FanPost

Fourteen Years Ago Today, City Started To Believe

City in recent times you may think back only a few months when Sergio Aguero lifted the Blues back up above United to win the Premiership title in the most dramatic of ways.

You may even go back to the year before when the single Yaya Toure goal dumped United out of the FA Cup, the trophy we would then go on to win.

How about the wins which got us into our first Chamions League campaign? It is true that all these were certainly important but one of my most important games came back in the 1998-99 season and no it isn't the Playoff game with Gillingham although it is a related game.

On this day fourteen years ago Manchester City were in the third tier of English football and had been struggling. Sure we were 7th in the league but had played two more games than Bournmouth who were above us with three points more and a cool 15 points away from the top team.

Boxing Day had seen us beat Wrexham 1-0 away from home but in truth that win was one of only 8 from the opening 23 games. It wasn't that we had lost a lot but the nine draws really were holding us back from what we had to achieve, promotion. It became clear after the fact how close City came to being financially ruined and a second season at this level would have been unthinkable.

So to the 28th and City hosted the high flying Stoke City in a must win game. As it was City, Manchester that is went behind 1-0. Bournmouth, Preston went on to win and of course Stoke currently were winning. In fact of all the other teams above us at this time only one outside of our game, Walsall would lose.

Cometh the hour though cometh the Dickov and Taylor to pull us through to a very important 2-1 win and kick start our promotion push. It would be Taylors first and probably most important goal for City and that result turned one win into back to back wins. That back to back win was extended to a 12 game unbeaten run and in fact we only suffered two defeats in the back end of the season. Fourteen wins from the last 23 games and 7 draws were enough to see us finish third and on good form heading into the playoff system.

That game, I feel, built the belief and team bond that we needed on May 30th that year and got us the promotion that not only we wanted but financially desperately needed.