James Lawton in the Independent on the laughable Premier League 'test'.
'You might imagine the new chairman of Manchester City is a suitable case for resounding rejection by the quaintly named arm of the Premier League known as the Fit and Proper Persons Test.
'You might think the antecedents of Thaksin Shinawatra would provoke the full majesty of an instrument that sounds as though it was made to sift out candidates who do not perhaps carry all the right credentials for ownership of a club which, for all the despair and the angst it has generated over the years, is still one of the most beloved in the land.
'But then you will probably have to think again. Why? Because Thaksin, the former prime minister of Thailand who has been accused of corruption by the military government that succeeded him and has been regularly in the sights of Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch, and who has just had more than £1bn frozen in 21 banks, has proved himself eminently capable of command to the hierarchy of City and enough of the club's shareholders.
'The proper person, we know well enough now, can be someone like Thaksin. He has the supreme virtue of carrying more than enough of the folding stuff. It is, apparently, the ultimate requirement in an examination which is not so much a moral probe as a financial checklist. Human rights and business practice are simply not part of the equation. Have you or one of your companies suffered bankruptcy in this country? No, well fine, march on. Give us your huddled masses of money.
'Roll up, roll up, the Premiership will take your money and leave the agonising to more gentle souls, who might just wonder how it was that Abramovich was a man of fabulous wealth in his mid-thirties in a society where professors and eminent doctors can go months without being paid? He won himself so many of the mineral rights of the people who authored the October Revolution.
'Naturally, the selling owner of Chelsea, Ken Bates, didn't thrash out the moral imperatives of the man who was about to pay off the club's debts and so substantially augment his own wealth. Premiership football doesn't work like that. It doesn't worry about the origins of wealth; it just counts the money.
'Inevitably, there now must be a sense of working amorality that is quite stunning. Thaksin may have a dubious past, he may be persona non grata in his own country, but he brings the promise of success, of wealth that will make City contenders again. It is the simplest equation: money makes success, money swamps guilt.
'It takes us to the ultimate question. Will the City fans care how their new wealth and power were gained any more than the denizens of Stamford Bridge when mega-signings like Michael Essien and Didier Drogba put on some unanswerable show of power? Did Pompey supporters fret over the background of their owner when they pushed for the once fantasy ambition of European football?
'There are no prizes for the correct answers to such leading questions. They produce only sighs of recognition that football has rarely had a more poignant example of the degree the game has changed than in the annexation of a club which, even more than the late-charging United, was so rooted in the streets of its city.'