Great Article In The Independent ( A must read) The truth!

[Dubai Blue]

Dubai Blue... that's a brilliant argument.

Thank you, I thought so too.

Some people will always know more about certain fields than other people do. That's why they are called experts. Garry Cook happens to be an expert in the marketing of sportsmens' intellectual property rights. Of course you can discuss things, but I will always side with the expert when it comes to his area of expertise.

Moomba is slagging Cook off and saying he has approached this side of the deal completely wrong. How would he know? Does he have extensive experience in this area of sports marketing?

Kaka's sponsorship deals are central to the earnings potential at Manchester City, so of course they should be looked at in detail before agreeing on a salary.

 

[Matty]

This is the issue that Kaka will have by employing his dad as his main agent/negotiator. His dad is an engineer by trade, he's entirely unsuited to the role, if he wasn't related to Kaka he wouldn't be anywhere near deals like this. Kaka's image rights etc were, according to Cook, far lower than he'd have imagined and the fact that Kaka's dad wouldn't (or more likely couldn't) provide City with a detailed analysis of his contractual abligations etc would seem to indicate that he doesn't really have a clue what he's doing and is just 'winging it'. The deal died partly because AC Milan didn't have the balls to do what was right for the club in the long run (i.e. cash in on Kaka and use the £100m to rebuild and aging squad) and partly because Kaka's dad simply isn't up to the tak of being present and negotiating with people as experienced as Cook. Quite simply he was out of his depth.

 

[Soulboy]

Dubai Blue... that's a brilliant argument.

Thank you, I thought so too.

Some people will always know more about certain fields than other people do. That's why they are called experts. Garry Cook happens to be an expert in the marketing of sportsmens' intellectual property rights. Of course you can discuss things, but I will always side with the expert when it comes to his area of expertise.

Moomba is slagging Cook off and saying he has approached this side of the deal completely wrong. How would he know? Does he have extensive experience in this area of sports marketing?

Kaka's sponsorship deals are central to the earnings potential at Manchester City, so of course they should be looked at in detail before agreeing on a salary.

That's all fine and dandy. But having the viewpoint that we can't disagree with the "experts" somewhat limits the use of this messagenboard, does it not?

It's fine for people like you who accept their limits of knowledge compared to the experts and so agree with their every action, but others, I presume Moomba is one, like to challenge the accepted norms.

If you believe everything Cook, Hughes et al do at the club, then you must be a very contented person.

Unfortunately after many, many years of following City I am less inclined to believe the "experts". I have seen too many of them cock-up to trust them without question.

It takes all sort to make a world. Some follow, some question.

 

[Dubai Blue]

Thank you, I thought so too.

Some people will always know more about certain fields than other people do. That's why they are called experts. Garry Cook happens to be an expert in the marketing of sportsmens' intellectual property rights. Of course you can discuss things, but I will always side with the expert when it comes to his area of expertise.

Moomba is slagging Cook off and saying he has approached this side of the deal completely wrong. How would he know? Does he have extensive experience in this area of sports marketing?

Kaka's sponsorship deals are central to the earnings potential at Manchester City, so of course they should be looked at in detail before agreeing on a salary.

That's all fine and dandy. But having the viewpoint that we can't disagree with the "experts" somewhat limits the use of this messagenboard, does it not?

It's fine for people like you who accept their limits of knowledge compared to the experts and so agree with their every action, but others, I presume Moomba is one, like to challenge the accepted norms.

If you believe everything Cook, Hughes et al do at the club, then you must be a very contented person.

Unfortunately after many, many years of following City I am less inclined to believe the "experts". I have seen too many of them cock-up to trust them without question.

It takes all sort to make a world. Some follow, some question.

Right, look at the bold bit in my post. I have not said you cannot disagree with him. Of course you can. But if I have to back someone on this issue, I will back Garry Cook over Moomba. No offence intended.

Kaka's father seemingly wanted a cash-only deal and people are asking why City didn't give him a salary offer. The simple reason is that City weren't prepared to enter into a cash-only contract; they wanted to adopt a more innovative approach along the lines of Beckham's deals with Milan and LAG. Now, you can debate the rights and wrongs of such an approach until the cows come home, but that's the reason no offer was made and City walked away. They obviously weren't prepared to fork out 200k+ per week in cold, hard cash.

 

[Soulboy]

I read your bold bit... but it still says that you would agree with the expert.

