Nowadays, Manchester City are a world-leading football club, full of high-earning, global superstars who are mostly welcomed into the city rather than hailing from it.
In the Etihad Stadium dressing room, a line from the poem 'This Is The Place' reads: "Some born here, some drawn here, but we all call it home." That is a sentiment that reflects the modern-day City, while also reflecting the storied history of the club's working-class upbringings throughout the 20th century.
Many of the club's older fans will remember the lows of the 1990s and the highs of the 1960s, but little before that. So MEN Sport sat down with Dr Barry Posner, soon to celebrate his 100th birthday, to discuss life in Manchester and his experiences of supporting City over almost 100 years.
In fact, Barry's connection with City tracks back even longer, with his father a doctor on Cheetham Hill Road and one of a handful of professionals who would be on hand at Maine Road to tend to injured players. Most of the time, though, there was only one treatment required.
"These unfortunate guys in those days, the trainer had a bucket of water and a sponge," Barry explains. "Every time a player was lying on the floor, this sponge was in a bucket of dirty water, that's how it used to look. Today they lie down every five minutes, groaning and moaning, then get up and run off. I watch football today and the footballers make me ill, their pretence, lying down as soon as anyone looks at them. They're faking it every time."
The reaction to injuries isn't the only striking difference between 20th century and modern-day football, as the current superstars on hundreds of thousands of pounds a week, hailing from all corners of the world, couldn't be further away from the players paid just five pounds a week in the 1940s and '50s.
A keen footballer from his days as a student at Manchester Grammar School, Barry studied at Manchester University after World War II and was a member of the university football team.
In those days, as he explains, City used the university training ground as their own training base - and invited Manchester United to share the facility after Old Trafford was bombed in the war.
"The university sports ground was called the Firs," he explains. "It was a respectable outfit, we played there at home and did some training. When the war ended, United's ground had been bombed and City did the right thing and offered to let United use their grounds for training which was the Firs. United used to come on a Thursday and Friday - City let United in to train on their ground, sometimes training alongside each other.
"I enjoyed it very much. I knew all the City players in those days. I had a car, which was very important as nobody had a car. My father-in-law was a car owner and builder, he gave us an engagement present of a Riley, which was a well-known sports car.
"When I was going to training, I went in the car. The footballers were getting five pounds a week, so didn't have cars, two pounds extra for a win and a pound for a draw. They were poor as church mice, they were all nice local lads. We all trained together, that was my connection with City as a supporter.
"Many times after finishing training they said 'will you give us a lift into town, Barry?' On one occasion, I had five of them on the back seat, seven people in the car. They hadn't got a penny to bless themselves with, they were nice guys. If you came from further afield than Rochdale you were a foreigner. In those days they got a pound extra if they got a draw and thought they were getting well-paid."
Barry can still remember his close relationships with the City squad, including legendary goalkeeper Bert Trautmann - who broke his neck in the 1956 FA Cup final - as the story goes.
"Bert Trautmann's name was actually Berg," he says. "I'm talking as a Jew, been through a war when millions of Jews were killed by the Germans. Bert was a lovely guy, you couldn't dislike him, but Germans weren't at the height of popularity. It was an astonishing position for him to get.
"He was one of the nicest people you could ever meet. They say he broke his neck, he didn't, he broke a vertebrae. It was technically a broken neck but he carried on playing - it just wasn't a broken neck as such.
"There was also Frank Swift, another nice guy, his hands were twice as big as mine. Swift was in goal. Sam Barkas and Bert Sproston were the full-backs. Willie Cowan the captain and centre-half. Jackie Bray the left or right half and the other one was Albert Emptage. The forward line was Eric Brook, an incredible character, Peter Docherty who was a brilliant inside man. They had a forward called Fred Tilson. Then they had Ernie Toseland, he could run like hell but that was about all.
"Tilson was a dirty player, a bit naughty. They didn't have players who were cunning like today, but Tilson if he wanted to do anything he did it. There was a frequent comment written by the Evening News newspaper in the football special, it said Tilson always finished up with his arms round the waist of the opposing goalkeeper and consistently held players down. It was reported in the paper, it said 'Tilson hindered the goalkeeper' and said it several times."
Barry fondly remembers being part of City's all-time record attendance of 84.569 against Stoke in an FA Cup tie in 1934, as well as taking his wife to a clash with Rangers only to be sat among a stand full of Scots who had been drinking for 24 hours - "The fans that came up from Glasgow, on special trains, they boozed all night and landed up in Exchange Station 99 per cent pissed out of their minds at about 6am. They walked to Maine Road drinking all the way. We were sitting and we were the only two English-speaking people among all these Scots - all terribly polite but drunk out of their minds. The fella in front of me never saw the game, he was asleep the whole way through."
And while he struggles to get his head around the modern game, which features far too much rolling around, Barry never misses a City game and hopes to attend a fixture at the Etihad when he turns 100 in March.
As a teenager when war broke out in 1939, the conversation with Barry turns to the social changes in Manchester in the 1930s, and he remembers vividly some of the treatment he received from teachers at school simply for being Jewish - from outright threats, to unfair treatment on the school football team.
He said: "My first lesson was geography, the teacher was a swine! I'm only about 12 or 13, the geography master, takes the roster. He said 'stand up the Jewish boys'. I remember every word. Three or four of us little lads stood up, shaking, wondering what's going on.
"I've never forgotten, he said: 'The Jews are a very clever race - if you boys don't do better than all of the other boys, I will know you're not trying and you will be punished.' I don't care what religion you are, but when that's said to you on the first day at school, I remember word for word. I lived it down without any problems.
"I was a good footballer, above average. I played on the first team. The master responsible for the selection was another swine - most of the masters were lovely guys but there were three or four, and antisemitism in those days was of course prominent. I got picked as an outside right, I was a good runner, picked pretty regularly. The guy who selected the team always saw to it that I was dropped when the names were coming up to getting 'colours' for making so many appearances. That was another trick."
And another story saw Barry and a friend decide to drop out of sixth-form and join the war effort, signing up to make gas masks at a factory on Oldham Street, knowing that Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain was headed to Munich for talks with Adolf Hitler.
"We were certain there was going to be a war," he says. "Chamberlain went to Munich, my friend and I decided there would be a terrible war, so in our wisdom went to this factory and signed up to assemble gas masks, everyone in the country needed one. We stopped going to school for a week.
"When we decided we have to come back, because Chamberlain came back from Munich waving a bit of paper shouting ' peace in our time!' We'd been out of school for a week, we crept back to school. But I'd used some of my father's surgery note paper to write notes out for us so I was landed with having taken a whole week off and forging a note to excuse us. I got caned, the one time."
Barry went on to serve in the war as an RAF pilot in Canada, before resuming his studies and becoming a successful dental practitioner in Manchester after his playing days ended. In his later career, he lectured around the world for a German company until his retirement.
"I thought about it very hard," he said. "People said how can you work for a German country under the circumstances. To tell you the truth I don't know how I did, but the point was this was not immediately after the war, it was about 20 years after. I said I like these people, they're nice people. The people I dealt with weren't the wartime people, they were generous and amazing."