The message from the City dressing room in the wake of Thursday's 4-0 win over Aston Villa was uncompromising. The celebrations could wait until the final whistle early on Monday (NZT). The memories of Queens Park Rangers were altogether too fresh.
That match is depicted on photographs six metres high on the Etihad Stadium walls. Had Sergio Aguero not scored with the final kick of the season to win it 3-2, that match and its images would have been buried into the deepest recesses of the club. Nobody would ever have talked of it.
The image Andrea Pirlo painted of the Milan dressing room after they squandered a 3-0 lead to Liverpool in the Champions League final would have been theirs. Insomnia, rage, depression, a sense of nothingness.
"I no longer felt like a footballer, and that was devastating enough," wrote Pirlo in his autobiography. "Worse, I no longer felt like a man."
Pablo Zabaleta knows how close Manchester City came to being infected with what Pirlo called Istanbul syndrome. It is why he claimed the club could not relax, even at this late stage.
"Every single player knows we have done nothing yet," said the Argentine defender. "Most of our players have been here for more than two years so we have experienced that final game against Queens Park Rangers and don't want it again.
"The inspiration is that we know we are 90 minutes from another title."
West Ham, however, are slightly different from QPR. In May 2012, Mark Hughes' side came to Manchester knowing that if they lost and Bolton won, they would be relegated. City had to match Manchester United's result at Sunderland. Here, Manuel Pellegrini's side can afford to drop two points and still win it on goal difference.
Nevertheless, West Ham sides with nothing to play for have twice denied Manchester United league titles. On the final day of the 1994-95 season, Alex Ferguson observed: "I cannot believe that this 5ft 5in [1.65m] winger [Michael Hughes] could cut in across our defence and side-foot the ball home."
The United manager was less philosophical three years earlier when he had stood in the press room at Upton Park and shouted that it was obscene that an already-relegated West Ham should have denied his team a title.
Liverpool's biggest hope might be the crowd, not theirs but City's. The Etihad on Thursday was a strange place. It was not full because a man threatening to hurl himself from a motorway bridge had paralysed Manchester's traffic and those who made it there were as nervous and anxious as Liverpool's fans had been at Anfield when the usual early knockout blow failed to arrive against Chelsea. By the interval, City had still not broken down Aston Villa and the players walked off, not to boos but to shakes of the head.
"We never felt nervous. Passion was the key," Zabaleta said.
He expects West Ham to do the same on Monday (NZT) and he expects Pellegrini to respond in the same way, ordering his fullbacks to attack from the flanks.
They probably need only one against a side that has never recorded a league victory at the Etihad Stadium, but they will dream on Merseyside about Van der Velde, Bill Tilden and all the other defeats snatched from the jaws of victory. Independent
