehensive steward, silently

From behind the nets "ripped by City fans"

mouthing entreaties to the Gods of the Sagrada Familia who have placed him here tonight as Barcelona’s sole representative before a rabble of English that will almost certainly riot at the drop of a hat, has bought into the theory that most of us have arrived unwashed and unreconstructed on a charter flight direct from 1983. Looking at us, you can see the area for confusion.

Possessing only Catalan, Spanish and a rudimentary ability to wave his arms, he tells late arrivals to keep on going. We are facing the heavens. We are just under the clouds. There are no allocated seats. My Boca 533 is correct enough, but the rest is as rooted in reality as Monsieur Lannoy’s grasp of a good tackle is about to be. People are just being waved forward and upwards into already packed stands. Bewildered, frightened and in a hurry, the gangways are filling with fans too. Heated words are exchanged between folk who know no Spanish and bibbed representatives of Barcelona who know no English.

When we finally manage to turn to face the other way, the temple reveals itself in glorious technicolour. Only there is a hitch here too. For, we will be the only fans to be afforded the same view you would have watching migrating wildebeest from a helicopter, through a thick camouflage tent. Pockets of City fans are beginning to make

Where the special funds are kept

themselves heard further below in the home sections. Three of our happy band –we already know- are at the other end of the stadium with other optimists, who had bought tickets on the Ramblas in the morning.

** Note to FC Barcelona: wonder if those in the know might want to put some of that Neymar leftover fund into shoring up the old edifice a little and perhaps paying for some English classes for Apprehensive Rùben and his jittery mates in bibs.

Butthere is no time for trifles like this. The teams are entering the surface to a mass of plastic red and yellow flags. The Barcelona anthem strikes up. It will be days before the dry little military ditty exits my head. As the sides line up the first swell of Blue Moon heaves out over the night sky. We are so high up, this probably doesn't even register to the folks back home, but the tightly packed City curvais in tremendous voice. The home fans will manage two more flag waving bursts after each goal and the occasional roll of tickled applause. I am struck by a lack of passion in the ground. They have seen it all before, I guess. One Champions League knock-out round morphs seemlessly into another and so on until the world stops turning.

The next day reasons for this are revealed. The little red and yellow flags are everywhere. In the old town, at the cathedral, on the Ramblas, at Plaza Catalunya and each one is neatly rolled up and poking from the back of a foreign tourist’s rucksack. Here lies the future and it is wrapped in canvas and speaking Swedish.

"Is that Messi there...the smallish one?"

I digress. The action has started. City manager Pellegrini is up in the Gods for talking too much (only the dios know what he will say after this one), whilst Gerardo Martino, embattled and possessing the suave good looks of a bus driver coming off the late shift in Asunción, prowls the touchline alongside the thin fellow who assists our manager. Make no mistake, Barcelona are far from past it. Tales of their impending demise have been somewhat exaggerated. Whilst the morning press and its possessed by the Gods headlines are predictably over the top, there still remains enough class to make this Barcelona vintage a tough one to uncork. They still swarm at you with their short passes. They still overwhelm with their quick thinking. They still grind you into making mistakes in dangerous areas of the pitch. Most importantly, they still have an innate ability to be knocked from their feet by the slightest zephyr of breeze and make it look like Hurricane Hadley is in town. Our French stand-up, Monsieur Tannoy (shout it loud) is convinced and proceeds towards refereeing nirvana with his golden whistle and his warped sense of fair play.

Packed at the front, dishevelled at the back

City, hardly the underdog these days, hold on for dear life. An increasingly dogged, brave display begins to grow on us. Not cowed, not pressed back, City are winning corners and keeping possession. Against the owners of the ball. Chances come and go. Lescott upends Messi but the referee is busy filing his nails. Joleon’s trusty old legs are whirring as fast as they can, but every time he slides one in, the little Argentine has just departed. City go toe to toe and do not give an inch.

