Typical Manchester City – What is “Typical City” These Days?

The Manchester City fan base is these days a broad church and nothing divides the fans as much as the notion of “typical City”.

MANCHESTER, ENGLAND – MAY 06: General view of the action inside the stadium during the Premier League match between Manchester City and Leicester City at Etihad Stadium on May 06, 2019 in Manchester, United Kingdom. (Photo by Laurence Griffiths/Getty Images)

The phrase is forever linked to Manchester City and captures our historic ability to summon defeat from the jaws of victory. Of course it relates to an earlier era entirely when the comedic value of our endeavour was cast somewhat differently and was of course a label which we not only owned as fans but used and even coined.

Yet to newer fans of our great Club it seems a disparaging term and frankly for anyone who has joined us for the ride in the last ten years it is hard to apply this moniker to Guardiola.

However us older fans still cling to “typical City” as both a security blanket and armour. For us it is a blatant coping strategy to employ when times get strangely bad, because in dismissing the moment as typical City we are of course referencing the past – which was so very much worse. There is nothing you can say or do to us which is anywhere near as bad as we have inflicted upon ourselves.

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So us older City fans find moments to still trot out the typical City defence – Wigan in the FA Cup, even inexplicable defeats this year to Newcastle and Crystal Palace. But it grates on the newer fans who know only a very different kind of City.

I can understand that because we have a Manchester City team here who have so far notched an incredible 195 points in two seasons with a game still left to play. We have won 8 major trophies in the last 10 years and have a very real chance to add a further 2 to that total this season!

For any younger or newer Manchester City fan, typical City will mean something completely different. Typical City these days is winning through beautiful football. Defeats are few and far between and of course this means some of our fan base can struggle to accept the consequences and brutal reality of defeat.

Being part of a broad church of City fans is a real joy and change from what has been an insular past. But just as the newer fans need to appreciate and understand the humour and horror permeating “typical City”, then the older fans have to understand “typical City” means something completely different to newer fans. Under Guardiola our team is becoming different and us oldies have to learn to ditch our understanding which is anchored in the past and move with the times.