That’s why we asked you to help mark the club’s 125th anniversary by sending in your suggestions for a very special Manchester City mishmash poster.
And after months of hard-work, dedicating up to 50 hours per week, artist Alex Bennett has unveiled his chef-d’oeuvre – capturing some of our most pivotal chapters right up to Rodrigo’s signing in July.
It would be difficult enough to even decide where to begin such an intricate piece, but for Bennett there was only once place to kick things off.
“The Aguero goal (against QPR)”, he said.
“I got that in nice and early and worked around it, it might not look like it but that’s the focal point.
“There’s some such as the Sane free-kick (against Schalke), Kompany’s (Leicester) goal and Aguero’s that are in a set position, they have to be there… then you can work around it and just tweak things.”
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Key moments in our recent history such as these can be reeled off by most football fans in seconds, but what makes this mishmash unique for Blues supporters?
It’s Rodney Marsh’s mazy run and trivela finish against Brian Clough’s Championship-winning Derby County in 1972, it’s Steve Mackenzie’s thunderbolt of a volley in the 1981 FA Cup Final replay, so often forgotten thanks to Ricky Villa’s heroics later in the same game.
In short, it’s bringing these forgotten gems to life, all in the same place, which make this a real masterpiece.
And Bennett was keen to give these kinds of moments their time in the sun.
One of his personal favourites to bring to life, for example, was the famous ‘Ewood Park Hill’ where City fans unable to get tickets to the Blues’ final game of the 1999-2000 promotion season away to Blackburn spectated from the ridge overlooking the ground.
He said: “(I like) stuff that is a bit out there and not too obvious… it’s just things like that that only City fans would understand.”
Bennett’s comments are a case in point, Joe Mercer or Pep Guardiola, Colin Bell or David Silva, Maine Road or the Etihad Stadium, it doesn’t matter. This mishmash captures our history in all of its glory.
