Manchester City supporters take solace in their club’s past as an uncertain future looms
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Before there were inflated sponsorship figures, there were inflated bananas. Or the inflatable ones, anyway. In the days when Manchester City met with a mixture of admiration, amusement, mockery and pity, but rarely hate, the supporters who had gone decades without seeing a major trophy could fairly be described as long-suffering. They found their own entertainment, and not merely from the tragicomic adventures of their team. Some of it came in the form of inflatable fruit, which they waved to Erling Haaland and co after a victory that might prove momentous or meaningless.
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At a point of existential peril, the City supporters sought solace in the distant past and in blow-up bananas. They were waved in the corner of the Anfield Road Stand they occupied, adding a further element of the surreal to what always promised to be an unusual occasion. It is not often that chants of “going down” are directed at the team top of the league; but then these are scarcely normal times.
This could be the kind of win that sets a team on the path to the title or a complete irrelevance; no one can say for certain whereas Liverpool, beaten for the first time under Andoni Iraola, knew the value victory would have had to them. City await their fate for what, unless their appeal fails, is the most serious case of breaching Premier League rules. At Anfield, the disciplinary sanction dispensed was a red card to Ryan Gravenberch, dismissed after fouls on Elliot Anderson and Jeremy Doku brought twin bookings. Twin goals, for Haaland and Doku, soon followed. Rayan Cherki got a glorious third. Even Pep Guardiola never got such an emphatic triumph at a full Anfield as his successor, Enzo Maresca.
Erling Haaland fired Manchester City into the lead at Anfield (PA)Jeremy Doku came off the bench to set up Haaland's opener and score City's second (Getty)“We’re not really here,” the City supporters chorused as they made it a second straight win at Anfield. They might not be here again for quite some time. Perhaps the prospect of the penalties for sustained rule-breaking were forgotten in the instant when Doku and Cherki scored wonderful goals, but the travelling Mancunians’ response to the commission’s verdict entailed bringing the bananas back.
Some fans responded with delusion, many with defiance, escapism and hints of humour. There were nods to the identity City had before the most successful, and now controversial, era of their history. There were the lurid retro away kits from 1999, when they spent a season in the third tier, a nostalgic vibe from those who supported City before the Sheikh Mansour years and who, if it is nearing its end, will do so afterwards.
They harked back to the days when the midfield featured Jamie Pollock who, unlike Enzo Fernandez, did not cost £125m and never won the World Cup, though he did score a ridiculous own goal in a game against QPR. It was a time when the attack was built around Paul Dickov, not Haaland, a scorer in an Anfield win for a second successive season.
Ryan Gravenberch was dismissed after collecting two yellow cards (Getty)Man City celebrated their victory in front of their fans (PA)It was a time before some £900m was injected into the club in what the independent commission ruled were sham sponsorship deals. Then some of City’s punishments tended to be self-inflicted, consequences of their footballing cock-ups. They were all too visible to the wider world; then the questionable figures were the amounts City paid for some ill-fated signings.
Now City may have to reconnect with that history, with life in the lower leagues, with a fixture list featuring Chesterfield or Colchester, York City or Northampton Town. If so, they may not meet with too much sympathy on Merseyside.
One banner in the Kop, borrowing from Oasis’ Wonderwall, read “after all you robbed us all”. Another, also stemming from the watching Noel Gallagher’s lyrics, proclaimed: “All of your stars are fading away.” Although other verbs may be necessary, if they are sold off on the cheap, agitating for the exit if City are not in the Champions League, or even the Premier League, or if they cannot afford their sizeable contracts.
Liverpool fans hold up a large banner (Peter Byrne/PA). (PA Wire)Liverpool supporters showed the feelings to Man City’s guilty verdict (Getty)Meanwhile, a lone flag in the City end proclaimed: “In Khaldoon we trust”. That faith in Khaldoon al-Mubarak looks misplaced right now. The City chairman was not at Anfield; chief executive Ferran Soriano was while Maresca’s team were castigated as cheats.
The reality is that this group of City players, blameless as they are and likeable as many of them are, will receive this kind of reception at many a ground. They will be treated as proxies for the real guilty parties, and many of them did not brave the Anfield atmosphere.
The Liverpool supporters rarely require a reason to be loud for City’s visits. They had one anyway. The flag beside the Kop read: “A generation of supporters cheated”. Liverpool can only imagine what they would have won without City’s supercharged spending. The Premier League may hope the class of Cherki, the trickery of Doku and the potency of Haaland does not fire them to another title now. In a rather different way, that may make many go bananas.
Because, after the disguised funding, there was no disguising how good City were after Gravenberch paid the price for his misdemeanours.