Again, as in the first leg, we are treated to a referee seemingly starstruck and whistling gleefully whenever Barcelona players go to ground (and boy do they go to ground). At one stage Iniesta lands on the turf, dispatched by an ordinary enough tackle, and lies in a diagonal mess with one arm stiff and in the air, like a board hard corpse. Whilst many of the Catalan newspapers and sections of the English press dismiss City’s efforts as puny, the wall of support from upon high suggests a different point of view. Referee Tannoy dismisses Zabaleta for asking for his penalty back. Messi does his famous little feint and dink routine. All is going round. Kompany digs an equaliser and the brattish Dani Alves immediately skips in for 2-1. Barça are not dead. Not yet. The press, who have murdered them all week, now flush up with hyperbole. It is all about diosand pasión. We have seen great players play well, but we have seen little or no passion. A place swollen on history and self-importance, pumped by thousands of tourists and half-believers does not easily make for pasión. It is already happening at the Etihad. This is the cult of the super clubs.

Amadeu arrives at Plaza Real

City are out of the Champions League, but have acquitted themselves admirably to what had always seemed a gigantic task.

Now they must lick their wounds and prepare to swap the sun-kissed Ramblas for the sobering surrounds of Humberside. Wigan-Barcelona-Hull in the space of a week. Time travelling at its best. Whilst the quality of opposition will not be nearly as intimidating, those heading to Hull can at least rest assured their accomodation will be safe and comfortable, their seats appropriately numbered and their “matchday experience” will mirror the standards expected of stadia in the 21st century. Michel Platini will not be in Hull on Saturday, but he will no doubt be fascinated to learn that even the biggest of European giants can still, it seems, learn some valuable lessons from their smaller brethren, if what the powers that be have turned into a “consumer experience” wishes to live up to its lofty and these days not inexpensive tag.

PRESS REACTION -

"Negative point: Manchester City fans again ripped the netting protecting the away section..." Mundo Deportivo

Those That Are Alive (When They Want To Be) "Those that are dead are City." ... "Messi and Andrés assassinated them..." - Sport

"Nasri.timid. Lescott. Insufficient. Dzeko. Man of the Match."

"Gods return the faith to Nou Camp" - Sport

"Impressive support and passion for the team...." - Mundo Deportivo

Two matches from one season: FULHAM 1999-2000

Romance stirs by the sparkling waters of the Thames

August 14th 1999 dawned sunny and calm in London. By the banks of the Thames, Craven Cottage, newly restored to the second tier, looked forward to receiving Manchester City, also back in the big time after an eventful season attempting to avoid cowpats in the old third division. City had opened inauspiciously with a home defeat on live tv to Wolves, whilst Fulham had drawn 2-2 at Birmingham. A midweek blitz of Burnley in the Worthington Cup restored faith amongst jittery City supporters that the season need not be a complete disaster. Fulham, with the likes of Steve Finnan, Rufus Brevett, Chris Coleman, Lee Clarke and Geoff Horsfield, were tipped to be strong challengers, whilst City were looking for a season of consolidation after the ructions of 1998-99 had nearly caused us all seizures.

"The only noteworthy incident came in the 70th minute when Collymore went down in the box under a beefy challenge from Morrison. (...) When asked why he was sent off, Morrison said, "I haven't got a clue. Collymore just whistled..." - Mark Redding in The Guardian

Tiatto produces his usual half-hearted commitment

The game was to hinge on an incident in the 70th minute. Embroiled in a bout of pushing with Fulham's star man Stan Collymore, captain Andy Morrison, with a reputation for storing the shortest temper in football under his overstretched shirt, somehow ended up with his tongue in Collymore's mouth. As Morrison received his marching orders, it was unclear whether tongue kissing an opponent had been deemed a bookable or a sending off offence, as Morrison had been booked earlier. "We've had a player sent off for putting his tongue down another player's throat," exclaimed a mildly surprised Joe Royle at the end of a backs-to-the-wall 0-0 draw, which earned City their first points of what would turn out to be another one of those quite eventful seasons.

