Man City are about to show just how far they have come

It will amuse plenty of Manchester City fans that their team could move one match away from being world champions on the 25th anniversary of the day they lost to York.

Twenty five years before Jeddah and a flagship FIFA tournament, the Blues were slipping to one of the lowest points in their history at Bootham Crescent. And while some may try and forget their worst defeats, for City supporters who could not believe they were in Istanbul in June watching the Champions League winners, the York defeat has become a badge of honour and an iconic moment in their history.

"There were 60,000 fans there if you believe some people!" Paul Dickov laughed as he remembered the 2-1 defeat. The feisty forward missed the game through suspension so had to listen for updates on the radio.

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"It was the last fixture before Christmas. I remember watching the score coming in and listening to the radio and thinking 'Oh my God, what are we going to do'.

"We'd sunk to 12th after that game, the lowest point in the club's history at the time. We'd struggled up until then, we'd drawn at Luton the game before and drawn at Gillingham before then. It was a tough time for us but the one thing we did have was the belief that at some point it was going to come together, and belief in Joe [Royle, manager] because Joe was amazing.

"The fans were amazing, the worse we got they got some kind of weird kick out of it and supported us more. There was the feeling within the changing room that we owed them. The backing we got was amazing and we wanted to give them just a little bit of something