Simon Hattenstone in The Guardian recalls that after the League Cup success of 1976 city fans had reason to be giddy but then....
‘Things got so good that we almost won the championship in 1977. Dave Watson towered in the middle of defence, Kiddo forgot he was a Red, Joe Royle rediscovered the net, and Tueart and Barnes ran riot down the wings. On the cusp of glory, Watson scored a late own-goal against Liverpool and we surrendered the league. Our home gate was averaging 40,000. We were better than United, and almost as big as them. Things could only get better.
But they didn't. We never got anywhere near winning the league again. We became losers. Laughing stocks. And all the years merged into one. Yes, there were great players - Trevor Francis, Kazzy Deyna, Steve Mackenzie, Kinky Kinkladze, Kenny Clements (only a blue would describe Kenny Clements as a ‘great player’) - but few great days (10-1 against Huddersfield, 5-1 against United). Maine Road memories were largely bleak. And never bleaker than David Pleat skipping across the pitch after Luton relegated us in the last minute in 1983.
Maine Road is like a photo album. I look round and age myself from the stands. The bad years coincided with growing up and standing in the old Kippax. The ground had lost its romance. We saw it for what it was - shabby and squalid, and stinking of piss. Great pillars obstructed our view. We wondered why it was impossible to build a new stand that looked vaguely like the others. In the 80s, the mood changed. We were bitter, humourless, resentful. We turned up fired by duty and anger rather than love and hope.
And then something strange and wonderful happened. I don't know why we took to giant inflatables, but we did. We decided to laugh our way through the torment. The football was surreal, and so were we. How could we despair when we had six-foot plastic bananas for support? So what if our new chairman, Francis Lee, turned out to be chairman Mao and made 40,000 of us sing Happy Birthday to him when he took over the club; so what if we signed Lee Bradbury for £3m; so what if we didn't think the new First Division was bad enough for us and plumped for the Second. We had our songs. "We are not, we're not really here, we are not, we're not really here. Just like the fans of the invisible man, we're not really here!"
Even the Kippax went, and suddenly our capacity had shrunk by 20,000, a diminished ground for a diminished team. The new Kippax was a monstrous contraption that reached to the heavens and could barely hold 10,000. Old Trafford could house more than 60,000. So we laughed. We sang 21 years and we're still here (to celebrate 21 trophyless years). The 21 became 22 and 23 and 24 and 25 and 26, and only ended when we won the First Division, which counted as a trophy because we were desperate.’