The last 6 weeks have been the best six weeks in my 35 years of watching the club. When Tevez lifted the cup at Wembley my football life flashed before me a bit, a bit like a drowning man. There was the glory, albeit limited, the famous victories and the resurgance of a club which seemed dead. But there was also those stomach churning lows. Those awful moments were suddenly all part of a tapestry, a road which lead to that day at Wembley and hopefully continues to the Champions League final. I believe that you need to experience those lows to appreciate the highs as a football fan, and that's why the ecstasy on the faces on all those blues in WEmbley, the tears, the dancing, was so much more intense than fans of most successful clubs will ever know.
So I thought I'd reflect on those lows, and give my top five. I actually mean moments, rather than matches, when I felt sick to the stomach, close to tears and even ready to jack it all in.
1) Gillingham go 2-0 up at WEmbley. I can remember it like it was yesterday. The most tense football match I have ever been to bar none. Big Fat Bobby Taylor put them 2-0 up with a few minutes to go. United had won the treble. We had failed to get out of the third division. I sank down in my seat and put my head in my hands. I questioned my love for Manchester City. I thought "I can't put myself through this any more". I said to my dad "It's never ever going to happen for us, ever, is it dad?". He just looked at me with a tear in his eye.
2) Driving back up the M6 after the 5-2 victory at Stoke. There was no actual moment in this game where the reality of our relegation hit home. It kind of slowly seeped over the crowd like mustard gas. And being undercover in the Stoke end sharpened the senses. But as we drove back up the M6, a car full in total silence, the reality of what had happened kicked in and I just felt sick to the core. How had we sunk so low?
3) Full time whistle at the Luton 83 relegation. The wierd thing about this one is that relegation was a total shock. We'd not been in the bottom three all year. We needed a point to be safe. But it was all irrelevant to me, a 13 year old. City didn't play in division 2. This was just a clamactic end to a poor season. Bang, Antic scored out the blue and the crowd was in total shock. We sang "We'll support you ever more" but there was a sense of total disbelief about this one.
4) United come back from the dead. I think this was about 1994, we were 2-0 up and cruising at home to United. At the time we had as good a team as them and it felt like City were finally back. suddenly we sat on the edge of our own box and they started to murder us. When they got it back to 2-2 with a fe wminutes on the clock it was bad, but when they scored that late winner it was worse than a hard kick in the balls. In fact it was a few minutes after that goal was the low. I seem to remember we'd been singing "2-0 up and you fucked it up" at them all game after a defeat to Galatasary and they were singing it right back at us. Ouch.
5) Driving home after losing 1-0 to Bury. This would have been around 97 or 98 I think, when we were blatently not going back to the premier league, we were actually going backwards. The club was in a mess behind the scenes. We lost to Bury and Maine Road was absolutely furious. The stadium shook with ferocious booing at full time. After the game, David Makin rang GMR to basically say that the club was in tatters and it was all down to Franny Lee. For one of our shareholders to do this was just mindblowing and it seemed at this point that City were doomed forever.
So there you go, there's my low points. The only difficulty was selecting the 5 worst - I could have done another 15 easily! I never dreamed during any of these moments we'd be where we are today - ever. But we are. Enjoy it, Blues, because we fucking deserve it.
