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did you finally think "no more false dawns, this is the real deal"?

There were 2 for me. Both for completely different reasons.

Arse at home. They'd had a good start to the season and were unlucky to come away from the swamp without any points. I just thought that with all our new signings that it may be too soon in the season. WRONG. The football that we played after they equalised was breathtaking, especially the counterattacking. As good as i've ever seen City and i've been watching em since 1976. Brought a tear to my eye.

The second was the semi first leg. For as far back as I can remember, we've gone into derbies as underdogs. Certain things need to happen for us to win like the planets being in correct alignment, they play crap, have players missing, Chuckle 1 is a blue, we put out our absolute best 11 who have the game of their lives etc, you know where i'm coming from. This time however was very different. All talk of the league cup being a minor comp was abandoned, along with Bacons youth policy. Boyata of the blues is given his grounding. WE were the ones with key players missing. WE were the ones that didn't perform that well but strangely something I had never experienced before happened. We won a derby without playing like supermen (no pun intended).
Bacons whole attitude to the whole tie (ie worried) and his noisy neighbour comments brought it home. this time it's for real. CTID :)

Stamford Bridge!

i'm not joking mate they're the games i would pick out as well, will never forget how blown away i was watching that performance against arsenal, and i felt like the eyes of the world were genuinely on us for that derby first leg. everyone was going on about the next day 'the biggest rivalry in the world' i felt like we really arrived that night.

Robinho's home debut last season. When he scored his free kick I knew we were about to go on a wonderful ride.

The Arsenal one - the old CITY were capable of starting well and getting ahead - but have they scored the old CITY would have crumbled to a defeat by a couple of goals

dazby wrote:Robinho's home debut last season. When he scored his free kick I knew we were about to go on a wonderful ride.

really? We lost that game.

The Chelsea away game

we,ve had so many false dawns, that its was hard to assess where we really were going, but under the current manager and his squad, you just know this is the real thing. Manchester City have finally arrive to the top table of football, and are getting closer to sitting at the head of that table. With the backing we have we cant possibly fail. All we need to do his qualify for the champions league, and make the worlds top players sit up and say '' I want some of this ''

Branny we got beat at the swamp the next game.

As for arrival prob the Arse game too. We were great that day and if we can produce more of that kinda display and less of the Stoke ones then maybe we can push on.

Sister of fu wrote:Branny we got beat at the swamp the next game.

Yeah i know. Twice in injury time. That's how close we've been. I was taking the first leg in isolation. I'm not just talking about the 90 mins on the pitch but the build up and bacons back side going hence the need for him to play his best available team and as iv'e said in 35 years of watching City it's the only time I can remember us not having to be at our best to win a derby.

stamford bwidge this seasson....awight

branny wrote:

Sister of fu wrote:Branny we got beat at the swamp the next game.

Yeah i know. Twice in injury time. That's how close we've been. I was taking the first leg in isolation. I'm not just talking about the 90 mins on the pitch but the build up and bacons back side going hence the need for him to play his best available team and as iv'e said in 35 years of watching City it's the only time I can remember us not having to be at our best to win a derby.

I understand this reasoning. Even in defeat at the swamp in the second leg, you could feel the relief there. We've turned up there in the past as fodder, but they were shitting it that night and taking us seriously.

branny wrote:

Sister of fu wrote:Branny we got beat at the swamp the next game.

Yeah i know. Twice in injury time. That's how close we've been. I was taking the first leg in isolation. I'm not just talking about the 90 mins on the pitch but the build up and bacons back side going hence the need for him to play his best available team and as iv'e said in 35 years of watching City it's the only time I can remember us not having to be at our best to win a derby.

Sorry misunderstood what you wrote, thought you meant that we had played and got beat by Man U the week before the Arse game not the week after.

Stamford Bridge - wiped the smile off a few so-called experts.

branny wrote:did you finally think "no more false dawns, this is the real deal"?

There were 2 for me. Both for completely different reasons.

Arse at home. They'd had a good start to the season and were unlucky to come away from the swamp without any points. I just thought that with all our new signings that it may be too soon in the season. WRONG. The football that we played after they equalised was breathtaking, especially the counterattacking. As good as i've ever seen City and i've been watching em since 1976. Brought a tear to my eye.

