When today’s supporters sit in the pub and talk about City legends, names like Haaland, Agüero, Silva, Kompany, De Bruyne and Touré are heard.

But if anyone mentions Richard Dunne, it’s certain they’re a true blue Cityzen.

Dunne is arguably the greatest City legend most people have never heard of. To this day, he is the only player in club history to be named Player of the Year four times — and he achieved this feat in four consecutive seasons.

For most of the 2000s, Dunne was the one constant in a team that was rarely steady.

He played for City from 2000 to 2009 and made 352 appearances in City’s defence, cementing his place in the constellation of club stars.

The boy from Dublin

Richard Patrick Dunne was born on 21 September 1979 in Dublin and grew up in the suburb of Tallaght. His uncle, Theo Dunne, was a footballer. As a schoolboy he played for Home Farm, one of the region’s best-known youth clubs. Dunne did not take long to make his mark, debuting for the Republic of Ireland U16s in 1996.

That same year, he left Dublin to play for Everton. He appeared for the reserves the following season and made his first-team debut in January 1997 at age 17. He soon after signed a five-year professional contract. 

For Ireland, he played in the 1997 European U18 Championships in Iceland and in 1998 year won a gold medal at the U18 Championships in Cyprus. That same year, he was part of the Everton squad that won the FA Youth Cup, featuring in every round. 

A signing City nearly missed

Dunne was 21 when City acquired him for £3 million in October 2000. In an interview on the club’s website, he said Everton had accepted a bid from another club, and he had passed a medical there. However, that deal collapsed, City made an offer, and Everton accepted — reuniting him with Joe Royle, his former Everton manager.

He arrived as a right-back, but his biggest impact would come at centre-half. He was a powerful, broad-shouldered defender who was deceptively quick and very skilful. He made his debut away at Southampton in the same month he joined City.

City and Dunne stumble badly, then bounce back

City were relegated at the end of Dunne’s first season, and Royle was sacked. In the 2001-02 campaign under new manager Kevin Keegan, they won the First Division and went straight back up. That championship would turn out to be the only silverware Dunne would enjoy with the team.

With City back in the Premier League in 2002, all was not fun and games for Dunne. First, he lost his starting place to Sun Jihai, a transfer from Crystal Palace. Sun was the club’s first-ever East Asian player and became the first East Asian to score in the Premier League that season.

Then in September, Dunne was banned from the training centre for 14 days and fined two weeks’ wages for a disciplinary problem. At the time, the Irish Times reported he arrived late to training after allegedly “drinking into the early hours.” Sky Sports wrote that he showed up to training with alcohol on his breath and was sent home.

He and the club agreed an intensive fitness program, and he won an international recall within months. City legend Dennis Tueart, who was a club director at the time, later remembered that as a turning point in Dunne’s career. “There must have been a light switch in his head turned on, and he realised where he was going and where he didn’t want to go,” Tueart told The Athletic via Balls.ie.

Rising like a phoenix

Dunne’s emergence from the doghouse began quickly. He started at Birmingham on 26 October and played 90 minutes. By December, Keegan was praising him for his performances for City. 

He started every league match through 29 January 2003, including the 3-1 Manchester derby win on 9 November — a string of 15 straight starts. During this run, he made the fateful switch from right-back to centre-back, a move that would come to define the rest of his career.

He was recalled to the Ireland squad in late November 2002 to travel to Athens for a scoreless draw against the Greeks. 

For City, he started the final seven league games of the 2002-03 campaign. The club won three of those and drew one to finish ninth, a remarkable accomplishment for a team that had been in the First Division just 12 months earlier.

Growing into a City legend

Dunne started slowly in the 2003-04 season. He was largely out of the side until a League Cup win over QPR in late October. After that, he truly came into his own. He played every match through the new year at centre-half. By December, Keegan said he was in the best form of his career. Unfortunately, he was diagnosed with a hernia in the spring of 2004, limiting his performance. But he still made 40 appearances that season, including 38 starts. Sadly for City, the club finished 16th in the Premier League table.

Despite undergoing a hernia operation before the 2004-05 season, Dunne enjoyed the best season of his professional career to date. He started all 36 of his appearances, scored two goals and was named City’s Player of the Year. Dunne did lose one of his top supporters when Keegan departed the club in March 2005 with City mired in 12th place.

However, Dunne stayed focused and helped the team improve to eighth in the final league table. New manager Stuart Pearce heaped praise on Dunne, calling him one of City’s three best players. Dunne was given a new two-year contract.

A light in the darkness

In 2005-06, Dunne started 37 of his 38 appearances, scored three goals and was named City’s Player of the Year for the second straight season. Pearce, who had been made permanent that summer, extolled his maturity and professionalism when he gave him the captaincy in July 2006, replacing Sylvain Distin.

However, the team around Dunne struggled. City finished 15th, scoring just 43 goals and conceding 48 in 38 league matches.

In 2006-07, Dunne was again a stalwart for an inferior team. He started all 44 matches, scored once and earned the Player of the Year award for the third straight season. Teammate Micah Richards told the press Dunne was among the best three he had played with, alongside John Terry and Rio Ferdinand. Dunne also scored for Ireland in a Euro 2008 qualifier in Cyprus.

City finished 14th in the Premier League. They scored just 10 league goals at home, none after 1 January 2007, and lost three of their last four matches. Manager Pearce was sacked the day after a season-ending defeat at Tottenham. Sven-Göran Eriksson was named his successor in July.

A “reformed monster”

The next season, 2007-08, Dunne again captained the team and again was a standout. He started 42 matches and won Player of the Year for the fourth straight season, the first (and so far only) City player to do so. The Guardian, in their inimitable understated fashion, headlined a January 2008 article: “Eriksson leads the acclaim for reformed monster Dunne.” Under their new manager and new owner Thaksin Shinawatra, the club finished ninth in the league.

In 2008-09, Dunne made 47 appearances for City, all as a starter, and scored once in a 6-0 win over Portsmouth on his 29th birthday. He retained his captaincy, but Stephen Ireland was named Player of the Year, ending Dunne’s four-year hold on the award. For Ireland, he played all 10 World Cup qualifiers, scoring twice. 

That first season under Abu Dhabi United Group ownership was erratic. They finished 10th with 50 points (15 wins, 5 draws, 18 losses), scoring 58 and conceding 50 under manager Mark Hughes. The gap between home and away was stark: 13 home wins from 19 (40 scored, 18 conceded) against two away wins from 19 (18 scored, 32 conceded).

Red cards and own goals

Dunne left for Aston Villa in September 2009 and played there for four seasons. He then went to Queens Park Rangers for two seasons before retiring in 2015. All told, he made 515 professional appearances over an 18-year career. 

For the Republic of Ireland, he earned 80 caps and was in the squad at the 2002 World Cup and Euro 2012. After retiring he became a pundit with BT Sport, and he still appears in City’s own coverage of the club.

Over the course of his Premier League career, Dunne received eight red cards, a record he shares with Patrick Vieira and Duncan Ferguson. He also holds the Premier League record for own goals, with ten. That’s more a testament to the struggles of the teams he played for than a reflection on his skills.