GUARDIAN/Daniel Taylor
Nedum Onuoha back in Manchester City squad as Garry Cook probe goes on
• Defender is asked to return to first-team training
• Club investigate sending of offensive email Roberto Mancini has made the unexpected decision to include Nedum Onuoha in his first-team plans at Manchester City, regardless of the controversy involving the player that threatens to cost Garry Cook his role as the club's chief executive.
Onuoha, who had been excluded from the main group, practising either alone or with the youth-team players, has been told he is welcome to return to first-team training. The 24-year-old has asked for an opportunity to re‑establish himself and, provided he is suitably fit, he may return to the squad for the game against Wigan Athletic on Saturday.
Cook, however, will be conspicuous by his absence at Eastlands as the club's owners in Abu Dhabi continue the investigative process that will determine whether he is allowed to continue in the role he has held for three years.
The former Nike executive, who is paid £1.8m a year, is on planned leave, visiting his wife and children, who moved to Portland in Oregon this year. The eight-hour time difference with Britain explains, in part, why City's internal inquiry has not been concluded. The expectation had been that it would be a relatively quick process.
Cook's position may not be resolved until he returns to Manchester early next week. The club's legal and human resources departments have been informed and are looking at IT records to try to establish the origins of an offensive email that was sent to Onuoha's mother last October.
Their findings will go back to the club's owner, Sheikh Mansour, and the chairman, Khaldoon al-Mubarak, in Abu Dhabi. Cook's position will be in grave doubt if discrepancies are uncovered in his story that a club employee hacked his account to send the email, which mocked Dr Anthonia Onuoha for having disclosed in a previous conversation that she was "ravaged" with Cancer.
The email, sent from Cook's account to Brian Marwood, City's football administrator, via an iPad, was addressed to "Brian". It read: "Ravaged with it!!........I don't know how you sleep at night. You used to be such a nice man when I worked with you at Nike. G". Dr Onuoha was copied in.
Mancini has been monitoring the situation, without a great deal of sympathy, after a deterioration in his working relationship with both Cook and Marwood. Mancini has a better understanding with John Williams and is receptive to the idea of a new regime involving the former Blackburn Rovers chairman, who was appointed in June as third in command among City's Manchester-based employees.
Williams, who was at Ewood Park for 13 years, would be an obvious candidate should the controversy engulfing Cook lead to his departure, as many people at Eastlands believe to be almost inevitable. The club's ambitions are such, however, that the billionaires in Abu Dhabi may feel more inclined to appoint one of their own or headhunt a replacement.
On Tuesday Kia Joorabchian, Carlos Tevez's adviser, issued a statement to deny any involvement with Onuoha. There were also suggestions that the relative of a former City player, nursing a grudge against Cook, was prominently involved in the leaking of the story
www.guardian.co.uk/football/2011/sep/06/nedum-onuoha-manchester-city-garry-cookDaily Mail - Martin Samuel
Turmoil in the City... but is there a cure for Garry Cook?7th September 2011
At this year’s Champions League draw, in the giant space of the Grimaldi Forum in Monaco, when Manchester City’s name was read out there was an audible murmur of discontent.
Football’s old money has never been particularly welcoming to parvenus. It used to be Chelsea that were treated with disdain, but they have stuck around long enough now to be part of the furniture. Viktoria Plzen, of the Czech Republic, are also new to the group stage this year but fit into the category of clubs who will be patted patronisingly on the head, beaten soundly, and sent on their way. Plzen are no threat to the established elite.
City are. They are the coming club, backed by oil money, managed by an astute Italian and represented by the finest players from three continents; they could be contenders, and the established elite do not like it one bit.
City are in a constant battle for credibility, therefore, and it does not help to have a chief executive officer, Garry Cook, whose every sound bite requires a Heimlich manoeuvre to prevent seizure in the aftermath.
Trouble at the top: Garry Cook (right) with City chairman Khaldoon Al Mubarak
This week, Cook managed to alienate most of the country by appearing to insult a seriously ill woman via email. Well, not this week exactly. The exchange actually happened 11 months ago but has come to light only now, which is puzzling. It does, however, concern one of the few words with the capacity to shock and offend in modern Britain, so Cook may yet lose his job. Here goes.
Cancer. Boo. Scary, isn’t it? Little takes us by surprise these days, but playing fast and loose with the C word rarely ends happily.
Woody Allen summed it up. He said the most beautiful sentence in the English language was not ‘I love you’ but ‘It’s benign’. Everybody can relate to that. Those who believe Cook — or the mysterious employee he claimed hacked his email to send the offensive missive — would not have mocked his victim if he had experience of the illness have not done the mathematics. We all know somebody.
