Phil Foden walked into his post-match interview at the Etihad Stadium on Saturday carrying an inflatable banana. It was the image that framed a charged afternoon in east Manchester: hundreds of yellow inflatables laid out on seats in the home sections before kick-off, tens of thousands of supporters booing the Premier League anthem as the teams lined up, and then a 3-2 win over Ipswich Town that moved Manchester City six points clear at the top of the table.
This was City’s first home league fixture since an independent commission found the club guilty of serious financial irregularities on 29 September, a verdict City deny and are appealing. A record Etihad crowd of 60,817 treated the occasion less as a routine Saturday and more as a referendum.
A sea of yellow, and a boo for the anthem
The anthem was drowned out, replaced by a chant of “City, City, City” that rolled round three sides of the ground. In the South Stand, the 1894 Group unveiled a banner depicting Frank Gallagher, the Shameless anti-hero, in City colours — a deliberately unserious answer to a very serious judgment.
“This is really why the City fans are not rushing to conclusions,” the group said of the display, “and today’s display reflects the fact we don’t need anyone telling us what to do or how to feel.”
The bananas are not new. They first appeared on the Kippax at Maine Road in November 1987, variously credited to the fanzine Blue Print and to supporter Frank Newton, and took hold because the terraces had nicknamed City’s No 9, Imre Varadi, “Imre Banana”. By 1988-89 the inflatables had become a national story, with 12,000 City fans travelling to Stoke carrying them.
Varadi, who scored 26 league goals in two seasons at the club, has watched the revival with some amusement. “Just to see the inflatable craze coming back from the 80s when I was playing at the old Maine Road, it was a joy,” he said. “Brilliant to see and it brought a lot of fun back.” He now sells his own inflatables in the club stores: “I started it but it was 40 years ago and it’s still going strong now.”
They had surfaced in the away end at Anfield the previous weekend. Saturday was the first time they were deployed at scale.
Maresca’s record seven
The football, for all the noise around it, was the more straightforward story. Foden opened the scoring in the 19th minute — his first goal of 2026 — and Haaland scored twice to take his season tally to 12. Gary O’Neil’s Ipswich twice found a way back into the game and left with considerable credit, but City held on for a seventh straight league win.
That is a Premier League record. No manager had previously won his first seven league games in charge of a club, putting Enzo Maresca ahead of Pep Guardiola, Carlo Ancelotti and Ole Gunnar Solskjaer. City sit on 21 points from seven matches, six clear of reigning champions Arsenal.
Maresca has consistently framed the off-field case as a unifying force rather than a distraction, and he returned to that theme afterwards.
“The environment was very good,” he said. “The fans, the club and the players are all together on this journey.”
Why the six-point lead comes with an asterisk
The complication is that the table may not be the table. The commission found City had inflated sponsorship income by £830.69m across the 2009-10 to 2017-18 seasons, including via contracts it characterised as shams. Sanctions have not yet been handed down, and the appeal has not been heard.
Recent precedent is instructive rather than reassuring:
- Everton were docked 10 points in 2023-24 for a profit and sustainability breach, reduced to six on appeal, then given a further two-point deduction.
- Nottingham Forest were docked four points in the same season.
- Both cases involved breaches of a far smaller scale and far shorter duration than those found against City.
A points deduction large enough to erase a six-point advantage is not a remote scenario, which is precisely why Saturday felt the way it did. Supporters who have spent a decade being told their success is illegitimate have decided to answer with an in-joke from 1987 rather than a legal argument.
City play AEK Athens in the Champions League on Tuesday before travelling to Aston Villa on 24 October. On the pitch, Maresca’s side have not yet given anyone a reason to doubt them. Off it, the decision that matters most is still being written, and no amount of yellow plastic will change it.
Sports journalist and editor at SportsPortal.net. Covers cricket, football, Formula 1, tennis, and basketball with a focus on how global sports connect with Pakistani audiences. Follows the PSL, Pakistan national cricket team, Premier League, and major international tournaments. Has reported on sports for digital audiences since 2021.
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