FA PREMIER LEAGUE MANCHESTER DERBY: MARK HUGHES has revealed that he came "close" to walking away from Manchester City in the summer of 2008, frustrated by the lack of money, "confusion" and turmoil at the tail end of the club's ownership by Thaksin Shinawatra, the former prime minister of Thailand.

Recruited to manage City after four seasons at Blackburn Rovers, Hughes said he made the move because he believed City were in a good financial position under Thaksin and that money would be available to sign players.

“The reality wasn’t exactly what was described and sold to me,” he said. “In fairness, we were able to go into the transfer market, but there seemed a focus that players had to be sold, and I realised that maybe the resources weren’t in place that I thought.”

Hughes, whose side face the first Manchester derby of the season tomorrow, was disappointed with the facilities at City’s Carrington training ground, which he described as “rundown” and “not fit for purpose”. There was, he said, “confusion and miscommunication” about players who might be sold, with Stephen Ireland told he would be leaving when Hughes had not approved any decision to sell him.

Thaksin had already had€1.35 billion of assets frozen and faced corruption charges in Thailand when he took over City in 2007, and on August 10th, 2008, he and his wife, Potjaman, skipped bail after she was convicted of fraud in Bangkok and sentenced to three years in prison.

Hughes said that at the time he tried to concentrate solely on managing the football club, hoping his job would not be affected by Thaksin’s problems.

“Probably naively, I thought you could separate the two, but obviously you can’t. If you are single-minded, you have to work purposefully,” he reflected, “and if you get to a point where it is untenable and not manageable, then you make the decision to walk away. I never got to that point – but I was close.”

Garry Cook, City’s chief executive, who was seen as an apologist for Thaksin after describing him in an interview as “a great guy to play golf with”, said he now feels “dreadful” about having made that comment. Cook joined City from Nike in the US, where he had become the president of the Jordan brand, but he, too, soon found there was no money.

“I have made some mistakes in my life,” Cook said, “but I deeply regretted my failure to do proper research on Thaksin.”

Cook confirmed City were at the time borrowing heavily, then reached a point where they could not pay the wages and had to ask former chairman, John Wardle, to lend the club €2.2 million. Cook felt then that his decision to take the City job was “the biggest mistake of my life”.

After Thaksin agreed to sell City to Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed al-Nahyan of Abu Dhabi on August 31st last year, there was speculation that Hughes would be sacked and the huge money Mansour was making available would be entrusted to a more celebrated manager such as Jose Mourinho.

However City’s chairman, Khaldoon al-Mubarak, who was appointed by Mansour, said there had been “an immediate chemistry” with Hughes. Khaldoon said he believes Hughes will be “a great manager” and they had confidence in him from the beginning.

“It was very unfair what he had to face all of last season,” the chairman said. “And that to a certain extent made me feel stronger towards him. Last season was very difficult, but we wanted Mark to succeed.”

Khaldoon said that after “a couple of meetings” he also recognised Cook’s qualities, and ability to handle the reconstruction of City desired by Mansour.

Meanwhile, United manager Alex Ferguson sent a few barbs in City’s direction as he assessed tomorrow’s game, mainly in the assessment of what constitutes success for a club who have achieved so little for so long.

There is, though, one pretty significant irritation, in the shape of the provocative Carlos Tevez poster proclaiming: “Welcome to Manchester.”

Ferguson was unhappy at the time when it went up at one end of Manchester’s busy Deansgate shopping area, emphasising as it did City’s claim to be the city’s only club bearing in mind Old Trafford is outside the boundaries.

“That stupid poster upset us,” he said. “It showed an arrogance. It was naughty. It showed a cockiness that wasn’t required at the time because they hadn’t done anything. The season hadn’t even started.”