Our biggest ever game?

[balotelli's back pocket]

Biggest for 2 years. But far behind gillingham,blackburn, qpr and that derby

 

[chaddblue]

Awful in every way, throughout. Until Yaya's second.

In my mind, it is still the most accomplished/mentally right performance for a must-win game that I have seen us play in the Mansour era.

Yep, perfect match plan devised by Bob and implemented by the boys

Soak up the pressure, take the sting out of their attack and quieten the Geordie croud

30 mins to go bring on NDJ and push Yaya up... BANG BANG... job done

 

[DJBusinesscake]

That United game in 2012 with the Kompany header felt bigger, and also felt more important.

 

[manimanc]

Nope, far from it. The natural order would have seen to it, with crowds at 33,000. The worse we got, the more loyal the fans became.

Wardle and Makin were always being asked to get involved at City, it was simply a question of when.

The Romanticism has been added down the years because we won the game, and where we are now.

Would makin and wardle have wanted to pour their hard earnt cash into a club treading water in division 3? They was shrewd businessmen at the end of the day and fans or not it would have been a huge gamble. Maybe we wouldn't have gone under but we'd certainly be like a forest or a Leeds and be down in the wilderness for a good few years.

 

[cleavers]

Define "biggest" different things to different people. Most important, nowhere near, most dramatic, nope, but perhaps it will be club defining, and that is important.

It could be a completely damp squib if we go out, but win and we are further in the biggest club competition in the world, so it is "big" whatever the champions league denyers on here say.

I'm gutted i cant be there as I'm away, and will have to watch it in the early hours of the morning.

 

[tolmie's hairdoo]

Would makin and wardle have wanted to pour their hard earnt cash into a club treading water in division 3? They was shrewd businessmen at the end of the day and fans or not it would have been a huge gamble. Maybe we wouldn't have gone under but we'd certainly be like a forest or a Leeds and be down in the wilderness for a good few years.

There's nothing shrewd about buying a football club - a complete money pit.

Dave Makin was actually more of a driving force, when it came to involvement with City. They would simply have got City for an absolute song, had we not beaten Gillingham.

Rangers have come back because of the natural order, their crowds, their ability to still generate more money than their rivals in the grander scheme of the division they were playing in.

Sheffied Wednesday, Wolves, Leeds, they have become victims of circumstance in the last few years, due to the huge parachute money from the Premier League, widening the gap, between traditionally big clubs and those who are able to come up and down like a yo-yo.

We would have had to have stayed in Div 2 for at least another five or six years for that to keep us down and out.

Remember, we went up and then up again. When we were relegated with Royle, we had the Premier League money cushion.

 

[OB1]

PSG is not even close to being our biggest game ever; certainly not in terms of importance and I would think the world wide viewing figures are eclipsed by numerous other games we have played. If we eventually get to a Champions League final, that will likely count as our biggest ever game but still won't be the most important: that crown surely will rest on the head of the Gillingham game for a very long time; if not forever. It does not even bear thinking about the state City might be in if we had lost to Gillingham.

 

[petrusha]

Nope, far from it. The natural order would have seen to it, with crowds at 33,000. The worse we got, the more loyal the fans became.

Wardle and Makin were always being asked to get involved at City, it was simply a question of when.

The Romanticism has been added down the years because we won the game, and where we are now.

Spot on. People like the narrative that we'd have gone to the wall, but it wouldn't have happened.

We lost GBP 1 million on a turnover of GBP 12 million during the Division Two season. We'd have sold Weaver and/or Wiekens to keep the wolf from the door - probably Gerard, who we could have fetched a couple of million for at the time and replaced with Richard Jobson, who played 40-odd league games the next season in the higher division, ensuring performances wouldn't have suffered. Gates would have held up - we sold almost 14K season tickets before the play-off final, which was not far off the total for 1998/9. And we had a side that, if form from Boxing Day to the end of the season had been averaged over the entire campaign would have topped 100 points. I think we'd have cantered to promotion in front of gates as big as the previous campaign and been quite financially healthy.

However, Gary James has suggested that we might not have got the stadium or the permanent capacity would have been smaller if we'd stayed dow. Sport England weren't keen to put in the same level of funding for a facility with a tenant in the third tier. That might have had implications for takeovers in later years, but the 'we'd have gone bust if Gillingham had beaten us' story is overly romanticised.

Wardle and Makin were already involved at City in those days, btw, just not as the main shareholders. They ended up buying some shares off the Boler estate in October or November 1999, converted some of their loans to shares and Sky took 10% of the club. We were actually debt free as a result of those transactions (not for long, mind!).

 

[TexasCityzen]

While I fully respect and appreciate the history of this club from before I became a fan on Feb 10, 2008 (and I have been trying to go back and learn more about that history over the years), this is the biggest game the club have ever played in. I define biggest by the number of people around the world that will be watching (i.e. brand recognition). How many neutral fans are out there in the world that may become city fans tomorrow if the squad puts in one of "those" performances? Never before in the history of this club (in my opinion) will there have been this opportunity for fan base growth in one fell swoop (possibly QPR, but even in 2012 watching EPL games around the world was not as easy as it is today...CL has been extremely easy for over a decade). That being said, it is definitely not the most important, and if we win and progress to the next round, then THOSE games will become the "biggest" games ever played by city. Sure there were european nights some 40 years ago, but we are talking about 1 billion+ watching the final...

 

[Didsbury Dave]

We can debate until the cows come home about what would have happened to City if Dickov hadn't have scored. To me it was the psychological impact of the win and the manner it happened. I think that defeat in that game would have made a big dent in the fanbase. For the first time in a long time our fans had felt real hope right throughout the second half of that season. "Typical City" at that point was to blow things on the big occasion, and it looked like it was going to happen yet again. With United having just done the treble, I think it could have been the final straw for a fair chunk of our crowd. And the financial implications could have been extremely significant.

That game and the Newcastle 2012 game are the most nervous I've ever been before a game. To debate which game is the "biggest" is meaningless because there are many factors at play.