Without Thaksin we were pretty much nailed on to go down, no money to sign anyone, lost Distin & Barton, no manager etc. If we'd got relegated then we'd have lost most of our decent yougsters as the vultures would have swooped, we'd be in the Championship now battling for promotion again on a shoe-string budget. That's if we hadn't done a Leeds and gone into administration.
Frank got us SGE and some players which helped us to a 9th placed position and into Europe, via a back door admittedly, but if (big IF though) we win EUFA then who gives a shit how we qualified?
I don't give a crap why Frank bought the club, I'm concerned about the CLUB. What's the difference between the sheikh buying us to promote the UAE between Frank buying us to promote himself in Thailand - the only differences I can see is Frank has, shall we say, a much more dubious past and the arabs are much richer. We've been bought twice now by owners for personal and promotional reasons, I hope no-one is kidding themselves that the sheikh is a died in the wool, true blue City supporter.
People woman about what MIGHT have happened under Frank but the fact is that it didn't. He couldn't sustain the cost of running MCFC so he bowed out and we ended up being owned by one of the richest (if not THE richest) people in the world. He enabled the club to come out of a disastrous situation, possibly on two occasions - pre-Frank and pre-arab takeover. Even if you blame him for the situation before the sheikh I'm reasonably sure he never expected to have all his assets seized and if they had been released I do think he would have continued to invest.
IF it had all gone pearshaped and we did a Leeds I'd be slagging him off like everyone else but the plain fact, as far as the club is concerned, we are now unrecognisable from the City of early 2007. We have spent £80m on players for 2 seasons, signed Robinho, looking at signing Kaka for £100m with more to come I believe.
Yeah, I'd say we owe a lot to Frank.
