Forever Blue With Ian Cheeseman: The Highs And Lows Of Following The Blues

What a journey Manchester City have been on during the last week or so.

First they ground out a draw against the club that are the definition of “anti-football”, Atletico Madrid, to qualify for the semi-finals of the Champions League and then they lost 3-2 at Wembley in the semi-final of the FA Cup. I’m used to riding the rollercoaster, as a City fan, but this was quite a drop after such a big high.

City showed their grit in the Spanish capital as they protected their slender 1-0 advantage from the first leg. As Atletico, and their passionate fans, tried to unsettle the Blues, Pep’s men dug in and even exaggerated a few challenges themselves near the end to make sure they kept the clean sheet they needed to progress. Who can blame City’s wonderful footballers for fighting fire with fire when they needed to. Pep’s progression to the last four of the competition was a win for football.

Just three days after that physically and mentally draining game, City faced Liverpool for the second time in a week. Having drawn at the Etihad Stadium in the Premier League they squared up again at Wembley in the FA Cup. The players who featured in both games looked tired. There were several players out through injury and rotation whereas Liverpool had been able to rest a few of their stars in midweek, because they already had a two goal lead over Benfica and the second leg was at Anfield.

Liverpool’s energy levels were clearly much higher and they raced out of the blocks into a 3-0 halftime lead. Although City got a couple of goals back in the second half to make the scoreline more respectable, 3-2 flattered City who were well beaten on the day.

I could relate, to some extent, to how the City players felt. I’d travelled to both games and feel exhausted as I write this. I’d flown out on Tuesday, with a four hour stopover in Dublin, and another hour long queue to go through security (don’t ask me why, because we’d already done that in Manchester). The return journey was even worse. We first flew south to Majorca before a two hour delay later, we arrived back in Manchester at 1.30am Friday morning. After waiting 20 minutes for an airport bus I got home at 2.45am. On Saturday I drove down to Wembley at 7am.

Admittedly the City players wouldn’t have had it quite that bad. I do all I can to keep the costs down. What did annoy me was that after the 0-0 draw, in Madrid, I could see the players were very reluctant to acknowledge the travelling fans and had to (literally) be man handled by captain Fernandinho and pushed towards the fans before they made a token gesture of waving vaguely in their direction. I wish they were in touch with reality a bit more. I guess that’s why they play so well, because that’s all they focus on.

On Sunday at Wembley a section of City fans sang songs while the rest of the crowd fell silent to remember those who died at Hillsborough. I felt ashamed. Such a lack of respect. On the field Pep showed, by his team selection, that that his priorities are the Premier League and Champions League, by leaving out key players. That disrespects those who travelled at great expense and inconvenience. No wonder City didn’t sell all their seats.

I am so proud of what the players have achieved so far, and I’ve been a Manchester City fan all my life, but there needs to be more respect all round. Let’s hope lessons have been learnt from the good and bad of the last seven days.