Preamble: Seventeen years ago, a Manchester City side with a central midfield pairing of Steve Lomas and Garry Flitcroft were about halfway through the decline that saw them go from fifth in the top-flight to mid-table in the third tier in the space of six and a half seasons. An Ajax side containing Frank Rijkaard, Clarence Seedorf, Jari Litmanen and Patrick Kluivert (on the bench) had just won the European Cup. How times change. City now have more dough than a workaholic baker, while the Amsterdam club haven't gone beyond the group stages in the Champions League since 2005-06 and can consider themselves to be on something of an upswing having actually made the tournament proper for the last couple of seasons. They're clubs who seem poles apart these days in outlook and expectation, which is why it was such a shock a fortnight ago when Frank de Boer's side piled the pressure on Roberto Mancini with a 3-1 win over the English champions.
Yet Ajax are in pretty miserable shape in the Eredivisie. They've not won in four attempts and lost 2-0 at home to Vitesse at the weekend. They are fifth, but trail the leaders, FC Twente, by 10 points, the same gap that separates them from 16th-place PEC Zwolle. And while domestically they've been, like Hard Fi's third single, hard to beat (yes, a seven-year-old musical reference counts as bleeding edge to me), in Europe they've been, like Hard Fi's ninth single, good for nothing (yes I had to look that up). That is until City rocked up at the Amsterdam Arena and watched as the home side partied like it was 1995.
Still, the Dutch giants are supposed to be the whipping boys in Group D and City are huge odds-on favourites tonight. Anything other than a win and Mancini's side can pretty much kiss goodbye to the Champions League for another season and Mancini himself can start thinking about polishing up the CV that had seven or eight clubs clamouring over his services towards the end of last season.
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