A long and self indulgent post, but I'm going to post it anyway, as no one has to read it if they don't want. And it may explain to some of the newer fans just what it felt like to follow City through the dark days.
My first game was in December 1975. Over my first few years, we then won the League Cup, almost won the league and had wins over the likes of Milan and Juve in Europe. As I posted in another recent thread, we were attracting comfortably the third biggest gates in the country behind United and Liverpool, had a stadium regularly chosen above Old Trafford for FA Cup semi finals and one of the best squads in the country. We were definitely a big time club, and though United were seen as more glamorous, I didn't feel - in a primary school full of Reds - that we should regard ourselves as inferior to them.
When Luton sent us down, it actually didn't hit me that hard. I thought we'd breeze away with the Division Two title the next year and come back stronger, like I knew United had done a few years before and like I remembered Spurs doing. If I'd known that it was effectively confirmation that we were no longer a big club, which we basically weren't from the moment we had to sell Trevor Francis, I'd have been devastated. I utterly despise Peter Swales to this day, because that c@nt was the main reason it happened.
I always had a hope, though, that we'd get back to something like the status we enjoyed when I first started going. That we'd eventually sort out the financial mess, get a decent manager and start to compete again with the big boys. We had the potential, if harnessed properly, to do that. As time went on and the way money was distributed in the game changed things, I adjusted my horizons. I wanted us to be a club which was regarded as basically a fixture in the top division, and which might qualify for Europe from time to time, maybe even sneak the odd League Cup. I didn't think that such aspirations were unduly fanciful for a club like us.
I'm not a City fan who obsesses about United, as too many, in my opinion, do. By the mid and late nineties I'd reconciled myself to the fact that we'd never really compete with them again. But the day we went down at Stoke in May 1998 left me devastated, the worst I ever felt after any game. Not competing with United was one thing. We couldn't even fucking compete with Stockport, Bury and Crewe, who'd all be playing in a higher division than us the following season.
On the day it happened, I was simply numb, and spent the evening in on my own with only alcohol for company. I found it hard to take in - a lower division than fucking Stockport, Bury and Crewe. What the fuck had happened to the club I'd supported as a kid? Where had it gone? As time wore on, I got used to the fact, and the disbelief turned to anger. We had average gates of over 28,000 and teams attracting around 5,000 had survived where we couldn't. That didn't give us any divine right to be above them, but I was furious with all those twats down the years whose incompetence meant that we couldn't apply our resources so as to do better than teams with a tenth of our income.
As the new season approached, I started to look on the bright side. The club seemed to have been shocked by the relegation into realising that things couldn't go on as they were, that important changes had to be made, and I hoped that it would be a new beginning. As things stood at Christmas, it looked like we were playing at a level where we thoroughly belonged, and the mood among fans was poisonous. We had too much to do to win automatic promotion, but finished third after a great run starting on Boxing Day. The play offs were a lottery, of course, but we went into them with confidence, as the team with the momentum.
When, in the final against Gillingham, we went two down, the following seven minutes were my lowest point with City. I was utterly shellshocked. I just felt that we were cursed, that we were stuck in this situation for ever, that we'd never come back. I thought of United winning the Champions League to clinch the treble four days earlier, and remembered how we used to compete with them when I started going. Now I didn't think we'd ever even play them again. I'd allowed myself to believe that we'd win the play offs and start what I expected would be a long road to recovery. The bastards had let me down again.
I wasn't asking for trebles, just to beat fucking Gillingham, and they couldn't even do that. Now the dream of one day playing in Europe again, which I'd always nourished through all the dark days, had been emphatically shown to be a hopeless and unfulfillable fantasy. I hated the club, and cursed the day I asked my dad to take me with him when he went to Maine Road. It was an utterly desolate few minutes, made worse and not better by the fact that we pulled a goal back. We'd never get another and it was just typical that the bastards should finally break through when it was too late to matter.
When Paul Dickov scored, I completely lost it. I actually have no recollection of anything between our equaliser hitting the net and extra time kicking off, but I know I was with my mate and his dad, and his dad still refers to me as BDS as a result of the way I celebrated. It stands for 'Big Daft Sod'. I was just delirious, but it was justified. Suddenly, we weren't cursed, or fated to be shit for ever. If we could claw our way back in that manner, then more or less anything was possible - even playing in the UEFA Cup again.
It was an amazing day. The emotional swing in those few minutes was a real once-in-a-lifetime experience. It was cathartic suddenly to be moving the right way again, after several years when every time it seemed that things couldn't get worse, they did. And psychologically, it was vital. The manner of the comeback created a belief and momentum which took us further forward, more quickly than anyone had thought likely.
