sport

SAME OLD CITY

Thaksin - fled to London.

Francis Lee put it best almost 40 years ago.

"If there was a cup for cock-ups we'd win it every year," said the former Manchester City striker who went on to be the club chairman.

As a new Premier League football season dawns City are favourites for the 'Cock-up cup' once more.

I would hate to be a supporter of City.

Nothing against the club. Nothing against the fans, who deserve our sympathy as well as admiration for the way they turn up in such huge numbers week after week, some 40,000 or so, despite having lived permanently in the shadow of near neighbours Manchester United.

But at a time when supporters should be at their most optimistic, when they should be dreaming of potential glories, when they have a right to expect a clear vision for the new campaign, City fans once more are trying to see through the sort of fog which has enveloped Beijing's Olympic stadium for most of the past week.

Their owner, former Thailand Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra, has jumped bail and fled to London rather than risk being sent to prison on corruption charges in his native country where he is accused of contravening Thai rules over purchases of state land while in office.

What does it mean for City?

No-one quite knows, except that Thaksin - who faces the threat of extradition - is unable to free the £800million worth of his assets which are frozen in Thailand.

Even in the money-swirling world of the Premier League that amounts to a sizeable hole in anyone's finances.

So doubts surface about whether transfers can be made, whether wages can be paid and just how rigorously the Premier League enacted their 'Fit and Proper Person' test when the club was sold.

Doubts linger, too, about how new manager Mark Hughes really feels about the job perhaps not being quite what it was in the brochure.

Meanwhile, men in suits offer reassurances, smokescreens are put in place and Hughes plays a diplomatic game, talking about "misunderstandings" and a "difficult week" but insisting "we can move on from here."

Yet Hughes had to intervene to prevent Vedran Corluka being sold to Tottenham earlier this week, as well as having to investigate whether Stephen Ireland had also been put up for sale.

That does not sound like joined-up management. It does not sound as if all at Manchester City are singing the same tune. It does not sound as if they are even in the same band.

What do the fans think?

Kevin Parker, spokesman for the Manchester City Official Supporters Club, said: "We're a bit dizzy with it. We're just getting so many conflicting messages. I think most supporters are worried that the impact on the club is going to be very negative."

They are used to 'negative' at City. They are used to managers being sacked with indecent haste.

Seven managers in the 1980s, relegated to League Two in the 1990s, relegated from the Premier League in 2001, scored the fewest home goals in a season in top flight history, a mere 10, in 2006-07.

And just when they seemed to have achieved some stability with ninth place after a passable year under Sven-Goran Eriksson last season, it was all change again.

City simply do not do stability. They are a club who have been lurching from one crisis to another ever since Malcolm Allison returned for a second spell in 1979 and flushed a then-record £1.43million down the Manchester drains on Steve Daley. They are a club who are happy, it seems, only when they are unhappy.

But at least in Thaksin it appears they have a man who can deliver their first silverware since 1976.

You've got it. The 'Cock-up Cup.'