SHEIKH MOHAMMED has left the door open for a possible reconciliation with Henry Cecil but only if the 10 time champion trainer mends his ways.

Racing's most powerful owner hinted yesterday that the rift, which resulted in the sheikh removing all his horses from the Newmarket handler last season, was not irreparable.

But he insisted Cecil had to accept that the sheikh wanted to be kept better informed and have a greater input in the training and running of his horses for any reunion to take place.

The sheikh split with Cecil last autumn after he discovered that Mark Of Esteem, who he had claimed for his Godolphin string days before he was to run in the Royal Lodge Stakes, was carrying an injury that the trainer had failed to notify him about.

There were also alleged differences of opinion with Cecil's wife, Natalie, but the sheikh, speaking to journalists in Dubai yesterday, stressed this had not influenced his decision.

"I have nothing against Henry Cecil, and if things change and he understands the way I do, there is nothing to stop me going back with him. I don't take it personally," he said at his Al Quoz Stables.

Mark Of Esteem, a 7 to 1 second favourite with Ladbrokes for the 2000 Guineas, has an arthritic spur in his knee and even now suffers from occasional lameness.

It was Cecil's failure to brief the sheikh of this problem that proved to be the final straw in an often difficult relationship.

"For a long time Henry Cecil wanted to get his own way and I kept tackling him. There was always a fight. It was friendly, but I knew then that he wasn't enjoying it and I wasn't enjoying it,"

"That's why I decided to cut it clean. I don't take anything from Henry Cecil, he's one of the best trainers in the world. But the new trainers now are more forward and talk about the horses.

"My problem is I'm a horseman and not only an owner, therefore I want to be involved, I want to know, I want to interfere. That's the problem, what happened last year broke the camel's back.

"If the trust is gone then it's finished and really I was coping with many things. But you cannot cope when somebody is letting the whole world know that I am stopping a horse from a big race and yet the horse is lame.

"We are loyal people. We never drop anybody. But we want the same, we want loyalty from them. Of course I'm sorry for Henry Cecil and I have nothing against him. But I stopped for my sake and his sake."