23rd October 2011.
Every City fan will have their own memories of that day whether they were at Old Trafford or not. I've written about the day itself, and the time before it happened. I don't need to go on about it but this was only the 2nd time City had won there since 1974.
It's a day which gets sung about every game City have played in since. In the days after the match it felt big, but a decade on I think we're still feeling the tremors of it now. It was debated whether the "balance of power" (whatever that means) was going to shift. Safe to say "this is how it feels to be City" has changed over the last decade.
In the short term, the game put City 5 points clear in the league during the 2011/12 season and added a lot of confidence to a team that had only dropped points once already that season. The moment on the pitch and the jubilation off it were memorable for me over the next few weeks, we played Wolves twice in a week scoring 8 goals just after the 6-1, we then won away at Villarreal 3-0 in the Champions League before a back and forth 3-2 win away at QPR before there was an international break. I was lucky enough to be at all of those games and for City fans it was unchartered territory. We were flying. The momentum did run out after awhile. Points dropped around Christmas and New Year, followed by some pretty average performances as Winter turned to Spring felt like City had run out of steam.
Anyone reading this knows what happened. A generation of younger football fans, or supporters of other clubs may just think the 2011/12 season was a case of thumbs being twiddled until Aguero scored the winner in May, but it wasn't. Balotelli sent off at Arsenal, Arterta scoring from long range - 8 points behind with 6 games to go. The madness at Carrow Road where Tevez was back to his best, the unforgettable moment in Wolverhampton pre game when Steven Pienaar told us that "God Is Great", Yaya Toure stepping up and being the match winner at St James Park in an unbelievably tense game.
But when Aguero did score that goal, it came back to the 6-1. That shift in goal difference was effectively the game that won it for City seven months later. We won the league by 8 goals. Every goal counted from August onwards, but in the 90th minute when De Gea and Rio caused a right fuck up and the ball goes out for a City corner the next 4 minutes or so are vital in what happened in May and really, what's happened since.
The following year they came back stronger and we fell apart. Mancini didn't say 'good morning' to Les Chapman, Van Persie went to United and we thought that Maicon would fit into XL shorts. But apart from that, well, it's all been pretty exceptional from the boys in blue whilst them from outside the city boundaries have gone in a constant cycle of being "back" before quickly rushing round their mums box room to find that old Norwich scarf.
Since the 6-1 we have won the league five times in 10 years. Perhaps we've underperformed in the FA Cup, but United have only won it once in that time too. We all know we've underperformed in the Champions League albeit we've been in it every year since the 6-1, only under Pellegrini's last season have we even threatened to not come in the top four, having said that, in the 2015-16 season if we'd won our last two games of the season instead of drawing them we would have come 2nd. Them lot on the other hand have years where they haven't qualified for the Champions League, yes they won the Europa League in 2017 but only a handful of years earlier "Thursday night, Channel 5" was a chant often heard from United fans mocking the trophy. And as for the biggest trophy of the lot, well we've won the league cup six times since 23rd October 2011, one for every goal that we scored at Old Trafford that day. Really makes me sad to think that as I left the ground that day, almost dizzy from what I saw, that I didn't know what 'Carabao' meant.
Time to sound really bitter? Yeah, why not. It's absolutely fucking fantastic that this happened to United when Ferguson was the manager. The BBC have done an article about the game which featured his post match interview, "dominated the first 30 minutes" - did they fuck, the old piss can. You shouldn't laugh at a pensioner looking suicidal, but then again Kevin Reynolds had it right when he kicked him in the bollocks at Euston. All the other chancers that have come and gone since like Moyes or that current plank would have just caused a bit of a shrug of the shoulder from the fans. It's important for us City fans to never let the 6-1 go because as the years go by there's more and more vomit inducing content glamorising United's time in the 90's (don't bother watching Fever Pitch or whatever it was called), and you still can't move without the OG Rat Boy Neville being plastered on TV at every fucking opportunity. The new generation of eReds who've never been within 100 miles of Manchester think they won every game every fucking week for 25 years, well riddle me this - how come they didn't get 100 points in a season?
The amount of colleagues, friends of friends, even customers through work I've spoken to over the years who (debatably - there's no way of proving it, is there?) used to go to watch United a lot, they all seem to have packed it in around 2013-14. They still hark back to the days when that horrible prick was there, sounding more and more like Arsenal fans going on about replacing Vieira in midfield.
It wasn't a game where we won a trophy. You cannot win a league in October. But as far as a game that set the tone in the relationship between two clubs for the next decade goes, and a game where it showed where City were going as a club it was as important as anything. Something like it just cannot ever happen again. "You lucky bastards, it should have been 10!" - We're the luckiest of bastards, and long may it continue.
