You could see it coming. Soon after the story broke, there was a certain inevitability about the whole thing, and last Friday Garry Cook finally succumbed to the media pressure over his email gaffe and resigned, to the delight of millions.

Cook has never been a popular man in the press, or with other clubs’ fans. Seen as prone to gaffe after gaffe, keen on CEO-speak and too business-oriented, his departure will gain little sympathy. And on over a million pounds a year that’s fair enough. The press had had it in for Cook for a while as he had lied to them about finding a successor to Mark Hughes – they obviously expected him to openly tell them they were looking for a new manager.

I am not sure when football club CEOs and board members became big news in football. The likes of David Dein and Peter Kenyon led the way by having a high profile, linked to the fact that many like them and David Gill at Manchester United sat/sit within the FA and various European club committees.

And Cook was certainly high-profile, sometimes unwittingly. Overseeing one of the most talked about football stories of our time, he brought unprecedented growth in the club and its global profile, sometimes talking in the style of the marketing man that he is, a style that grated with many, who still see football clubs as some close-knit local community-type operation.

Welcome to the 21^st century. You might recoil at the thought that football is all about money and global profiles and marketing, but it has been that way for decades – that’s not Cook’s fault, and with the dawn of the Financial Fair Play regulations, Cook and the owners knew that City had to expand their profile and increase marketing in order to compete. He did his job, and he did it well, also helping to bring the best set of footballers to the club for a generation (possibly ever).

So like the game around him, Cook was about the money – some of his football ideas are to be dismissed, but he wasn’t there at City for that. Every top club (and many others) has someone like Cook now – just because they don’t say as much as Cook did publicly doesn’t mean they’re not doing the same things and thinking alike.

But Cook offered something else too that you won’t see mentioned. Most people know only half the story.

As Oliver Kay of The Times astutely tweeted: What I found endearing about Cook was that he cared about the fans. Very few do. And it’s not just a £ thing. Do other rich clubs care?

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