It is one kind of humiliation to lead the club on a tour - even one with the overriding aim of boosting the national credibility of the billionaire who wants to sack you. That’s what sitting tight and waiting for a pay-out (probably £1m) is all about. But to hold off breaking the news of your demise, presumably to prevent any embarrassment to Thaksin during the tour? Can you imagine what Brian Clough would have to say about that? Or Alex Ferguson for that matter?

Any such agreement will reveal precisely what a product of the destructive power of foreign billions in the game the City saga really is - if Eriksson's treatment hadn't done already.

In the new football landscape, a multi-million pay-off is always around the corner and another multi-million pound job offer on the way. They used to call it the managerial merry-go-round, but that was in the days when only manager’s chairs were up for grabs. £2.5m at City? £1.8m at Benfica? Eriksson would have preferred the former – and he genuinely wants to manage in the Premier League. But with £1m to sugar the pill and send him on his way, one job’s much like the other so he won’t make too much of a fuss. That's why he is living with these humiliations.

I tuned in to the tape of City’s calamity at the Riverside on Monday morning hoping to find that Eriksson’s team had actually decided to have the last laugh at Thaksin - by delivering the only kind of punishment within their power. The early dismissal of Richard Dunne – one of Eriksson’s great allies at City – gave cause to hope that what they were showing on the pitch reflected what they thought of their chairman.

It was nothing of the sort, of course, but rather Sun Ji-Hai and Javier Garrido, showing themselves to be way out of their depth again. The City fans’ love of Eriksson has been manifest these past few weeks but he will do the soul of football a mighty favour if he cuts the pleasantries and lets Thaksin have both barrels before he finally walks away.