After Palace, City went on a remarkable run, winning 19 of the remaining 24 games, winning the league by ten points and scoring 108 goals, with the brilliant Goater netting 32 of them. But what happened that night, as fans racially abused City players Shaun Wright-Phillips, Shaun Goater, Ali Benarbia and Eyal Berjovic, helped to cement the team together and spark a winning run which sent the Blues careering to the Football League title. He wouldn't speak to me about it... and I wouldn't speak to him about it': Micah Richards on the dark side of the game he loves I didn't cry... I only told the truth": The strange and confused day Manchester City signed 'the new Pele' Shaun Wright-Phillips got his first goal, we got a win, and that was a major result. There were others, of course, after that, but that was probably the turning point for me.”

One of those fans was Sean Riley, a City fan who had not missed a game for 12 seasons and was desperate to keep his record intact. He managed to find a way in and continue an unbroken run of loyal support only broken by another fan ban – when he failed to get in to CSKA Moscow in 2014. We had really good players, who were always going to score goals, and Keegan was perfect for that team.” The first time we scored, there were people turning round and staring at me – some of them with F Troop masks on, trying to intimidate me.”City have moved onwards and upwards, and Keegan was in no doubt that the victory at Millwall was crucial. The steward said it was just as bad in there, and she was right,” he said. “But we did move and were behind a family, whose young girl – maybe six to eight – started scratching under her arms and making monkey noises when Shaun Goater came over to our side. Every game was a bit of them against us for City at that time – the Blues were a scalp. And they had the former England manager and European Footballer of the Year in charge, so no matter where they were, everyone wanted to take them down.” Read More Related Articles It was not going well. The Blues had lost six of their first 20 games and were seven points behind leaders Burnley – and defeat at The Den would have seen Millwall leapfrog them into fourth place, and City plummet to ninth.

City chairman David Bernstein also remembers the night well, as he was on the team bus as it made its way through south London, like a stagecoach with a cavalry escort rattling through Apache country. A London-based City fan who also managed to get in, along with his 15-year-old daughter and a friend, was appalled at the levels of racist abuse. Things had not improved a great deal when Manchester City went to the new Den, just down the road, at a crossroads moment in their history. I’ve been watching football for ages and seen some bad stuff – following England abroad was bad enough – but this was a whole different world.”

In terms of positive turning points, I would say the game at Millwall, when we had to go down there – a tough place to go,” he said. Two years earlier, when City and Millwall met at Maine Road, down in Division Two, a particularly inventive piece of vandalism by some Blues fans had led to serious trouble.