You and I are in a
state of considerable flux, aren’t we? We’re still not sure if this is meant to
be or not. All these wins, all these goals, all these people liking us from
afar and hating us from up close. It never used to be like this, in the cosy
days of failure and flotsam. The days when Peter Swales talked us up to allow
for an even bigger fall. In the days when Tony Book’s flares whipped in the
wind like all our lost hopes, when the buzz was about Garry Flitcroft’s hair
and Nigel Gleghorn’s goalkeeping gloves. When there was nothing else but Liam
Gallagher and Richard Jobson.
Sunderland. Full of
the passion of the underdog. Just look at them, lapping it all up. That should
be us. That IS us. Only it can’t be
anymore. We have left all that painful introversion behind in a cloud of Lamborghini
dust (driven by five star clean as you like Abu Dhabi gasoline). We are no
longer able to cavort around owning up to tied stomach muscles and lack of
sleep. We cannot quote the law of the inevitable cock-up. We cannot stare
wistfully at posters of Ken McNaught and Steve Kinsey and say, here come
raggle-taggle City for their once in a lifetime tilt at glory. We cannot shout
and scream like the eternal underdog, because we aren’t anymore. It was easy to
flood through the opened gates and wait for hell to break all over us. Now a
different hell awaits us.
Gone are the Roger Palmers.
Ten-to-two feet and all. Away with your Graham Bakers. Chubby cheeks all gone. Gordon
Davies no more. All those little wafted back post misses from three
centimetres. No longer.
Kun Aguero. Yaya Touré. David Silva. Smooth
as silk. One two three.
So, now, brave
friends, we must descend upon Wembley Stadium, our Wembley Stadium, and show the rest how it is done. Manchester
United, Stoke, Chelsea, Wigan. Wembley Stadium. Again and again and again. The
Green Man. Those little meeting points. The same bar staff, winking their
hellos. The waves of recognition. The nods, the grins. The casual use of the
London underground. Whatever happened to getting out by mistake at High Barnet
and asking passers by where Wembley was and being told you were almost in the
Midlands? What ever happened to travelling with maps and plans and packed
lunches in case we went the wrong way yet again? What happened to the old
Wembley, the only focal point we had? Full Members Cup in the grey incessant drizzle.
Third Division play off final in the grey incessant drizzle. Wembley meant
tension but it meant embarrassment too. Gillingham, for Christ’s sake. Chelsea
with the prizes handed out by Dickie bloody Attenbrough. 5-1 down with two minutes
to go. On a bloody Sunday. A day after the Manchester Derby. At Old Trafford. No
royalty for City’s Wembley efforts. No royalties. Just Dickie Attenbrough in a
flat cap and a long trek north with our tails between our legs, where they truly
belonged.
Now the tail won’t sit down. It’s excited
and wags like a Jack Russell in sight of its first chicken dinner.
Wembley meant Keith
MacRae’s gingery bonce. It meant Rodney Marsh flicking the ball into John
Richards’ path with the back of his heel. It meant bearded Ricky Villa and well
spoken Garth Crooks and that damned awful Chas and Dave ditty with Ossie’s
doleful cod-English. Wembley meant Tottinghem. In the Cap. In de cap. For
Tottinghem. Tears and anguish, like it was always meant to be. Hope dashed,
squashed and
strangled at birth. The departure, energy sucked out of us, faces drained
of blood, to search for coaches and trains and cars and the slog home in
silence but for the occasional “not again, City, bloody hell”.
Marsh: Heel of destiny |
So where do we go
from here, us lost souls, us drifting bits of anachronistic malcontent? Where
do we take our long held doubts, our heaving unhappiness now? What do we do
with our gallows humour and our belted songs of attrition? How do we hold onto
that magical keep-going-and-be-damned attitude that saw us through disaster
after disaster when the disasters are thin on the ground and all the world
expects?
Not easy is it?
Manchester City
runaway favourites. Manchester City the royal family’s team. Manchester City a
dominant force in the Premier League. Manchester City, Champions League
regulars. Manchester City, Wembley tenants. Manchester City this and Manchester
City that.
So, this is how it
feels. This is what we have been waiting for. The glittering football,
delivered by a squad of global superstars (and Jack Rodwell), the pristine
pitch, the flashlights, the screams of little people, the prestigious people, the
friendship scarves with Barcelona and Real Madrid. A scarf, half Real half
City! Half Barcelona (Barça to the regulars) half City. What a thing is this? What
of our ski hats in 1983? Sat forlornly over our Morrissey quiffs and our
Bunnymen side burns, our half Rangers half City tributes to tribal nothingness.
Where are they now in this maelstrom of Champions league bric-a-brac?
We groan at Javi Garcia
and Martin Demichelis, nod knowingly as Micah flies though the air again, tut
at a wayward pass from Gael Clichy, which fails to glue itself to Silva’s heel.