CITY: Weaver; Crooks, Tiatto, Wiekens, Morrison; Horlock, Jeff Whitley, Bishop; Dickov, Goater, Kennedy (sub used: Vaughan)

By Sunday 16th January, an odd thing had happened. Fulham, as expected, had acclimatised well to their new surroundings and were well placed in a comfortable 10th place, City, though, had managed to do the usual trick of surprising everyone, this time in a positive way, and lay in an incredible 2nd place in the table, a single point behind leaders Charlton. City came into the Fulham game on the back of a salutary lesson in the 3rd round of the Cup, where David O'Leary's brilliant young Leeds side had thrashed the Blues 5-2 at Maine Road.

"We are not going to go out and meet teams the calibre of Leeds in this division (...) we have to find out strengths and play to them..." - Ian Bishop, previewing the Fulham game.

"Well, they're hardly Leeds are they, Fulham?!" - Joe Royle previews the Fulham clash in his own inimitable way.

This match hinged on the performance of another high profile player. Whereas the away game had been dominated by Andy Morrison's romantic advances on Stan Collymore, this match was all about the incredible goal poaching of Shaun Goater. The Bermudan striker, with a knack for hitting the net with any part of his body, grabbed a brilliant hat-trick as City kept distance between themselves and the hard chasing Ipswich and Barnsley in 3rd and 4th respectively.

Shaun Goater carries out another unlikely finish, this time over his right shoulder

Taking his tally to 18 for the season with a neatly taken threesome, Goater was busy confirming his cult status amongst the City faithful. Again this match hinged on a sending off 20 minutes or so from time. With City one up, Chris Coleman was given his marching orders for a foul and hand ball double on Goater as he raced onto a cunning through-ball from Rodney Trotter look-a-like Tony Grant (a collector's item if ever there was one) and from that moment on City had it all their own way, scoring another three goals, with a penalty from Kevin Horlock completing the rout.

CITY: Weaver; Edghill, Wiekens, Jobson, Granville; Bishop, Grant, Horlock, Kennedy; Goater, Taylor (sub used Tiatto). An amazing six changes from the side that had played the August fixture.

The season would end in tears for the third season running, but this time they would be tears of delight and disbelief after a roller coaster game at Blackburn saw City promoted for the second consecutive season. Fulham, finishing strongly in 9th, would miss the play-offs by nine points.

Shinton: no laughing matter

Two matches from one season:
Manchester United 1979-1980

Saturday November 10th 1979 dawned damp and dark in Manchester and feelings amongst the City faithful seemed to match the weather conditions. Malcolm Allison's second coming had not reignited the good times, but instead had hailed the arrival of many sub-standard players to replace the stars he felt had passed their sell-by date. Having shipped out Brian Kidd, Asa Hartford and, most depressingly of all, Peter Barnes and Gary Owen to West Brom, Allison's side now featured the likes of Steve Mackenzie, a £250,000 teenager from Crystal Palace, Michael Robinson, £750,000 from Preston North End, Steve Daley £1.450,000 from Wolves and Bobby Shinton £300,000 from Wrexham. Even more bizarrely, Allison would add to the extravagantly priced with low profile players Paul Sugrue, Dave Wiffill and Barry Silkman, odd captures from non league and reserve sides, who were now expected to rise to Big Mal's expert coaching and become integral parts of the next generation. To complete the decidedly unstable cocktail, Allison threw in homegrown youngsters Tommy Caton, Nicky Reid, Ray Ranson and Dave Bennett. What happened next was entirely predictable.

On this occasion it would be none of these names that made the headlines. Both derby matches in 79-80 brought another player to the nation's attention, a player neither in the first days of youth, nor in the infamous Allison how much did he pay for him? ranks.

Step forward Tony Henry.

The 22 year old had the season before turned down a move to Blackpool and was expected to be a bit part player in Allison's extravagant plans, but with the likes of Colin Viljoen, Daley and Kaziu Deyna failing to impress the coach, Henry was handed his chance in midfield.

