Manchester City beat Ipswich to move six points clear at the top, in a match watched by 60,817 fans — a new attendance record at the Etihad. But the central event of the evening was not the play, but the reaction of the home fans to the anthem.
Tens of thousands at the Etihad booed and protested as the Premier League anthem was played over the loudspeakers just before the match. It was the first home game for City since the club was found guilty of breaching the Premier League’s financial rules, so fans made their displeasure clear. During the anthem, they waved inflated bananas in the air.
Fans arrived at the stadium to find hundreds of inflated bananas placed on the seats in the home sections. These inflated objects were visible in the away section on a trip to Liverpool the previous week, and the reference is to the late 1980s. In addition to the booing, fans chanted ‘City, City, City’, sang the song about the trip to Stockport, and directed a chant of ‘You’re going down with the City’ to the visiting Ipswich fans.
The club was found guilty of creating ‘fictitious contracts’ in which sponsorship deals were inflated to £830 million, and the club subsequently lodged an appeal. The breaches in question relate to the period between the 2009-10 and 2017-18 seasons.
City’s manager, Enzo Maresca, said he sensed the tone of defiance from the stands even before the match. Maresca took over the team from Pep Guardiola, who, over ten seasons, won 20 trophies.
On the pitch, City continued their perfect run in the Premier League — seven wins from seven matches. Phil Foden, who had returned to the squad following his suspension for sending off against Manchester United on 13 September, scored in the 19th minute, his first in 2026, and during the interview for Match of the Day took a balloon banana in his hand.
Maresca’s record is historic: he is the first manager in the history of the Premier League to win his first seven matches in charge. Only Chelsea in the 2005-06 season (first nine) and Liverpool in the 2019-20 season (first eight) had achieved this, and both clubs went on to win the title. City, meanwhile, were trailing behind in the league, and for more than an hour they played with one player less than Manchester United. This start to the season is the best for City in the league in 129 years.
