As Bad As Things Got: Manchester City, 3rd May 1998

Manchester City haven't always been the Empire of the Sun, you know.

Current legal issues with the Premier League notwithstanding, the ongoing efforts of the Abu Dhabi United sovereign wealth fund to build an Empire of the Sun around Manchester City aren’t going too badly, despite Liverpool’s occasional interventions. But longer-term supporters will reflect that all this success remains most out of character for a club with a lengthy history of trips, pratfalls, and otherwise dragging defeats from the jaws of victory.

For many years, Manchester City were an ongoing soap opera, overseen by an owner of the old-fashioned archetype and managed by a revolving door of managers who were attracted by the scale and history of the club but were often spat out again by how dysfunctional the entire club had become as a result of years of decline so gradual as to be almost imperceptible from the outside. For every high, there had to be an equivalent or greater low. “Cityitis” became something of a measure of footballing slapstick.