From that Law back-heel to this Keegan kick-start

All aboard the rollercoaster – but this is not the same old City, says Tueart

Keeping up with the Joneses can hardly be more difficult than when they live at Old Trafford. Just once in 24 years have Manchester City managed to finish a football season looking down on their neighbours. (That was in 1991, when Manchester United, three points behind in sixth place, went out the following week and won the European Cup-Winners' Cup).

Walking through the front gate for a lunchtime appointment today, holding heads as high as they can manage, City must attempt to put aside any inferiority complex; looking back not in anger to previous disappointments but with pride to that glorious day last November when it was United who had the threadbare look after a deserved 3-1 beating at Maine Road.

A once in a Blue Moon triumph? Or was that Saturday- morning glory to be the moment the balance of power changed? United, being United, got a rocket from Sir Alex Ferguson and won nine of their next 10 games; City, being City, immediately lost at home to Charlton, then away to Middlesbrough; Kevin Keegan, being Kevin Keegan, demanded more money for more players; status quo restored.

From the outside, the apparent obsession with catching and matching United, as articulated by Malcolm Allison when he first went to Maine Road almost 40 years ago, seems to distort so much of what City do. It means that they have always been in too much of a hurry, unable to bear the thought of another day, let alone another season, in the red shadow.

"What you've got to under-stand is what this club is all about, and how big it is," says Dennis Tueart, who remembers days of lording it over United, and will be sitting in the visitors' section of the directors' box at Old Trafford this afternoon. "After being with the club in the successful Seventies, I know this club can sustain success at the highest level. So it's important that we get there. The biggest problem we have is that once you get to the Premiership you have to retain that position for two consecutive years because of the finance."

Consecutive years in the same division has not, of course, been the City way of late. Under Tueart's former team-mate Joe Royle, they went from the First Division to the Second and then to the Premiership, with Royle talking of aiming for Europe – and getting relegated again. Straight back up under Keegan, whose dictionary omits the word "consolidate", and more talk of the top six, put into perspective by last week's home defeat against West Bromwich Albion.

"It's been a rollercoaster," Tueart admits. "But we've got 37 points now so you can talk quite confidently about us being in the Premiership next year, which is obviously important in bringing the quality players here, like the appeal of Kevin Keegan as manager. If you'd said three years ago that we'd have Anelka and Fowler up front, Berkovic and Foé in midfield and Schmeichel in goal, people would have thought you had your head loose."

The manager, he feels, is exactly the same person he played alongside while winning six England caps in the late Seventies: "Kevin hasn't changed. He's aggressive, very ambitious and wouldn't have come here unless he thought there was massive potential to tap into. I said to the chairman when we first looked at Kevin, 'Your feet won't touch the ground', and so it's proved. You're always trying to hold Kevin back – he just goes.

"But we have to be sensible. If you build on sand it'll collapse, so we need a proper foundation and that means managing all the different areas of the club. One of the first things I learnt as a director was how huge a business a football club is these days."

Almost the first thing he learned as a City player, in March 1974, was the importance of the derby game: "I was signed from Sunderland on a Wednesday by Ron Saunders and played against United three days later." Even with Colin Bell, Francis Lee, Mike Summerbee, Rodney Marsh and Denis Law on the books, City were struggling, the old lags not appreciating Saunders' authoritarian ways. But United were in an even worse predicament, and after a goalless draw at Maine Road, and Saunders' sacking, Tueart's second derby, six weeks later, was the most famous of them all: Law's casual back-heel to score against his old club, the Stretford End boot boys invading the pitch and the match abandoned with United relegated.

"It was very emotional for Denis and he wasn't best pleased, but it's been wrongly reported over the years that it was that goal which sent United down. In fact that result was irrelevant because of the results elsewhere."

For a few years it was good to be blue in Manchester. United, though soon promoted, were beaten 4-0 in the League Cup with Tueart claiming what he believes to be the quickest-ever derby goal (35 seconds), then scoring in the final against Newcastle at Wembley with an overhead kick; City finished second and fourth, before it all fell away again. By 1983 they were relegated and a decade later Lee announced: "If there was a cup for cock-ups, City would win it every year".

So the Joneses are top dogs in the neighbourhood again. But the rough lot from Moss Side have a rather desirable new home to move into next summer (capacity 48,000 and paid for by public money). They are just hoping that for once it is built on something more solid than sand.