PAD|People's Alliance for Democracy
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Garry Cook & Thaksin

“Is he [Thaksin] a nice guy?” Cook had asked rhetorically. “Yes. Is he a great guy to play golf with? Yes. Does he have plenty of money to run a football club? Yes. I really care only about those three things. Whether he is guilty of something over in Thailand, I can’t worry. My role is to run a football club.”

Speaking before City’s first home game this season, against Wolves, Cook addressed that character reference he gave for Thaksin, who was subsequently convicted of two corruption offences in absentia, and has allegations of serious human rights abuses long laid against him by Amnesty International.

“I feel dreadful about having said it,” Cook said, making eye contact and looking genuinely, emotionally, contrite. “I have made some mistakes in my life, but I deeply regretted my failure to do proper research on Thaksin.”

It all came out wrong, Cook winced. He had been trying to express the idea that he could not be deflected by Thaksin’s political problems, which were outside his control. “The charges did not seem real,” Cook said. “It felt like a political situation Thaksin had run away from. I did not want it to affect the day-to-day running of the football club but I was being enlightened on a daily basis.”

In fact, Cook revealed, his own job had become a living nightmare as he too realised Thaksin’s money was frozen but the people, and infrastructure, were not in place.

“My wife had packed up everything in our house in the States, the furniture was in transit, and I sat in my hotel room in Cheshire crying down the phone. I felt I had unravelled everything, undone all my hard work, because I had been seduced into this role. I realised I had taken my family into the lion’s den.”

Stephen Ireland

“When Thaksin took over everybody thought it was going to be massive, and it wasn’t,” Ireland remembered. “There was no stability, people weren’t sure what was round the corner. It was mad, that somebody like that, who was on the run and had been convicted of corruption, could own our football club, for our careers to be in his hands. Everybody was wondering what’s next. Thankfully we got a new owner.”

Mark Hughes

“I made the switch from Blackburn because I thought City was a club with potential, in a good financial position, and there would be money available,” he reflected ruefully. “The reality wasn’t exactly what was described and sold to me. In fairness we were able to go into the transfer market, but there seemed a focus that players had to be sold, and I realised that maybe the resources weren’t in place that I thought.”

The Carrington facilities were also not as he had expected, bearing no evidence of investment. “The training ground was not fit for purpose,” Hughes recalled plainly. “I was quite shocked by how run down it was. Blackburn Rovers is a good club, well-run and organised, it has top-drawer facilities as a consequence of the money Jack Walker invested, and I made the assumption …” he paused. “That was my failing last year; I made too many assumptions. I assumed that people and facilities would be top quality and it was patently obvious they weren’t.”

Deals to sign players were already well-advanced when he arrived, including Jô. There was, Hughes said, “confusion and miscommunication” about players who might be sold, and he had to address the first-team squad to tell them he was in charge of football affairs, and not to listen to anything they were told by anyone else. “Whether they believed me or not at that stage is open to debate,” he grimaced.

News Source

• I was close to walking away from Manchester City
• How the takeover of Manchester City came just in time to rescue a club in disarray

Credit: http://forum.serithai.net/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=13270

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