Perceptions of who are a big clubs and who are parvenu interlopers are often conditioned by your youth.
The problem for City in this regard is that the three decades between, say, 1978 and our takeover in 2008. Gary Neville was born in 1975 so he won't remember City winning at Wembley a year later, or chasing Liverpool for the title another year on (when we twatted Spurs 5-0 to almost confirm their relegation), or even the 1981 final and replay.
What he does remember is 30 seasons from 1978/79 in which we finished in the top ten of the top flight on only seven occasions (only three times higher than ninth and twice above eighth). He'll remember the twenty-year period in which we spent nine seasons out of the top flight (if we take Spurs, Everton and Villa as a comparison, they had one between them in the same period). He'll remember us, after 1981, not even playing in another domestic semi-final until the second decade of the new millennium.
He won't remember Maine Road in the seventies, when it was in the words of Joe Royle a good friend to a good team and one of the best stadiums in the land. He'll certainly remember it when no one could seriously attempt to give it that label after a grievously botched reconstruction.
He won't remember the Manchester derbies in the seventies, when City often started favourites and regularly won. He will, however, recall the more than two-decade stretch from February 1981 to November 2002 in which City often weren't even good enough to be in the same division as United and, when they were, rarely threatened a derby win. The 5-1 trouncing at Maine Road in 1989 was a great day but a lobe victory over the enemy in over 20 fixtures during the above period.
At any time up until the late fifties, City would probably have been regarded as a bigger club than Spurs. The Londoners had a golden period in the early sixties as City declined, which no doubt put them ahead, but I'd argue that our resurgence under Mercer and Allison restored us to a similar level. In the late seventies and early eighties, no one would have questioned the right of either City or Spurs to be labelled genuine big clubs.
Our subsequent under-achievements, for what we can primarily thank that twat Swales, have skewed the perception, but represent an outlier in our history. Unfortunately, our performance was abysmal for a club of our size and it definitely affected the view of us in the wider football world. There are loads of media people of a similar age to Neville who think similarly to him, unfortunately, so this is a common narrative.
It's really irrelevant, though. Plenty of major clubs have, through a combination of external cash and top management, come from humble pasts to sit at the top table.
United themselves, funded by James Gibson and managed by Busby, came to the fore post-War. Before then, the club had been a complete nonentity for decades apart from a four-year spell when they were hugely advantaged by having been able to sign four top players from City in highly unusual circumstances.
Liverpool were firmly in Everton's shadow until Shankly arrived and inspired a resurgence in the early sixties. That was abetted by director Eric Sawyer, an appointee of John Moores, who funneled Littlewoods Pools money into the club to finance Shankly's lofty transfer ambitions.
Arsenal, the Woolwich Nomads, were Charlton Athletic's slightly less popular forerunner before becoming football's first franchise club. The tainted owner, Henry Norris cheated the club's way into the top flight, then lured Herbert Chapman from Huddersfield, before finally being banned from the game for financial impropriety.
If City play the cards right, then in 20 years time, City's less successful days in the past will be swept under the carpet by the media just in the manner of the three above examples. City-supporting FOCs like me, if I survive that long, will enjoy the memory, while Neville will be howling at the moon claiming we're not a real big club. Idiot.
