The end of the 88-89 season has never known anything more "pure City".
Seven or eight games to go. We go to Walsall second in the league whilst they haven't won in 20 odd games and are rock bottom. We go 2-0 down then have Andy Dibble taken off. Nigel Gleghorn goes in goal and within the space of four minutes we have gone 3-2 up and then miss a penalty. With a couple of minutes left a ridiculous back pass from David Oldfield and it's a 3-3 draw.
Four games to go. Away to Oxford and a disastrous run had seen us throw almost certain promotion away and 2-0 down at half time, and it could have been more, and only the most optimistic saw anything bar the Play-Offs. In the second half we came out and blitzed them. 4-2. We're going up!
Three games to go. A win against Palace will see us nine points ahead of them with only three games left for them to play. We're winning 1-0, then Andy Dibble gets injured and Nigel Gleghorn goes in goals again. Palace hump us in the second half but we get away with a 1-1 draw.
Two games to go. If City better Palace's result we go up. By half time, Palace are 1-0 down and City are 3-0 up. The beach ball was flying around, it was party central. No-one bothered to tell us that Palace were winning by now as the party continued with cheers for Bournemouth's first goal and even a few for their second. In the last seconds, Leicester equalised against Palace meaning our win would take us up. However, in the 97th minute Andy Hinchcliffe brought down Luther Blissett, who banged in the penalty and it was 3-3. I've never felt so devastated. Even though we only needed a point from the last game (perhaps not even that), people were just sat on the Kippax crying buckets. The only consolation is that if Palace hadn't conceded at the death also, we'd have needed to win at Bradford.
Last game. Palace had won 1-0 in midweek against Stoke, meaning it would go down to the wire. If City won or drew, we were up. If we lost 1-0, Palace had to win 5-0 to overtake us. Their game was delayed for fifteen minutes due to crowd congestion and by the half hour mark in our game, we were 1-0 down and at the same time, fifteen minutes into their game, they were 4-0 up. How bloody typical City was all this! Despite battering them throughout the second half, with three minutes to go in our game, the scores were both the same, although rumours were flying about that it was 5-0 at Palace, and someone ran on the pitch to tell Paul Lake so. However, all ended well as Trevor Morley popped up to score and after about five agonising minutes of stoppage time, we'd got the draw we needed. As it happens, Palace, stung by the news of our equaliser, only won 4-1, but who knows whether or not that would have been the case if they had heard we had lost.
There will never be another set of games that summed up the phrase "typical City" more! :)
