Manchester City and Liverpool have enjoyed one of football's most competitive rivalries over the past six or seven years.

With two great managers at the helm, they have swept up the lion’s share of domestic trophies and regularly put on thrilling displays during their head to head clashes. Yet their rivalry has largely been a clean one, with the odd exception here and there.

Players and managers alike regularly praise each other in what is considered solely a ‘footballing rivalry’, and any butting of heads is left on the pitch. But there was a time where their fixtures were so fierce that violence even spilled into the car parks.

That’s according to City legend Rodney Marsh, who played for the club from 1972 to 1976. The forward made 118 appearances for the Sky Blues, and one particular encounter at home against the Reds in the early-70s saw him rub Liverpool defender Tommy Smith up the wrong way.

Smith, a notorious hard man of the time, was nicknamed ‘The Anfield Iron’. It was therefore no surprise that he waited around the ground to give Marsh a pummelling after the game.

The 79-year-old wrote on X: “After one particularly violent match at Maine Rd, Liverpool's Tommy Smith was waiting for me in the car park! Today players unfollow on IG! Funny 'old game.....”

Marsh was then asked by a fan whether he “nailed” Smith, to which the former England star replied: “No! Franny (City team-mate Francis Lee) stepped in…..thankfully.”

The City star was fortunate to avoid confrontation with a man once claimed by Bill Shankly not to have been born, but “quarried”. Smith also infamously once said a referee “should be shot” for a wrong decision - a far cry from the uproar caused by Nottingham Forest’s recent comments about the PGMOL.

Stunningly, Marsh and Smith would go on to become team-mates in 1976 - not for an English side but the Tampa Bay Rowdies in Florida.