Hughes - 'I came close to walking away'

"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."

"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."

>>Mark Hughes.

Easy to be wise after the event of course, but in The Guardian feature by David Conn both Hughes and Garry Cook speak about their early days at the club under the crumbling Thaksin regime (including Cook's infamous 'good guy to play golf with' quote) - and hardly portray it as a good place to be.

The more that emerges over time about Thaksin's time at the club, the more you realise just how important and timely the ADUG takeover was.

One day, someone I'm sure is going to write a very interesting book about the Thaksin era.