“Typical City” are as much a part of the rich fabric of Manchester City's history as the silverware and glory of their finest years.
Blues fans celebrate the fact that they have, for long periods, lived up to the derisory nickname of the “Theatre of Base Comedy” handed to them by their aristocratic neighbours, an insult that has rebounded on the Reds with a vengeance in recent times.
The hopelessness, the haplessness and the tendency to shoot themselves in both feet have had City's loyal supporters never knowing whether to laugh or cry — so they usually did both.
The day in 1996 when Alan Ball wrongly thought a draw with Liverpool would be enough to keep City safe from relegation, and they were duly relegated while playing keep-ball in a corner, as those who knew they needed a win frantically tried to communicate the truth;
The day when City tried to sign football’s first superstar Billy Meredith, and their chairman ended up being chased around Meredith’s mining village of Chirk and thrown in the duckpond by enraged local fans;
And of course, other moments of tragic hilarity, like having a player sent off for “walking aggressively”, or winning their last game of the season at Stoke 5-2 in 1998, but still getting relegated.
Manager Joe Royle dubbed it “City-itis”, like there was a hereditary illness within the club that forever doomed them to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory, or at the very least make their fans even suffer terribly for their moments of ecstasy.
On the two greatest days of their modern history, the Blues kept the "typical City" theme in mind, when storming back from two down to beat Gillingham in the 1999 play-off final, and then similarly appearing to blow their first Premier League title win until late heroics from Edin Dzeko and Sergio Aguero took those fans from the depths of despair to football nirvana in just a couple of dramatic minutes in 2012.
Only City could put their fans through the emotional wringer in that way, and that turbulent relationship has only made the successes of the past decade all the sweeter.
But for sheer, unadulterated, unhinged, chaotic typical City-ness, then the 1937-38 season takes the cup for the greatest cock-up.
Not only did it see City go from the finest moment in their history to an unbelievable reversal in the space of 12 months, it would also mark the moment when the Blues went from being undisputed kings of Manchester to being underdogs to their Red neighbours for most of the next 74 years.
United fans who bang on about City having no history should look away now... the dominance United would come to enjoy in the post-war period was not always the case.
Back in the dark days of the 1930s, as the shadow of Hitler’s evil empire-building started to loom large over Europe, City were undoubtedly top dogs in Manchester.
They reached two FA Cup finals in succession, lifting the famous old trophy at the second time of asking in 1934, and had followed that with their first Football League title in 1937, playing wildly entertaining football and scoring a staggering 107 goals.
Across at OId Trafford, United were in the pits of despair, wallowing in the second division for most of the decade, and struggling just to stay afloat — a financial fight that earned them the nickname the “Rags” from cock-a-hoop City fans.
United crowds had dipped below 4,000 for the first time as the Reds yo-yo’d up and down the divisions, with City attracting bigger crowds for every season of the decade..
In a reversal of the modern story of the two clubs, United were rescued from ignominy by a sugar daddy, local businessman James Gibson, who shored them up financially and began to invest - so their lot gradually improved.
That could not prevent one more relegation, in 1937, made all the worse by the fact that City were champions.
At that point, few would have believed that within 25 years roles would be reversed, and it was City who would be concerned for their own existence, while United started a period in which they — with a few exceptional years — ruled the Manchester roost.
But 12 months after Eric Brook had sealed the title win with the last of their goals in a 4-1 win over Sheffield Wednesday to spark a jubilant Maine Road pitch invasion, the two clubs suffered a remarkable reversal of fortune.
After winning the title, City’s profile went through the roof, and they controversially accepted a close-season invitation to tour Germany. Even with the clouds of war gathering they redeemed themselves by refusing to perform the Nazi salute when asked, ahead of a game in Berlin’s Olympic Stadium.
Only City could suffer what came next.
They continued with their free-scoring football, the following season, as mid-table Derby and Leeds were beaten 6-1 and 6-2 respectively in Maine Road maulings, while bottom club West Brom succumbed 7-1. They also won 7-1 at Derby, en route to clocking up 80 goals.
That was the most goals scored by anyone in the first division that year, even more than champions Arsenal, who could only muster 77.
But City had also developed an unhealthy knack of conceding goals, and losing games, letting in 77 to finish the season with more goals scored than conceded — and STILL plummet through the trapdoor.
They also lost record scorer Brook in bizarre circumstances. A man who set a new English record by not missing a single game in the previous 11 seasons, went down with acute appendicitis and peritonitis, lying seriously ill in a hospital bed as his team won just one game in his two-month absence.
They had the ability to out-play and out-score the opposition, and with a tight relegation fight developing, they had blown away Leeds and West Brom in the last month of the season to ensure they had easily the best goal average - the old way of deciding league positions before goal difference was adopted.
Few believed they would go down. They still had the peerless Peter Doherty, who many older fans still cite as one of the club’s all-time greats, and Brook — who held the club’s goalscoring record until Aguero smashed it — was still finding the net on a regular basis.
The strangeness of the season was underlined by the fact that in a 22-team division with three games left, even 12th-placed Blackpool were still in danger of going down.
City lay in 21st, the second relegation spot, but were just a point behind other strugglers, and as the season entered its final day, there were still SEVEN clubs who could go down.
City were level on points with four teams - Grimsby, Stoke, Huddersfield and Portsmouth -, and with a superior goal average they could only go down in the unlikely event that all four rivals chalked up a better result than they could manage..
It seemed impossible that could happen, especially as City faced fellow strugglers Huddersfield on that fateful final day, heading to Yorkshire a week after sticking six past the Terriers’ more illustrious neighbours Leeds.
The football fates, revelling in City’s unlikely misfortune, combined to create the moment that might have spawned the “typical City” legend.
City seemed to have made the vital breakthrough when Alec Herd strode onto the ball 35 yards out and lashed a shot that — so the reports suggested — hit the crossbar, bounced down and out to safety.
Doherty was the nearest City player to the incident, and he swore afterwards that the ball had entered the net, hit a rear stanchion and bounced out again. Such was the ferocity of the shot that none of the officials saw it clearly, and Huddersfield survived.
That “ghost goal” would have repercussions for City for the next 70 years and more.
The Yorkshire club scrambled a winner with 12 minutes to go, and the City players trooped off to await news of the other three teams. If any one of them had lost, City would survive courtesy of their incredible goal average.
Bit this was City, and soon the results filtering in from around the country confirmed the worst; Grimsby, Stoke and Portsmouth had all won, and with Huddersfield having seen off City, the Blues were down, 12 months after being declared champions.
Of course, the gods had one last handful of salt to cast into the wound, as Manchester United clinched promotion with a 2-0 win over Bury, claiming second place by 0.3 of a goal, under the goal average system, which divided goals scored by goals conceded.
United were up, City were down, and the country was heading for war.
United, saved from financial ruin by Gibson, went from strength to strength in the 50s and 60s, once Hitler had been sorted out and after the blip of a one-season relegation in the Seventies, continued their rise to the pinnacle of English football.
City bounced back after two seasons in the second division, but the momentum they had in the 30s was lost, United took over as the most successful and best-supported club in Manchester, a situation that remained until Sheikh Mansour’s intervention, like that of Gibson 80 years earlier, sparked a turnaround.
The desperately bad luck and penchant for self-destruction that turned City from champions into chumps in 12 months would become a feature of the club in the years to come.
Dominant City were dead, and typical City had been born.
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