City at Goodison Park: Through the years | OneFootball

Saturday will see City play at Goodison Park for a 100th and final time.

Everton will move out of the historic venue at the end of the current season, ending the 133-year lifespan of one of English football’s most adored arenas.

Surrounded by rows and rows of terraced housing, soundtracked by the theme from Z-Cars (an old BBC drama based in the local area) and witness to some incredible events, Goodison is a special day out for home and away fans.

It will no doubt be an emotional farewell for Everton supporters when the time comes to say farewell next month.

For Pep Guardiola and his players, the focus this weekend will be on three points in our pursuit of Champions League football next term.

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However, Blues young and old will surely want to soak up every moment as we wave goodbye to a stadium that has been a constant in all of our lives.

It will perhaps conjure up memories of City’s move from Maine Road to the Etihad Stadium in 2003, when we bid a tearful so long to our aging, much-loved home for the promise of better things to come.

That decision proved a vital part in forming the Manchester City that today stands tall as one of the biggest clubs in world football.

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While the Toffees have won the league title eight times since moving to Goodison way back in 1892, the last of those came in 1986/87.

Everton fans will be hoping this move can do similar for their club as it did for us, but it nevertheless makes it no less gut wrenching to tear yourself away from the memories and traditions of your former home.

As for City, we also have plenty of memories at Goodison.

98 of our 99 previous games there have come against Everton, with just the 1904 FA Cup semi-final victory over Sheffield Wednesday the anomaly.

That 3-1 win on 19 March made Goodison a vital part of our first ever major trophy, as we went on to lift the FA Cup at Crystal Palace just a few weeks later.

Of the 98 games between City and Everton at Goodison Park, it’s fair to say our hosts have generally had the upper hand. The Toffees have won 47 times, with City victorious on 26 occasions.

We’ve scored 112 goals there, conceding 161.

Our first game at Goodison came all the way back in April 1900, when the hosts were 4-0 victors.

Since then, we’ve both spent the majority of our existences in the top-flight and therefore faced off at Goodison almost every single season – including in every year City have lifted the title.

In our first ever Division One title winning season back in 1936/37, City went to Everton in March in the midst of an unbeaten run that had put Wilf Wild’s side in with a shot of top spot.

We came away with a 1-1 draw and then won eight of our last 10 games to claim that historic first league triumph.

In 1967/68, Joe Mercer and Malcolm Allison took our exciting young side to Goodison in November after a shock defeat to Fulham. We stabilised with another 1-1 draw, before an unbeaten run that left us in the driving seat for the eventual success.

City’s next title-winners wouldn’t come until 2011/12, when we suffered a significant blow to our title hopes with a 1-0 defeat to a team led by the recently returned David Moyes.

Gareth Barry was part of City’s team that day but would move to Everton later in his career.

Speaking to the Guardian in 2016, he outlined what made Goodison so special: “For me, Goodison is the toughest away ground to come to. I have experienced it.

“If you are an opposition player and you want to take a touch but the crowd is on your back, it is a difficult place to play. Under the lights here, the atmosphere is that much stronger.”

However, it’s likely the 3-2 win in May 2014 as we approached the culmination of another epic title tussle that will stick out in the hearts of minds of most City fans.

With just three games left, Manuel Pellegrini’s team had to be perfect to snatch the trophy from Liverpool.

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Up against an in-form Everton chasing Champions League football, it was never likely to be easy.

And so it proved, with Ross Barkley opening the scoring. However, a Sergio Aguero leveller and two Edin Dzeko goals either side of half-time put us up before Romelu Lukaku ensured a nervy end to the game.

A valiant defensive display and some shrewd time management from Dzeko in particular got us over the line to three points that all would inspire us all the way.

Our next truly notable game at Goodison Park was a heavy defeat in Pep Guardiola’s first season in England.

The 4-0 loss proved to be perhaps the toughest point in the Catalan’s early time in England.

He recovered, of course, and has since overseen the greatest era of dominance in the history of the English game – winning six titles in seven seasons.

That game in January 2017 was also our last defeat to Everton, with 13 wins and three draws home and away since.

During that time, we’ve scored 20 times and conceded just four goals at the Grand Old Lady.

Some of those goals have been wondrous, including a sumptuous Ilkay Gundogan flick to all but seal the Premier League title in our 2022/23 Treble-winning season and a beautiful Bernardo Silva curler last term.

While there will be some room for sentimentality in the stands either side of the game on Saturday, Guardiola will be fully focused on making that nine wins in a row come kick-off.