Eight years ago today, Sergio Aguero’s injury-time winner on the last day of the season wrested the title from the red side of Manchester to the blue half in the most incredible end to a season ever.
How would you celebrate the greatest moment in Premier League history?
“I was out for five days in a row,” City defender and title winner Micah Richards tells Goal. “I’m not a big drinker. But I probably had two hours' sleep per night. I was drinking absolutely everything because I just couldn't believe it.”
Manchester City have gone on to win three Premier League title since and each of them have been memorable in their own way; pipping Liverpool on the final day in 2014 and last year, the style and swagger of Pep Guardiola’s remarkable record-breaking Centurions campaign in 2018. But the drama and emotion of the 2012 success will always be the most special for many fans.
With just six games remaining, City were eight points behind United. A derby win courtesy of a Vincent Kompany goal put City in a favourable position but they almost threw it away on the final day against relegation-threatened Queens Park Rangers.
That was until Aguero’s 94th-minute winner.
City’s side was full of stars, including Aguero, Yaya Toure and David Silva. But for Richards, who had joined as a teenager long before Sheikh Mansour sunk his millions into the club, the success was particularly sweet as City ended their 44-year wait for glory.
“No disrespect to them, Yaya and Silva - they were always going to win something,” Richards says. “But when you're a young player coming through the youth team at 14, to win a Premier League… you just can't describe it. It was absolutely incredible.
“I was out with my mates. I remember a couple years before Man Utd and Rio [Ferdinand] and all of them were walking around with their Premier League medals. So I went out that night, and I made sure I had my Premier League medal for everyone to see.”
The City squad headed for Manchester Town Hall that night to celebrate with celebrity guests, including Oasis frontman Liam Gallagher and former welterweight boxing champion Ricky Hatton, before moving on to a secretly-arranged party until 4am and a blurry-eyed open-top bus parade the following day.
Maverick striker Mario Balotelli, naturally, did his own thing, celebrating at his favourite Italian restaurant San Carlo in the city centre.
But City's was a close-knit squad, and Richards believed the glamour and excitement of the pre-season tour to Los Angeles 10 months earlier helped bring them together and set them up for the first title.
“I think it all started when we were in LA,” he recalls. “We just had a tight-knit group from then on. Normally in pre-season you're in not the best of places and all the time after training, you just want to go back to the room and relax - watch some films or whatever.
“But because we were in Los Angeles, we were venturing out and got closer as a group. That really helped us to go and win the Premier League.
“It helped obviously that we won the FA Cup the year before, but we believed in each other even more from that pre-season because we got to know each other more as people not just on the pitch.”
Richards’ contribution to the season was huge - starting almost two thirds of games that season. But Pablo Zabaleta was preferred for the final matches as they overhauled United - beating them 1-0 in that tense, penultimate home game of the season.
City boss Roberto Mancini was hugely superstitious and did not like to alter anything when his side was being successful. The Italian is also religious, praying that City would win the title the night before and had prayer beads in his suit pocket at the Etihad Stadium. But that did not stop him shouting an unholy “F*ck you! F*ck you!” at his players when they fell 2-1 behind to 10-man QPR.
“Everyone's seen that clip of him swearing at every one!” jokes Richards. “Everything had been going so right and he's waiting for just one moment against a team, which we should be battering probably 6 or 7-0.
“We had something like 20 corners in that game, and we couldn't hit the target. So everyone was just like 'we've lost the game'. I felt that on the bench when I was there.
“I was like: 'I can't believe this. Is this going be typical old City again?' Everything was in slow motion.”
Of course everything did come good in the end. Edin Dzeko equalised in injury time and while United fans began to celebrate after the final whistle in their 1-0 victory over Sunderland, Aguero made his unforgettable intervention.
“I swear you'll never see anything like this ever again,” TV commentator Martin Tyler famously screamed. We haven't yet.
