I was an Arsenal youth star but struggled to get first team football – I left and became a Man City cult hero

PAUL DICKOV is the type of cult hero Manchester City hoped they would never need.

Because he’s the ex-Arsenal youth who saved City from remaining in the THIRD TIER during their darkest, daftest days of the 1990s – with a stoppage-time Wembley goal.

Paul Dickov helped Man City climb back from the the third tier to the PremGetty

The frontman was just a bit-part player at first club ArsenalRex

And even Dickov wonders if Sheikh Mansour‘s transformational takeover of the club in 2008 would still have happened had he not scored his stunner nine years earlier.

The Scot completed City’s late comeback from 2-0 down in the old Division Two play-off final with a 95th-minute strike past Gillingham keeper Vince Bartram – who had been the BEST MAN at his wedding!

Joe Royle’s men went on to win 3-2 on penalties – earning an instant return to what was then Division One and is now the Championship.

That memorable day in May 1999 came midway through Dickov’s six years at City – the same length of time he spent at first club Arsenal.

But he never came close to a regular Premier League spot with the Gunners.

And following loan spells at Luton and Brighton he left Arsenal for City in August 1996 – two months before Arsene Wenger arrived for his golden 22-year reign in North London.

Dickov was signed by 1966 World Cup winner Alan Ball but played under FIVE bosses in his first year at the old Maine Road stadium.

The situation got so crazy that at one time City had 56 players – only settling down once Royle took charge in February 1998 and nearly kept them in the second flight.

He did take them back to that level the following season, however – aided by Dickov’s Wembley glory – and they returned to the Prem in the striker’s final campaign at the club.

The 5ft 5ins star went on to play for Leicester and Blackburn before returning to City from 2006-2008 – albeit now at the Etihad.

Temporary stints with Crystal Palace and Blackpool followed before a second two-year spell with the Foxes.

But although Dickov’s gritty style made him popular almost everywhere he went, it’s at City where he has a unique standing – as the little man who helped make them big again.

In fact, the 10-cap Scotland ace believes his dramatic play-off intervention has only grown in importance now that current manager Pep Guardiola has cemented the club’s rise to the very top.

Dickov told The Guardian in 2019: “If anything it’s been magnified more by the success. 

“Maybe 10 years ago fans would stop in the street, thank us for the goal in the game and that would be it. 

“Now, the club are dominating football and with the football that they are playing it makes it more iconic and nicer for the fans to think that 20 years ago we were there, 20 years later we’re winning Premier Leagues and breaking all sort of records.

“I dread to think what might have happened if we hadn’t have won. If you believe what people were saying, the club would have really struggled.”

And of inflicting anguish on the pitch on his best man, Dickov added:  “There is nothing better than getting one over your mate or reminding him of it a few years later.”