That's fair enough, it makes sense.

But this is a messageboard where you are encouraged to debate a viewpoint. Not much point having it if the response against anyone's argument is "well, what do you know compared to the expert?"

That means NO criticism of the board, the CEO, the manager, even the players... because they are all experts in their field and far more knowledgeable on their subjest than us mere mortals!

Accordingly we wouldn't have criticised Wardle, Sven, Thaksin, Pearce, Keegan, Franny... because they all are more expert than we are! I'm sure all the banking experts were above criticism at one time!

All I'm saying is don't always trust the experts! They can fuck up as well...

 

[Soulboy]

PS...

I take your point about the offer to Kaka not being "cold hard cash". It's clear from these negotiations that the perception most of us had that we would literally chuck money at getting the world's best players to City was somewhat naive.

I, like many other City fans, had this perception that money was no object in our assault on world football.. now it appears that it is going to be far more hard-headed and business-like.

All well and good. But that approach is going to take time. Lot's of time.

When Cook arrived he spoke of us building a new trophy cabinet, and being a world-player in the near future.

Listen to him yesterday. Now it's a "10 year plan".

Reality bites.

 

[bluegorton]

I read that Kaka had something in the region of 20 sponsorship deals. I'm sorry but you really need to know at least the basic structure & clauses of each of these agreements and how it might affect you before you can come up with a figure that you'd like to pay the player each week.

The whole point of being able to offer him 500,000 and still make "business sense" as Cook/Hughes have implied, is that you can go to town with IP rights. What if the Adidas agreement stipulated that Kaka cannot be seen endorsing any other sporting apparel brand? There could have been a million other clauses which would have constrained our ability to market him.

I think we could have offered a ballpark figure on salary (after sleeping on it the night before the next meeting), but it sounds like they got cold feet in a hurry so we never got to that stage.

For once, i'm firmly on Cooks side on this. This is one part of football where he knows his shit. I cant really blame him for Milan/Bosco not coming through on a similarly professional level.

Very good post here .... I will be a little over the top here but if they did not check the clauses in the various contracts we could have been in the state where he would be wearing his own shirt sponser or we would have to have his. I know would not have happened, just trying to point out the extreme.

Or... Robinho...great skill finds Ireland..Ireland goes past the defender slots it through Kaka sponsored by Adidas, Kaka sponsored by Adidas dinks it over the keeper for a goooooooooal, a goal with three stripes running through it!!! Sorry, bored at work.

 

[Patientman63]

Through all this sensible debate, one fact is not being faced.

If Kaka himself wanted to come to City. He would have. Simple. The money side of things would have been a mere formality. Everything else is smoke and mirrors.

The unavoidable fact is that is that, as widely quoted, Milan (or someone on the players side) "bottled it".

That the issue got so badly clouded does not appear to be a Cooke error.

 

[zeusbheld]

No. I'm suggesting that when it comes to complex agreements centred around intellectual property rights, Mr. Cook probably knows a little more than you.

Have you thrown your seasoncard away yet?

Dubai Blue... that's a brilliant argument.

Cook knows more about business than we do. So we can stop that line of argument straight away. Whatever he does as Executive Chairman is above criticism, 'cos he knows far more about businesss than any one on this board.

Hughes knows far more about football than we do. So we can stop that line of argument straight away. Whatever he does as Manager is above criticism, 'cos he knows far more about managing a football team than any one on this board.

Any player knows far more about football than we do. So we can stop that line of argument straight away. Whatever he does as a player is above criticism, 'cos they know far more about football than any one on this board.

Right. So just remind me again... what's the point of having a discussion board?

you know, if you can't answer an argument it's a good tactic to dumb it down into a straw man and then beat the snot out of it. no wait, you know that already. obviously.

 

[moomba]

I'm not saying, and haven't said that we should agree a deal before looking into all aspects.

But if we need to give a ballpark figure to keep the deal going then it makes sense to me that we do so. And if we think that his representatives should instead be focusing on his image or our vision instead of that ballpark figure then thats too bad. It's their decision to take.

I'm not saying that the deal fell over because of Cook, but for all the undoubted work he would have done on the foundation, and image and vision the player didn't see a second of it.

That to me suggests a strategy that wasn't effective on this occasion.

And the idea that you need a marketing degree to question the public statements of an official of the club is frankly, quite stupid.