Thaksin Saga Comes To Dramatic End as Club is Sold to Abu Dhabi Investment Group

Thaksin Shinawatra’s tenure as majority owner of Manchester City ended with a bang on Monday to cap an increasingly dramatic, absolutely incredible five days in the life of the club. As late as Thursday, City were a side struggling to win an UEFA Cup qualifier against Danish opposition. By Tuesday morning, City fans woke up [...]

Thaksin Considers Stepping Down from City Board, But Not Selling Out; Garry Cook Announces He Knows How To Run Football

Never a dull moment at Manchester City. This week the club announced the surprise signing of highly-rated defender and defensive midfielder Vincent Kompany from Hamburg. Kompany, who played for Belgium in the Olympics, could well supplant Gelson Fernandes as City’s holding midfielder.
More extraordinary news comes in the form of a wide-ranging interview City executive Garry [...]

A Tale of Two Owners; Season of Struggle Ahead for City?

Manchester City’s tumultuous week concluded with a 4-2 defeat away to Aston Villa in their Premier League curtain-raiser. City conceded three goals in quick succession midway through the second half, then piled on the pressure the final 10 minutes to earn one consolation goal and a more respectable scoreline. Fans will be encouraged by the [...]

Bad Week for City Continues; How Thaksin Will Fight Extradition

Interesting commentaries continue to pour out on the dramatic events of this weeks; Thaksin’s flight from Thailand is worldwide news, as evidenced by this analysis from The Economist and an editorial chiding Thaksin published in the International Herald Tribune after first appearing in the Boston Globe.
A key point made in the IHT piece is that [...]

Why Thaksin Must Go, and What the Premier League Should Do

Since this blog’s inception in July 2007, we have employed three distinct evaluative lenses for looking at Thaksin Shinawatra’s chairmanship at Manchester City. The first has to do with the impact of Thaksin’s involvement with a high profile football club on developments in Thai politics. The second has to do with the impact of Thaksin [...]

Assessing the Fallout

Literally every paper in the UK Tuesday is running a prominent “Manchester City in crisis” story (see the end of the post for an array of links). The most alarmist perhaps is The Sun, which has made Mark Hughes’ future as manager its lead sports story. Other papers are weighing in with a range of [...]

Thaksin Officially in Exile; Warrants Sought for His Arrest; City Fans Demanding Answers

Thaksin Shinawatra announced himself as an exile in a statement from London, citing fears for his family’s safety and a conspiracy in Thailand to punish his family. Thaksin asked for continued support from his loyalists in Thailand and expressed loyalty to the king and his wish to die in Thailand. But every indication is he [...]

Thaksin, Pojaman Flee to London

The action is coming thick and fast these days, as Thaksin Shinawatra and his wife have been confirmed as arriving in London rather than Bangkok where they were expected for a court hearing on a land deal corruption case. A press statement from Thaksin will be forthcoming Monday.
Meanwhile, the club’s official website announced that defender [...]

Man on the Run? Thaksin Fails to Return to Bangkok as Scheduled…

Breaking news from Thailand is that Thaksin and his wife did not catch their plane back to Bangkok today, sparking speculation the couple may be headed to England to seek asylum….

Duncan McCargo Interview; Questions at City

This blog has referenced several times the work of Leeds University academic Duncan McCargo, co-author of one of the two serious books about Thaksin published in English to date. In the past week he has given an email interview to the academic blog New Mandala, which is well worth checking out. No sharp new detail [...]