Manchester City v Chelsea

Chelsea were barely two years old when they first visited Hyde Road; a fixture with no weight yet, and a lifetime of it still to come.

Manchester City and Chelsea first faced each other in the First Division during the 1907-08 season. City were playing at Hyde Road, their home since 1887, while Chelsea were still a young club, founded just two years earlier in 1905. Both sides were establishing themselves in the top flight, and the fixture carried little of the weight it would later acquire.

Fifty years of waiting, one title: Drake's Chelsea finally arrived whilst City were still deciding which division suited them.

Chelsea won their first league championship in 1954-55 under Ted Drake, a milestone that took the club 50 years to achieve. Manchester City, meanwhile, were yo-yoing between the First and Second Divisions. The two clubs occupied different orbits for much of the mid-20th century, meeting only when City were in the top flight. City did reach the 1955 FA Cup Final, losing to Newcastle, before winning it the following year against Birmingham.

Both clubs arrived at this fixture as genuine trophy winners; between them, five major honours claimed across just three seasons.

The late 1960s and early 1970s saw both clubs at their strongest in decades. Manchester City, under Joe Mercer and Malcolm Allison, won the league title in 1968, the FA Cup in 1969, and the European Cup Winners' Cup and League Cup in 1970. Chelsea, managed by Dave Sexton, won the FA Cup in 1970 and the Cup Winners' Cup in 1971. Fixtures between the two were fiercely competitive, played between sides packed with internationals and genuine star quality.

One summer and £140 million later, Chelsea had handed every ambitious billionaire a blueprint.

Roman Abramovich's acquisition of Chelsea in June 2003 for approximately £140 million changed English football overnight. Backed by vast spending on players like Didier Drogba, Arjen Robben, and Claude Makélélé, Chelsea won back-to-back Premier League titles in 2005 and 2006 under José Mourinho. Manchester City, still at the old Maine Road until their move to the City of Manchester Stadium in 2003, could only watch as Chelsea became the blueprint for what money could buy.

A British record shattered on deadline day; Sheikh Mansour announced his ambitions before the ink had dried.

In September 2008, the Abu Dhabi United Group, led by Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Nahyan, completed their takeover of Manchester City. The club immediately signalled their ambitions by signing Robinho from Real Madrid on deadline day for a British record fee of £32.5 million. City now had the financial muscle to compete with Chelsea, and the fixture between the two clubs became a meeting of football's new superpowers.

Agüero's injury-time strike against QPR handed City the title in the most breathless finale the Premier League has ever produced.

The 2011-12 season saw City and Chelsea locked in direct competition at the top of the table. City's dramatic final-day title win, sealed by Sergio Agüero's injury-time goal against QPR, remains the most iconic moment in Premier League history. Chelsea, meanwhile, won the Champions League that same season, beating Bayern Munich in the final. The two clubs had arrived at the summit of European football almost simultaneously, and their meetings carried genuine title-race tension for the first time.

A hundred points in a single season; Guardiola did not just raise the bar, he moved it to another postcode.

Pep Guardiola's appointment as Manchester City manager in 2016 elevated the rivalry further. His first season saw City finish third while Antonio Conte's Chelsea ran away with the title, winning 30 of 38 league matches. But Guardiola's second season produced a record-breaking 100-point campaign in 2017-18, and City have been the dominant force in English football since. The fixture between the two became a barometer of where each club stood in the evolving hierarchy.

Three meetings in six weeks; Chelsea won every single one.

The 2020-21 Champions League Final in Porto on 29 May 2021 was the defining moment in this fixture's modern history. Chelsea, managed by Thomas Tuchel, beat Guardiola's City 1-0 through a Kai Havertz goal. It was City's first Champions League final and a painful defeat. The two sides had also met in the FA Cup semi-final that season, with Chelsea winning 1-0 at Wembley. Three meetings in the space of six weeks underlined just how intertwined these two clubs had become at the top of the game.

Four titles in a row, a Treble secured, and Chelsea still searching for direction; the Etihad's power shift could hardly be more stark.

Manchester City's historic Treble in 2022-23, winning the Premier League, FA Cup, and Champions League, cemented their status as the dominant force in English football. Chelsea, now under the ownership of Todd Boehly's BlueCo consortium following Abramovich's forced sale in 2022, were in the midst of a turbulent rebuild. The fixture at the Etihad remains a premium occasion, but the power dynamic has shifted decisively. City's four consecutive league titles from 2021 to 2024 put them in a class of their own.