I blame Toshack
Seriously, you’ve got to remember , City had a great chance of promotion in 70/71 but sold Toshack, failed to get Warboys in quick enough and missed out on promotion. We then started to slide down the leagues and never really threatened the top division until this century !
As we slid down so did our attendances and with increased football hooliganism at games, people stopped attending matches and as the only live football in those days were FA Cup final or England internationals , grew up on a diet of televised football highlights of the top teams which coincided with Liverpool’s rise especially in Europe where there was 1 representative for each league in European Cup with the others (including us normally in the early rounds) either in ECWC or UEFA cups.