I don't want to get into any wild predictions about the weekend , as the point I'm going to make remains the same whatever the outcome on Sunday.
There seem to be a number of points being raised by Liverpool fans to point to our unworthiness as Champions. From our lacklustre crowd and poor attendances to lack of players who genuinely care about the club. They are all assertions which could easily be challenged as wrong and undermined as inconsistent, but I'll leave that to others.
What I will take issue with, are the claims that we're a "plastic club" infested with newbie supporters. Whilst this may be true, to an extent, in the wider world, it certainly isn't the case, at least based on what I observe, at most games, certainly in the league. Doubtless this will be subject to some change as the club evolves over the coming years, but at its heart the club will still be followed by a group of supporters who share a common bond, which no Liverpool fan can hope to fully appreciate.
There is a rump of supporters, above the age of 40, who have actively followed the club for the last 30 odd years as it stumbled from one disaster to another. There are also younger fans who had to endure much of those difficulties, but their time of birth may have spared them to some extent. These are supporters who witnessed a once leading club, inflict wounds and mediocrity upon itself while they stood by, helpless. A group of fans who looked towards the top of English football, when City were no longer a part of it, with a mixture of regret and anguish, while their local neighbours swept all before them at a time when English football was gripped in a cycle of growth. All this against the backdrop of the teams at the top taking ever increasing measures to protect and calcify their positions, to exclude fallen giants like ourselves. And yet in spite of that these supporters carried on following the club in great numbers, wondering, in fact, if we'd even see a cup final again in our lifetimes. We managed to claw our way back to the top division and stay there, but the reality was that there was a glass ceiling in place through which we could not hope to break.
And then everything changed. By a combination of happenstance, circumstance and good fortune someone decided we were worth a punt and the outcome of that punt is there for all to see at the top of the Premier League with only a game to go.
So say all you will about the crowds and their lack of noise. It's all fair game, but know this:
Sitting there, in our stadium, with other people who I've shared this incredible journey with for the last 30 years, seeing the plans in and around the ground for greatness, watching some of the best players on the planet play for my club, planning Eurpoean aways which a decade ago were in the realms of fantasy, it does, at times feel a little unreal.
But to me, to us who've lived through that narrative, there's nothing about it that feels plastic in any way whatsoever. To have followed Manchester City for the last three decades and to end up where we currently reside feels anything but hollow.
It feels, in fact, absolutely fucking amazing.
