Reach PLC is teaming up with Shelter to support the homeless charity's #NoHomeKit campaign this Christmas.
Since the start of the pandemic, more than 180,000 families have lost their homes.
#NoHomeKit will be supported by a host of EFL and non-league clubs donning their away shirts on Boxing Day and December 27 to raise awareness of the crisis.
On City Is Ours this week, we will be doing our bit to raise awareness of the campaign by highlighting five memorable matches made all the more special by the Blues wearing a much-loved change strip.
First up is the 4-1 win at Blackburn Rovers on May 7, 2000. To say Joe Royle’s men rode their luck would be a massive understatement, but the result meant City returned to the top-flight for the first time in four years.
“I remember one Ashley Ward curled around me. It’s hit the post, I’ve turned around and it’s come straight into my arms.” City goalkeeper Nicky Weaver recalled. “And you’re thinking, ‘well, it might be our day today.”
Ward was the third Blackburn player to test Weaver’s furniture. Marlon Broomes thudded a header against the crossbar before Matt Jansen broke the deadlock late in the first half. Rovers' goalscorer had already hit the post and then glanced the outside of the same upright struck by Ward.
City were certainly making a meal of only needing a point to secure back-to-back promotions.
A week earlier, there was a pitch invasion after a fraught 1-0 home win over Birmingham City took Royle’s team to the brink of the promised land.
It felt like pretty much everyone who streamed onto the Maine Road playing surface also made the short journey along the M65. City had the whole Darwen End for their away allocation but there were large pockets of Blues throughout the home fans and, famously, a gaggle watching events unfold from the hill overlooking Ewood Park.
Aside from the shrewd additions of Mark Kennedy and Danny Granville, this was essentially the same team that squeaked out of Division Two in improbable fashion against Gillingham in the previous year’s play-off final.
That day City wore the garish but cherished navy and day-glo striped top, but something of a more classical nature was in order at Blackburn.
In 1999/00, the club reverted to their fabled red and black striped kit, a change strip made famous by Joe Mercer and Malcolm Allison’s all-conquering teams of the late 1960s and early 1970s.
Not all subsequent takes on the colour scheme were hits - see the drafts board effort from the 1980s - but this Le Coq Sportif design (actually the third kit after City's all-white away shirt proved problematic in what felt like a division of blue and white stripes) was clean, simple and very much in step with the original.
For an hour at Blackburn, it was not a performance to match a fine garment. Ipswich Town were ahead against Walsall and on course to take the second automatic promotion slot behind Charlton Athletic at City’s expense.
But then Kennedy held up play down the left flank, set the ball back for Kevin Horlock to deliver a delicious curling cross and Shaun Goater did the rest.
Bedlam in the Darwen End. Bedlam on the hill. Bedlam everywhere.
Paul Dickov, hero of that Gillingham heist, had come on as a second-half substitute and harassed Christian Dailly into a bizarre own goal to put City ahead.
Kennedy deliriously added a third to put promotion beyond doubt before Dickov added yet another coat of gloss to an improbable scoreline.
“Quite honestly, we got battered,” Royle said. “25 minutes later we were 4-1 up. That was Cityitis at its best.”
It might not have been a Wembley triumph or a European trophy, but the victory Royle’s rag-tag bunch pulled off at Blackburn in the kit inspired by that era remains one of the most fondly remembered in Manchester City history.
What are your memories of the promotion game at Blackburn? Do you still have that kit? Follow the City Is Ours editor Dom Farrell on Twitter to get involved in the discussion and give us your thoughts in the comments section below.
