For a club which is frequently described as having “no history”, Manchester City hold a proud record which makes a mockery of the ignoramuses.
The Blues currently hold the longest span of time in English football between winning their first major trophy and their most recent.
City won the FA Cup in 1904 – four years before Manchester United first had something to put in their cabinet – and this year’s Premier League triumph means there are 115 years between their first and last trophies.
That record will be extended by a week, of course, if they beat Watford to lift the FA Cup on Saturday.
But it is also sure to be beaten on June 1, when either Liverpool or Tottenham win the Champions League.
Liverpool won their first trophy – the Football League – in 1901 and if they win in Madrid they will edge out City with 118 years between first and last.
That same year, Tottenham became the only non-league club ever to win the FA Cup, so they will also chalk up 118 years of they triumph in the final next month.
By way of contrast Arsenal, generally regarded as one of England’s three biggest clubs, with United and Liverpool, have just 87 years between their first and most recent trophies. They won nothing until 1930.
The FA Cup has featured prominently in City’s history, with five wins and five runners-up places since that first triumph in 1904, when they beat Bolton at Crystal Palace.
And for any superstitious City fans looking for omens ahead of Saturday’s showpiece at Wembley, the fact that it comes just over a month after the release of “The Keeper” - the biopic about Bert Trautmann – might be pertinent.
Trautmann famously played on in the 1956 FA Cup final with a broken neck.
The win, over Birmingham, was City’s first FA Cup for 22 years.
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The 2-1 win over Portsmouth in 1934 came after a run to the final which included a win over Stoke at Maine Road on front of 84,569 fans, still a record for an English club ground.
The City team that day included future Manchester United manager Sir Matt Busby and great City 'keeper Frank Swift, who would both be on the plane which crashed at Munich in 1958 – Busby survived and Swift, by then a journalist, did not.
This year also marks the 50 anniversary of the 1969 FA Cup final triumph, when Neil Young’s goal settled the game against Leicester in front of 100,000 fans at Wembley.
