I think that every City fan has had that moment where the frustration just boils over the top and you question why the fuck you're spending your money/weekend following these bunch of fucking wankers around who constantly let you down.
I remember mine down to the very day - it's the only game I've ever walked out of in disgust. Charlton at home on the day before New Years Eve 2000. By the time I walked out, I probably should have turned off the lights based on the remaining attendance. There were worse games we played and worse performances that we'd had but maybe due to the optimism of the preceding seasons, I really bought into us as a team that was going places against my own experience and common sense.
The game was terrible. We were 2-0 down in about the first 15 minutes against a Charlton that weren't exactly world beaters themselves but still looked like they had a brighter future than what we had. One of the goals was a corner that was whipped in and the ball was at Howey's feet for long enough that I probably could have walked onto the pitch from my seat, picked it up in my hands and threw it away for the amount of time he had to clear it and he still failed to defend it. There was another one where Weaver had a goal kick and he just casually kicked the ball directly to their winger for a free one on one. Goater missed an absolute sitter where all he had to do was literally stand still and let the ball bounce off him and he put it right over the bar. Then there was the icing on the cake - Dunne attempted to clear the ball while 30 yards out by just twatting it at the Charlton player who got an odd connection and it looped all the way over Weaver's head. From 30 yards. We could get Messi to try that 600 times now and it would never come off again. Summed up City entirely - equal measures of bad luck, incompetence and frustration.
There were worse games in City's history and the stuff in the lower leagues was awful to watch but that game was my personal boiling point. You know, we were shit and that from 95ish onwards but after the double promotion you thought that maybe we'd turn a corner and get back to the early 90s form. We'd just signed George Weah FFS, things were on the up. 2000/01 was a fucker of a season because it took all of that new dawn optimism and crushed it. We didn't start the season well but I remember thinking that it was an adjustment and we'd played some really big teams so maybe we'd be alright. Then we lost to Ipswich at home in what might have been the most disgusting first half performance I'd ever seen from City but the optimism was still fighting against the oncoming storm of reality and I thought maybe it was just a blip. The Charlton game was the wakeup that this was not a blip, that we weren't unlucky with the fixtures, that this "too good for the lower league but not good enough to not be embarrassed in the PL" stage was what the immediate future held and the raging frustration just kicked in all at once. If I had to walk past the bench to get out, I might have even become one of those raving lunatics who runs on the pitch and throws their season ticket at them.
There's a few times in life where you really remember not just the events that happened around you but also exactly how you felt. Your own personal store of this emotion that's kept in a barrel in a storeroom that you can open when you need it; like remembering how you felt on the birth of your kids or your wedding day when you need a bit of a lift. My barrel of whatever that emotion can be called where you mix contempt, frustration, rage, disappointment and disillusionment together has a label saying Charlton 2000 (h) on it. It's also why I can't ever be a flapper in whether we sign Haaland or if Pep plays a DM in the CL Final or whatever the latest drama is. Because as soon as I feel myself getting really frustrated, I go to my barrel, peek under the lid and remember watching Claus Jensen's goal fly over Weaver's head and think to myself "you know what, we got through that so we'll probably get through this too".