One thing I should add, as well. Something that shone through very clearly is that, whatever other criticism people might throw his way, Francis Lee definitely had a strong and abiding love for Manchester City FC.
In the main body of the autobiography, Franny mentions a couple of times that he was always easy to deal with. The lie is given to that in the final chapter, where his second wife and three of his kids give memories of him, that he could be difficult to be around - even if not intentionally so. When I was working in a Manchester law firm during his spell in the boardroom, I was also aware that there were certainly people around the club who weren't altogether fond of him.
It's important to stress that none of those people would seriously have questioned whether Lee's affection for the club was genuine. This is important because po-faced, handwringing whingebag David Conn regularly suggested that Lee merely saw the club as a business opportunity. This was because Conn, as a young journalist representing a business magazine, had gone to interview Francis in his days City chairman and the latter had the temerity to assume that, in the circumstances, the conversation should revolved round the business side of the club.
Conn certainly has form for forming football opinions based on lamebrained, half-baked arguments. Remember, after all, how he embraced the charlatans at FC United and their pitiful vanity project only to disappear and maintain a years-long silence after it was shown that his mates in the boardroom there had run their laughable football tribute act into the ground.
What he wrote about Lee wasn't far off libellous, in my view. Time at least to put that nonsense opinion to bed.
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