Cook is completely ballsing up a tradition of general good spirit and co-operation that has existed between City and the press over the years and one which has served us well.
As a club - despite what some paranoid Blues are saying at the moment - we are popular with the media. We were seen as a club whose honesty, friendliness and sense of often self-depricating humour is a stark contrast to the press-release terseness as epitomised by Ferguson's United or Wenger's Arsenal. Benitez is a neurotic nutcase and every statement that comes out of Chelsea has to be rubber-stamped by an Abramovich lackey and in this culture City are seen as a breath of fresh air.
Or rather were.
Cook, by not coming clean with the Hughes saga - and not even being bright enough to get Mancini fully on board with the concocted story - has dragged us down the Big Four level as far as the press are concerned. We are now as steeped in subterfuge as any of them and all the years of goodwill mean nothing. We'll be working against the press in future, not with them, and we'd better get used to being every bit as unpopular as United as long as Cook is handling our PR.