Agony, ecstasy and Joey Barton.
This weekend is the fifth anniversary of arguably the great game – and definitely the most memorable three minutes – in Premier League history. If you don’t remember, this is how went down: On final day, both Manchester clubs could still win the title, but it was in City’s hands to lose. The teams were tied on points, but City had a significantly better goal difference. Providing United didn’t beat already-safe Sunderland by a cricket score, City just had to match or better their result against relegation-threatened QPR to win their first title in since 1968.
While everyone else was at home watching both games on two screens at once, on 13 May 2012, I was there, at the Eithad, in the away end, supporting QPR. Everyone remembers how City won the league, but what happened to QPR was equally miraculous. It was our first season back in the Premier League since 1996, we’d been a mess, with new owner Tony Fernades funding such prestigious signings as Shaun Wright Philips, Joey Barton and Anton Ferdinand. We’d deserved to be facing the drop, yet we’d also managed to beat Arsenal, Chelsea, Spurs and Liverpool. We were one place and one point above the drop, meaning that if Bolton won and we lost on the last day we’d go down – which was very possible as they were playing Stoke and we had Man City away.
🎥 #OnThisDay 5️⃣ years ago …
10-man #QPR celebrated @premierleague survival on a dramatic final day at @ManCity 😅 pic.twitter.com/fvAF28sQZQ
— QPR FC (@QPR) May 13, 2017
So not only was the title still to play for on final day, it was also top of the league versus one of the two teams who could still go down. The atmosphere on the way up from London was incredible, and we grabbed a few pints in The Lass O’Gowrie pub – home to a North West QPR supporter’s group – as it showed a DVD of us beating nine-men Chelsea 1-0 earlier in the season. Come half time though, both City and United had one goal leads, and the day looked like it was going to be predictable and depressing.
And then the madness started. Mad French striker Djibril Cisse had been on-fire since joining us in January, either scoring or being sent off in every game he played for club that season, and he kept his record up by pouncing on a wayward Joleon Lescott header to equalize just after the restart. We were staying up, and the title is heading to Old Trafford.
Then steps up Joey Barton. For anyone else, this would be the dumbest day of his footballing career – but for Joey, it’s merely just another incident. Carlos Tevez goes down – perhaps a touch softly – from contact with Barton, and then after seeing red Barton goes Super Saiyan, kicking Sergio Augero and trying to head-butt Vincent Kompany.
And yet, despite the extra man, City continue to capitulate. Jamie Mackie makes the single greatest off-the-ball run I have ever seen to get on the end of a Taye Taiwo cross, and somehow everything has gone insane and we were beating Man City, away. 25 minutes later, we’re still in the lead, and it’s full time at the Stadium of Light.
You all know what happened next. Dzeko and Augero both scored in injury time. At the time, we still didn’t know the Bolton score. 55,000 people checking their phones at the same time meant there was no network. Apparently some of the QPR players that were on the side near the bench did know that they had only drawn with Stoke, meaning the result didn’t matter, but not all of them. You all remember Augero celebrating. I just remember Clint Hill punching the Eithad turf in utter despair.
Quite quickly though, it came through that we were fine. It was a relief, not only that we were safe, but also because it meant I could enjoy one of the greatest sporting moments of my life as a neutral, and as a football fan. I’ve nether experienced a bigger sense of collective euphoria anywhere, let alone between rival football fans. People say that City buying the league destroys the soul of football, but only 13 years earlier the City fans had seen their team playing in League One (It was actually QPR who had relegated them in 1998). Say what you want about any plastic fans who’ve popped up in the last five years, but the jubilation on the faces of those supporters was real.
Sometimes I kind of wish I’d watched it like most of my friends did, seeing it play out from both Sunderland and Manchester, in real time, on split screen on Sky, or with several laptop in front of them. We really didn’t know quite how incredible it all was until it was all over.