More from Martin Samuel... Martin Samuel: No new broom for old boss Capello... 05/09/11 Martin Samuel: To lead the line or miss the bus? Time for Carroll to decide 04/09/11 Martin Samuel: On the road again, it all comes so easy to Capello and his England troops 03/09/11 MARTIN SAMUEL: Eurocrats with a touch of mad cow disease 02/09/11 Martin Samuel: Hold you nerve, Mr Levy, or we'll never believe you 30/08/11 Martin Samuel: United shot Bambi and even Fergie felt the pain 28/08/11 Martin Samuel: We can't let this happen in London 28/08/11 MARTIN SAMUEL: Go ahead, punk, make my day. . . and find a job 25/08/11 VIEW FULL ARCHIVE My mum’s got it. My father-in-law died from it. So did my brother’s best friend, in his twenties. I knew a young boy who contracted leukaemia and seeing his terminal deterioration remains one of the most traumatic experiences of my life. I’ve lost colleagues, friends and more aunts and uncles on all sides of the family than I could efficiently name. And I’m not exceptional, or cursed.
The Times ran a series called Living with Cancer based on the knowledge that there is barely a person in Britain who is not, in some way, doing so. Cook will recognise the suffering of Dr Antonia Onuoha, even if his iPad has a strange way of showing it.
What Cancer is, however, is a gamechanger. It has its own language and etiquette and nothing is ever the same after it, whatever the outcome. Cancer sufferers are always brave, always battling, always fighting. They have beaten the illness, or won, as if it were a game of chess, not chance. And having Cancer alters perceptions.
It is fair to say that John Hartson did not have the finest reputation in football during his playing days. His early life included an incident of theft to fund a growing gambling addiction, he was sent off on several occasions and he kicked a team-mate in the face during an altercation at the training ground. Shortly after retiring, however, he was revealed to have testicular Cancer which had spread to his brain and lungs.
A person could not help but mature in those circumstances, and public attitudes soften, too. Hartson made vulnerable was viewed with tenderness and sympathy. Now, thankfully in recovery, he is a respected TV analyst, a coach at Newport County and, most significantly, a role model. Nobody would advocate Cancer as a career move, and Hartson travelled a desperately dark road, but illness gave him a gravitas as a man that was missing from his career in football.
A new horizon: John Hartson
So what was, in essence, a contractual disagreement between Manchester City and the mother of a player, Nedum Onuoha — she was acting as his representative — became imbued with deeper meaning after Dr Onuoha was diagnosed with Cancer.
She felt it necessary to refer to her illness in an email sent to Brian Marwood, Manchester City’s football administration officer, and copied to Cook last October.
Referring to an existing dispute, Dr Onuoha wrote: ‘My body might be ravaged by Cancer and ongoing chemotherapy but my intellectual and mental capacities remain fully functional...’
She received a response from Cook’s email address apparently intended for Marwood containing a crass remark about her condition and all hell let loose; after nearly a year. In what at first appears a straightforward case of right and wrong, this lapse is the riddle.
Dr Onuoha described her feeling on reading Cook’s email as worse than being diagnosed with Cancer yet raised the matter with the FA and Premier League only after 11 months. There has still been no explanation for this or the strange marriage of intense feeling yet lackadaisical reaction.
So what is Cook alleged to have written to Marwood? The email reads: ‘Ravaged with it! I don’t know how you sleep at night. You used to be such a nice man when I worked with you at Nike.’
Callous? Yes. Crass? Yes. Amusing? Most certainly not. Yet, if Cook ends up unemployed as a result, it will either be because he is proven to have lied in an attempt to cover up his mistake or due to the cumulative nature of the PR disasters surrounding him.
Calling Kaka a bottler is injudiciously strident, mocking the afflicted politically suicidal. Yet break down what was said. Take away the first three words and the comment merely contains facetious incredulity at the club’s representatives being painted as the bad guys.
‘I don’t know how you sleep at night. You used to be such a nice man when I worked with you at Nike.’
Feeling the heat: Cook
The whole furore around the email centres on the sarcastic parroting of Dr Onuoha’s contention that she is ‘ravaged’ by Cancer. And, while it is crude and, without doubt, offensive to the unintended recipient, it only needs to signal Cook’s demise at City if he is found to have deliberately lied or the owners want a reason to sack him.
Plainly embarrassed, there has been no official defence of Cook. If the club were circling wagons they would first highlight the 11-month hiatus and use that to protect their man.
