User:Falastur2/York City away

The first league meeting between York City and Manchester City occurred on Saturday, 19 December 1998. A 2–1 defeat for Manchester City left them temporarily at what would prove to be their lowest league placement in their entire history, standing at 12th place in the third tier of English football. Conversely for such a humiliating result and for a point representing in some ways Manchester City's lowest ebb of their existence, the game - known simply as "York City away" - is remembered with intense fondness by fans of the Manchester club, and is regarded as one of the most significant games of their history, owing chiefly to their phoenix-like rise from potential obscurity back to Premier League status.

Background
Although the game at the time seemed fairly insignificant - just another defeat for Manchester City after a string of poor results in their first season in the third tier of English football - by the end of the season it was far more important, if symbolically, as the nadir of Manchester City's decline in the 1990s. With a shock relegation to the third tier, Man City had been expected to walk the league and achieve promotion with ease but as they approached the midpoint of the season they were without a win in any competition for almost a month and were on the back of a run of 14 league games in which they had scored only 16 points. Even more humiliatingly, City had in only their previous game lost at home by two goals to one to Division Three club Mansfield Town in their very first match in the Football League Trophy, a competition only for clubs in the third and fourth tiers and in which they were considered to be one of, if not the, highest-profile team ever to compete in.

Bootham Crescent, home of York City and with a maximum capacity of under 8,000, would see an average attendance for the season of only 3,645 but for the Manchester City game it was nearly sold out, with the 7,527 giving the game the ground's highest attendance since the visit of the sky blue's bitter rivals Manchester United in the League Cup three seasons previous. Indeed, much of this figure came from Manchester City's travelling contingent, with so many having bought tickets in the home fans' seats in order to guarantee their place that reportedly one of the main stands became an impromptu extension of the away section, with sky blue shirts outnumbering the home team's red.