We turn and ask our neighbours if 24 million pound Stevan Jovetic will ever be
fit for purpose and what the actual use of that kid from the Ivory Coast is.
We, who hold the dark secrets of Kenny Clements in our souls, who remember the
silent anguish of Geoff Lomax and the wordless agony of Tony Cunningham. We
cover and cower and turn away. The shame of it all is ours.
We are surrounded
by kids with tatoos, kids with scarves, kids with phones. The gay abandon of
youth, the free clear air of the unknowing. We do not burden them with Billy
McNeill, or John Maddock, or Ian Davies, or Peter Bodak. We mention not the night we launched
police crash barriers after Coventry or Oldham, or the afternoon we urinated on
the torn down fences at Meadow Lane and screeched and bayed for blood until our
faces looked like Roy Keane. We whisper the tales of Cold Blow Lane and
Stamford Bridge (not the one of today with its high sides and five pound
hotdogs, the old one with its painted barbed wire fences and twenty
metres of
sand pit). We don’t talk about carrying a giant inflatable banana to Stoke (not
the new *pretty* Stoke but the old Victoria Ground, with its sloping crumbling terraces
and its flying bricks welcome) or freezing to the point of no return on the
terraces at Grimsby and Middlesbrough (not the new *pretty* Middlesbrough but
the old corrugated iron, barrel roof Ayresome Park, with its ramshackle pub on
the corner and our blood spattered Pringle jerseys. We mouth sweet nothings
into the wind. That’s all gone. It’s better that way.
No more of this |
So, we nod to the
past as best we can. We stand upright in the present as best we can. We open
our wallets towards the future as best we can. Silently, guiltily, we know the
truth. There is no going back. What once was can never be again. Where we once
strode, immaculate and proud, primed and set with the steely look of the
terminally haunted, we now walk the walk of the unconcerned, nonchalant,
self-confident, content. Bloated on our success, slow moving in our middle
days, replete with days of glory to wash away the lifetime of hurt.
Now we are allocated pubs. Our pubs. City pubs. Blue
pubs. In North West London. Time plays tricks on those of us who dinked and
dived through the darkness of enemy territory, wondering whether the Dog and
Crown or the Fireman’s Helmet would be a our last port of call. Wondering
whether those dives on the way to Crystal Palace and that heaving place on a
rocky desolate road outside Bradford would be the end of us. Just for the sake
of an ill-needed pint and an ill placed flag.
Where we trod the
mean streets of Wolverhampton and Derby and came away with our backsides tanned
and our voices hoarse, now we sit in awe at the King Power Stadium remembering
Weller and Birchenall and Lineker and twitch in a comfy row at Meadow Lane
letting thoughts of Jimmy Sirrell and his loud hailer waft through our
comfortable minds. No Lee Bradbury scuff, no Buster Philips trip can skew our
confidence now. Steve Lomas moments are whispers in the wind.
No more of that. We
mustn’t even mention it, for fear of tweaking the ire of the new age fundamentalists.
No talk of that. No bloodshot eyes. No sweat stained shirts or ripped jumpers.
No missing pin badge, simple, round, Maine Road maestros, yanked from its
position by some eager beaver on the rainswept streets of Solihull or
Huddersfield. No bleary yelling to the night sky. No never again Citys.
No, we embrace the
new era, the dawn of prawn, the
sun-up over SportCity, the ever-lasting glow of the wealthy, the healthy, the
live-long-and-prospers. The sunlight gleaming off the glass sides of our palace
reflects beaming faces, musicians and hand held mics. People jump up and down
with their backs to the action where once we leaned forward to squint through
the gales of attrition. Now we tread lightly the roads of combat, dancing,
skipping, laughing, wearing painted faces and funny hats. Where once fear stalked,
willing self-belief now reigns. No slinking down alleys, no peering around
walls, no collars up, look left look right. No “where are you from, lads?”, no “what’s
the time, boys?”, just backslaps, Opel Meriva hatchbacks and a light snooze and
a pickled egg in the Family Stand.
And now Wembley
beckons again, with its frills and its flapping hemline. It knows us now. Its
comfy skyline of storage depots and ring roads embraces us. Welcome back, say
the billboards and the off licences. Come on in and relax.
We can do this, can’t
we? We should carry this off without too much problem, shouldn’t we? It’s
horses for courses, isn’t it?
When the expectant
noise of Sunderland wafts our way, will those once scorched lungs heave again? Can
we make it matter as much as it matters to the men in red and white, whose
place we occupied five short years ago?
Let us not ever forget
who we are and how we came to be in this state. Open up your lungs, ladies and
gentlemen and shout your pretty heads off for the mighty Blues, for, without
the noise welling up from thirty years of foul failure, the feathery softness
of this new comfort blanket will envelope us all.