The second was the semi first leg. For as far back as I can remember, we've gone into derbies as underdogs. Certain things need to happen for us to win like the planets being in correct alignment, they play crap, have players missing, Chuckle 1 is a blue, we put out our absolute best 11 who have the game of their lives etc, you know where i'm coming from. This time however was very different. All talk of the league cup being a minor comp was abandoned, along with Bacons youth policy. Boyata of the blues is given his grounding. WE were the ones with key players missing. WE were the ones that didn't perform that well but strangely something I had never experienced before happened. We won a derby without playing like supermen (no pun intended).
Bacons whole attitude to the whole tie (ie worried) and his noisy neighbour comments brought it home. this time it's for real. CTID :)

The game where we qualify for thechampions league will be the one where I will believe its the real deal.

When we beat Arsenal away this season.

Hard to choose , All the above But I would like to add the schlacking of Portsmouth Esp when David James had a dig at Robiniohs free kick against Chelsk. 5-0 up in the first half against any prem team is not to be sniffed at either.

Theres not been a game, the pivitol moment in our history when you knew we were moving on up was when we signed Robinho

I still have the "well you never know it is City after all" moments every now and then.
But definitely Arsenal at home this season was one time when I thought "I'm so fuckin proud to be a City fan right now" and was buzzin with expectation for the future. Remember I was in Nice with my mate and we'd met this 3 Canadian girls the night before and got them to meet us at this bar to watch the match with us. They turned up at 1-0 and I was giving it the big un telling them how good we are and then Arsenal go and score and it literally felt like 'here we go again, City fuckin me over as usual' but then you all know what happened next....

Like Grob, I don't think there was a game. For me the moment was when ADUG took over and we had the financial resources to succeed.
I understood it would take time and that even as we improved (as we have) there would be successes and failures.
The finances of most clubs don't allow them to correct their mistakes and all clubs make them. The finances at city allow us to fuck up then put things right again...and again...and again...if necessary. Success almost become inevitable at some point.

agree with Grob and John.

but trying to answer the OP. and assuming it is about if this squad is the real deal.. not the new dawn of the club.
I stared this season thinking that at some point this set of players would make their mark as a team. That is in some way putting down a marker.. or markers.

SO the games where i think this has happened have been the classic and obvious ones. Trashing Arsenal, Overwhelming Chelsea for 35 mins and winning from a goal down. The 4-3 Derby, Taking Chelsea to the cleaners at the Bridge.
Recently also the Fulham game.
The next ones will be professionally destroying the rags.
Trashing Arsenal once again in front of their own fans.

Also very important will be getting a result against Spurs, but i only see that in terms of not letting them take 6pts of us.

It is those big games that for me are about putting down a marker. In other words i see them as games that are not just about this year alone, they denote for this team and this set of players as worthy of CL football, as worthy of being title contenders. Which is how they want to be seen.
The rags saw this and took us very seriously in the Cup.
Do you think Chelsea are going to be looking forward to playing us next season.. in the league, cups or god forbid the CL ?
Do you think that Arsenal are going to take us very seriously at the Emirates.. ?

Those games were about this teams ambition and each of our players making a play to be included in that ambition.
i mentioned to a rag workmate that it was the Chelsea away game that was going to show me what this team is likely capable of and how far we had come.. remember the start of the season ? all the talk was of how long it would take to gel.
Adebayor against the Gooners was simply showing off.. and boy was it good.
The real problem this team has had is bothering to show up at all against anything not deemed worthy.. or earlier in the season completely switching off as it was job done.. allowing teams as shit as Burnley to grab a draw against them on their own turf.. no wonder we went back and panned them.

so you get my drift..

So all those games together show me that this team wants to be taken very very seriously indeed. I am starting to get very confident that we are going to smash Arsenal to bits.. just for the fun of it... so we will see in that game and the derby before it.

The other good thing is that we seem to be getting better at turning up for the other games and our organisation is getting better.

But we are not there yet are we so, lets say Birmingham is the Which Game for now and take it from there