There are several questions that could be asked. Why was this not brought to the attention of the FA or into the public domain until now? If Dr Onuoha was so upset surely she would have complained when her emotions were most acutely affected?
It would be a final act of madness to offer mitigation for Cook, particularly if he was then discovered to have lied and been party to the email, yet the inconsistent sequence of events suggests a negotiation gone horribly sour. Clearly, some subsequent matters have contributed to this humiliating end game.
A further deterioration in the relationship occurred, for instance, with Manchester City’s belief that Dr Onuoha had engaged Kia Joorabchian to find her son a club this summer. City immediately reported Joorabchian’s involvement to the FA as an unlicensed agent, a development that is the latest round in a feud with Cook, which began in January 2009 over the doomed deal for Kaka. (For the record, Joorabchian, who also takes care of Carlos Tevez and does have licensed agents in his employ, denies that he has ever acted, represented, met or spoken to Onuoha at any time.)
Then, what may have been the spark in the tinderbox ignited last week when, as the transfer window closed, Manchester City’s refusal to make up the difference in Onuoha’s £38,000-a-week salary scuppered his loan move to Everton. Within days the rogue email was on the back page of a national newspaper.
Going nowhere: Nedum Onuoha's wage demands put paid to a loan move to Goodison Park
Why should City pay the wages of a player at another club? Why did Onuoha not sign for Everton at their going rate and rebuild his career at Goodison Park rather than sit unwanted on an inflated salary at City? Could the unrealistic demands of modern footballers explain the slightly contemptuous tone that comes through what may be an executive level email exchange?
These and other questions will not be answered because Cancer has sucked all of the air from the room.
The comedian Denis Leary built his career on an Edinburgh Festival show dealing darkly with our deepest fears called No Cure For Cancer, and if Cook leaves City he will be the proof of that title.
‘It doesn’t matter how big the warnings on the cigarettes are,’ Leary tells his audience.
‘You could have a black pack, with a skull and crossbones on the front, called Tumours, and smokers would be around the block going, “I can’t wait to get my hands on these f****** things! I bet you get a tumour as soon as you light up”.’
Near to the knuckle: Denis Leary
Comedians get away with material like that, but there is certainly no fun in a rich guy belittling a Cancer sufferer, and certainly none in then attempting a cover-up. Cook claims his computer was hacked while he was on holiday in South Africa and his job may hang on the sincerity of this claim.
If he has lied that is what will get him in the end; yet even the lie will have been a panicked reaction to being caught and judged behaving inappropriately around illness.
Unless he resigns it is unlikely Cook’s future will be decided before next week when he returns from a planned break in Portland, Oregon.
By then City will know. The internal investigation should be able to detect, from the IP address, the whereabouts of the computer that sent the message.
As CEO of a major company, complicity in a falsehood and cover-up leaves no way back. Cook may have survived had he admitted an error of judgment from the beginning. To then lie to save his skin would fit too damagingly into previous claims — most forcibly from Tevez — that he is not a man of his word.
The purchase of Manchester City was a promotional exercise for Abu Dhabi, capital city of the United Arab Emirates. As such, it relies on presenting a picture of success, goodwill and excellence, and senior staff cracking wise at the expense of Cancer victims is not part of that image.
At the very least, even if Cook’s account is truthful, he allowed an irresponsible employee access to his computer, which is not the brightest move by a CEO.
Yet, while Cook may be a public relations disaster on stilts, while he has been denounced as a liar, and mocked as representative of all that is brash or gauche about City, within football he is regarded as having done an excellent job repositioning the club.
Even in this crisis, knowing Dr Onuoha could make such a harmful accusation, he had an easy way out and did not take it.
This is not intended as justification or defence but, had he agreed that City would make up the shortfall in Onuoha’s salary at Everton, the foolish missive, the accusation of deception, the headlines, the threat to his employment, could all have gone away.
Having waited 11 months to protest publicly, Dr Onuoha was in no hurry. Cook could have done a deal and hushed her up.
Maybe it was a feeling of misplaced arrogance that led him to believe he had weathered the storm but, whatever the motive, he did not waste club money solving a personal matter.
That may no longer be enough, though. The grumblers at the Grimaldi Forum will be delighting in City’s discomfort right now and the owners know it.
This could be why they are staying silent. Deep down, perhaps they realise that, however good he is at his job, there is no known cure for Garry Cook.
Read more:
www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/article-2034473/Turmoil-Manchester-City--cure-Garry-Cook-Martin-Samuel.html#ixzz1XF5PDDkA