City arrived at this stage of the season having been knocked out of the League Cup by 2nd division Sunderland and thrashed by champions-elect Liverpool, but with the flickering embers of a half decent home record to keep hopes ticking over. European Champions Nottingham Forest had been put to the sword in October, the winner a peach from Deyna, and there had been signs that Mal's expensive misfits might yet be beginning to gel.

With the game goal-less at half time, it was left to Henry, distracted by movement on the touchline which he feared might herald his replacement, to ignite the match. As the ball was squeezed from tackle to tackle in the muddy North Stand penalty area, it popped out to Henry, who dispatched it past Gary Bailey with aplomb. The 50,067 in Maine Road erupted and the City fans were soon celebrating a second, curled in exquisitely by Michael Robinson. League leaders United had been thoroughly beaten by the end and City, hovering in lower mid-table, could only hope that the season might yet deliver more than the inconsistent fare they had witnessed up to that point.

"Robinson, good try. Oah! Ooooh! That's a goal. To grace any derby match...." - John Motson, Match of the Day commentary

By Saturday March 22nd 1980 and the Centenary Manchester Derby, all hope had disintegrated and the denizons of the Kippax were now fraught with worry that the season might go a step further and deliver the unthinkable: relegation. With United now 2nd in the league and fighting the yearly losing battle to keep up with Liverpool, City began the day one place above the dreaded bottom three of Derby County, Bristol City and a seemingly doomed Bolton Wanderers. As it turned out, these very three would go down, but we were not to know it, biting our fingernails through those dreadful last weeks of season 79-80.

Kevin Reeves at Old Trafford

With few high points since the November derby match and the unequivical low of FA Cup dismissal on the legendary quagmire pitch at Halifax Town, City's approach was more Desperate Dan than measured plan. Few expected the derby to deliver grace and beauty, so much hung on the result, but what we got was still decidedly unattractive fare for Number 100 in a history of games that had created heroes and headlines on a yearly basis.

As Richard Bott opened in his Sunday Express piece, "We had hoped the Centenary derby would be a glittering occasion of pageantry and passion, a day of fine football and lingering memories. Unhappily it never measured up..."

Ironically it was to be Tony Henry again, who made the Sunday papers, but this time for all the wrong reasons. A scruffy match with few obvious scoring chances finally slipped away from a battling City side in the very first minute of the second half.

"All the abject misery of City's season was wrapped up in the crazy cameo which gave United the only goal of a dismal contest" - Richard Bott, Sunday Express

In attempting to block a tame shot from Mickey Thomas, Henry stuck out a boot and the ball looped high off his foot and over the stranded Joe Corrigan. United had presented little danger and their title aspirations had looked as sullen as City's own chances of finishing the season with any degree of optimism. City would leave it until very late in the day to save their souls with a typically emphatic burial of Bristol City in a relegation cliffhanger in late April, whilst United gathered strength from this victory and eventually ran Liverpool close for the title, only succumbing on the final day when Liverpool trounced Villa 4-1 to win the League title. For Tony Henry the two 79-80 season games with United would represent isolated and indeed contrasting moments of limelight in a career that never properly hit the heights. He will be remembered as the Allison water carrier who briefly hit the headlines in Derby number 99 and 100.

THE INFREQUENT ACQUAINTANCE

A DELAYED ARRIVAL IN HEAVEN part two

THE CONDENSED READ: Fulham away

THE DRAMA, THE PASSION AND THE GATHERING FREQUENCY OF THE CUP SEMI FINAL

THE CONDENSED READ: NEWCASTLE away

VALLEYS AND TROUGHS

JACK RUSSELLS FOR GOALPOSTS

THE TIDE TURNS

A FLUSTERED CHICKEN WRITES....

ODE TO THE SHEEP SHEARING DAYS

THE DONKEY DERBY

MASTER AND PUPIL

JUST CHAMPION

AN OPTIMIST WRITES...

EDIN, THE CONTROVERSIAL CAMPERVAN

HIGH BARNET LOW EXPECTATIONS

CHINKS OF LIGHT, RAYS OF HOPE

AQUI SE SUFRE MUCHO

FULHAM TIMES TWO

MANCHESTER UNITED TIMES TWO