In our family home growing up we took in troubled teens who were getting their life back on track. One particular lad claimed to be a big Liverpool fan and I recall exactly when he stayed with us for a very specific reason.

It is May 26th 1999 and Manchester United are losing with just a couple of minutes to go in their Champions League final with Bayern Munich. I am watching the game on a telly in my bedroom and as a Manchester City supporter their imminent defeat pleases me immeasurably. They are the bane of my young existence.

Every week I would go and see the Blues home and away with my older brother and we would invariably lose because we were rubbish, then on the coach heading home we’d hear about a routine victory for Sir Alex Ferguson’s men on course for yet another league title. Looking back, that seems to be my childhood encapsulated.

Only here they are losing, in their biggest, most meaningful fixture for eons, and as the game ekes past the ninetieth minute I wander into the kitchen to grab a can of coke. But on my return, at the doorway, it immediately becomes apparent that something significant has occurred. Clive Tyldesley’s voice is pitched skywards. The United players are piled high in celebration. They have equalised.

Only they hadn’t drawn level at all. That had happened a couple of minutes earlier. In the short time it took to have a quick chat with my mum in the kitchen about something entirely inconsequential Manchester United had pulled off one of the most astounding and unforgettable comebacks in the sport’s history.

At the exact instant this horrible, unimaginable realisation sunk in a voice piped up on my shoulder as the lad was passing and wondered what the commotion was. “Ah, you have to give it to them don’t you,” said this big Liverpool fan. “What a team. What a team!”

It was – and remains – one of the very worst moments of my life.

If I’d have been informed back then of a ludicrous future that had City as multiple league champions and the dominant force in English football as United floundered in mishap and misery, I wouldn’t have bothered scoffing in disbelief nor give it the time of day. I’d have simply assumed someone was rubbing unnecessary salt into my misery. You didn’t even dare daydream about such a circumstance so nonsensical it was.

On Tuesday evening at Old Trafford, City were cruising three goals to the good with half-time still on the horizon in their Carabao Cup semi-final first leg. The away team retained possession for what seemed like five full minutes and as they effortlessly put on a masterclass of fluid movement and sharp rondo passing the United players hopelessly chased shadows; beaten; broken. It was men against boys. It was brilliance against a side striving to be perfectly average. It was almost cruel.

Frowning in the technical area was Ole Gunnar Solskjaer, a pygmy of a manager whose close proximity to his opposite number had him resemble a competition winner. On the pitch Phil Jones gurned, punch-drunk and clueless while £47m signing Fred ambled about, ineffective as always. I think Jesse Lingard was playing too. Nobody is ever sure these days. Definitely missing in action, however, was the club’s record purchase Paul Pogba after ‘his people’ had informed them he was to have surgery.

The passing continued – first touch, second touch, move, first touch, second touch, move – until it finally broke to United’s David de Gea. The Spanish keeper attempted to play it out from the back because that’s what every keeper does now, as they copy a City creation that has utterly transformed and re-imagined domestic football. But De Gea is no Ederson. Instead he finds touch.

With perfect timing the away end chime in song. “We’ve got Guardiola. We’ve got Guardiola.”

It was – and will remain – one of the very finest moments of my life.

It felt complete seeing that. It’s the only word to describe it. Complete. Yet there have been plenty of other times in recent years when the satisfaction, smugness and unbridled glee have overflowed.

Most memorably there was the ‘Fergie time’ Aguero strike in 2012 that not only secured City’s first title for 44 years but broke United’s hearts into the bargain. That was an exorcism; a day so surreal it forever wiped out a lifetime’s worth of pain.

Then came the transferal of power, best illustrated by City’s 6-1 win at a fast-dilapidating stadium that used to be known as the ‘Theatre of Dreams’. In March 2014, following yet another easy derby win, David Moyes stated that United must’ aspire’ to reach their neighbour’s level.

They didn’t though, anything but, and as my team pushed back the barriers of the norm United flailed and thrashed in perpetual post-Ferguson crisis, enduring a sustained freefall that makes them the comedy gift that just keeps on giving. Indeed, when illustrating how so, it is difficult to know where to begin.

There is the whole Mourinho saga for starters. Or the fact they have unscrupulous owners in the Glazers who have drained £1 billion from the club while City’s owners have invested a similar amount, not just in the team but in infrastructure and the local area.

Or there’s the regular boasting by the hierarchy of a considerable social media presence as the team flounders. Or their insulating, comforting delusions of grandeur starkly highlighted by a manager wedded to the past. Or how about the stunning contrast in possessing the worst Manchester United squad I can recall in four decades of residing on this planet and the highest wage bill in Premier League history?

It sometimes feels like all too much, honestly. Like I couldn’t take another morsel.

And I don’t mean that frivolously either. Because on Thursday morning Twitter was ablaze with the news that the club was battling to retain Ashley Young from the clutches of Inter Milan and that primarily would be their January business. This astounded given that the 34-year-old has been never less than underwhelming for a good long while now. He would barely get into a Championship team.

An anger rose in me, all humour gone.

As much as I hate them – as is my right and duty to as a Blue – this is Manchester United for goodness sake. A behemoth. And it would be nice if they could make the right decision once, maybe twice every now and then so as not to make a complete mockery of the entity that haunted my early years.

To explain how I feel I must resort to analogy and imagine if you will a school bully. You see him in adulthood with tired looking eyes and in frayed trousers. His shoulders are drooped with the pressures of the world. This monster who once made your life a living hell is clearly not doing so good and that makes you happy.

He trips on a crack in the pavement and you laugh. It serves him right. Then you notice that his fall has taken him right into the path of some dog mess that smears itself across his clothing. You can now barely breathe for howling.

Only then he starts to cry. And he wails out loud to bemused passing strangers that he used to be someone; he used to be feared.

Sort it out Manchester United. Enough is now enough. Be the enemy you’re supposed to be.