Let Slip The Dogs of War

But with the team in 17th and falling - Claudio gets the boot. Bollocks.

Craig Shakespeare gets the gig - and his face is quickly added to the design - although it was a bit late to add an LCFC tracky top.

The ‘smaller’ surfers - still about 450m2 a piece - are put together along with the slightly amended message banner. With Shakespeare now at the helm, it was time to “Let slip the dogs of war”.

It’s matchday and more hurdles present themselves. The club has again chosen to bring in an agency display for the rest of the ground - but we’re assured that the Kop will be left to UFS. It’s not ideal but we’re in too deep now and the show must go on.

Into the pub and pre-tifo nerves are through the roof. We know that tonight we’re going to be going bigger than ever before and covering about 5000 within the Spion Kop in fabric and foil.

Into the ground and the Kop is full of the agency flags we were assured would be kept out. Brilliant. About 7:30pm and the lads are in their various spots across the Kop.

We’re all feeling the same knot of anticipation and nerves in our stomachs for both the display and the game. The players come out and the display goes off without a major hitch and Marc Kevin Albrighton seals our passage to the last eight and another legendary night at Filbert Way was written.

With the quarter final against Atletico Madrid just three weeks away, there’s no chance of turning something round again. We’re knackered and we’re skint.

All in, the display cost around £2,000. It’s a lot of money but we’re proud that, with some of the heinous figures that are raised and spent by other supporter groups recently, this figure still represented good value to those who contributed.

Tifo culture in England has developed significantly in the past five years. But the list of groups that can still produce these displays in-house, rather than running to a printing machine to do it for them can still be counted on one hand.

For those that contributed, grafted over the winter, or simply took part in the display: Thank you. We will continue to push the envelope, and nothing will ever be paid for us, and nothing will ever be made for us.

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22nd November 2016. Goals from Shinji Okazaki and Riyad Mahrez give City a 2-1 victory over Club Brugge and ensure we’re not just through to the knockout stage of the European Cup - but we’re going through as group winners, having won every group game on Filbert Way.

Now what? For the next few days, the group chats are alive with plans for away trips, documenting the possible draws and, most importantly, how we’d all get there.

The draw is made - Sevilla.

Perhaps not the fixture a lot were hoping for, but it quickly dawns on a lot of us that they hadn’t lost a two-legged knockout tie in Europe since 2011 – when Robbie Nielson was in LE2 chugging about at right-back.

Anyway, the flights are booked and the countdown’s on again.

Two months to go and attention turns to the home leg.

The club had frustratingly ordered two agency tifos for the Porto and Brugge fixtures in the group stage - but the group were able to get something on for the Copenhagen fixture.

Immediately after the draw, the club were informed of the groups intention to go big for the Sevilla home fixture. After all, this was surely the end of the line, right? Wrong.

The design is settled on and the materials are ordered. About 1.5km of fabric, near enough the same again in foil.

One lad rather naively volunteers his Mrs to sew the surfer together. The new year hits and with the team struggling in the league, motivation to graft in a freezing cold City car park for a game we’d surely lose is pretty scant.

The sewed fabric arrives stuffed comically into the back of a car.

For the lads, it was two days of work, plotting the design onto the fabric. We had some rogue pen marks and some numb hands to show for it.

Mercifully, the next stage of the prep is indoors, and another day or so of painting on an industrial scale gets the job all but done.

But there was still an elephant in the room. The image that had been transferred onto the fabric was that of Claudio Ranieri in his trademark sharp suit.