nice little article actually
It is difficult to guess what the new wealthy owners of Manchester City were doing on May 15,1999, but you can be assured Sheikh Mansour was not among the 6,762 fans squashed into Springfield Park for a League One play-off semi-final.
There will be rather more watching when the two teams face each other at Wigan on Sunday, yet their encounter a decade ago illustrates just how far both clubs have come.
It an era when Shaun Goater was the nearest you came to a superstar at City, while, in their fourth season in the Premier League, Wigan were just beginning their impressive climb through the divisions based on Dave Whelan's enthusiasm and hard cash.
Some of the fans who watched recently as the Latics overcame Chelsea 3-1 at the DW Stadium - formerly the JJB - will have congregated on mounds of mud behind the goals to watch Wigan draw 1-1 with City that day 10 years ago.
As usual, a glance at the team-sheets says as much about the changing shape of the two clubs. In goal for Wigan was Roy Carroll, who was to move to Manchester United two years later.
But other than the Northern Irish goalkeeper, Wigan's big names were Andy Liddell and Stuart Barlow, whose best years were already behind them.
Liddell experienced the Premier League dream with Barnsley and after six years helping establish Wigan as a footballing powerhouse rather than just a rugby league town, he left in the summer that followed their promotion but, at 36, is still playing at Rotherham.
But even given the remarkable Wigan story, and despite City's history, they are the team that have experienced the real transformation.
After the years that had really underlined the 'Typical City' tag, the Blues had finally dropped all the way down to the third tier.
They embarked on a campaign that sparked the self-mocking terrace anthem 'We're not really here' as they toured what they considered the backwaters of the English game.
But for all their superiority, how carried away can you really get when you end up finishing five points adrift of Walsall?
Under Joe Royle - and despite failing to catch the high-flying Saddlers or champions Fulham - City turned themselves around but had to settle for the play-offs to start the path back to where they kept telling everyone they belonged.
It may have been miserable on the field but this was a part of City's history that is vital to their current identity. Would Goater be considered the legend he is if City had spent all those years scrapping away in mid-table in the top flight? Unlikely.
After years of setbacks and embarrassment, City fans must have feared the worst when Barlow scored in the first minute for the upstart Latics.
But Paul Dickov earned City a 1-1 draw with an equaliser 15 minutes from time to take an advantage back to Maine Road.
It was the final game ever staged at Springfield Park, but Wigan were not to celebrate their move to the JJB Stadium with Championship football because Goater claimed the only goal of the second leg to take City through to Wembley, where they managed to beat the mighty Gillingham on penalties.
A promotion, a relegation and a promotion later, they were back in the top flight in 2002 and joined by Paul Jewell's Liddell-less Latics two years later.
City became the richest club in the world when the Abu Dhabi United Group took over on September 1, 2008.
But would Robinho have ever become a Manchester City player if men such as Royle, Goater, Dickov and Kevin Horlock had not arrested the slide down the divisions a decade ago?
For the record, the teams involved in the first play-off at Wigan were:
Wigan: Carroll;, Bradshaw (Green), Sharp, McGibbon, Balmer, Porter, Liddell (Lee), Greenall, Haworth (Jones), O'Neill, Barlow.
Manchester City: Weaver, Crooks, Edghill, Vaughan, Horlock, Wiekens, Brown, Whitley, Dickov, Goater (Taylor), Cooke (Allsop).
