AS A former prime minister of Thailand and a billionaire businessman to boot, Thaksin Shinawatra, the owner of Manchester City, can be assumed to be a man of the world.

But is he fully cognisant of Britain's copyright laws? Either way, he will surely be receiving a writ from the Football Association for a breach of said laws before long.

Does this ring a bell? Sven-Goran Eriksson lifts a team from the slough of previous failures and in next to no time has them playing fluent, match-winning football. The team then stalls, as all teams do every so often, and the victories dry up.

So Eriksson is taken to one side and told that at the end of the season his services will no longer be required. His employer then sets his cap in the direction of Portugal's Brazilian coach, Luiz Felipe Scolari, who says he will make no decisions on his future until after the summer's major international tournament.

All Manchester City have to do now is appoint Steve McClaren as their next manager. Then again maybe not. As they say in Thailand: "I don't mind a joke, but stuff a pantomime."

A pity really, because pantos are what City do best. And in preparing to ditch Eriksson when the Swede has been in charge for only 10 months, Thaksin has kept faith with the tradition of Widow Twankeys and thigh-slapping Dandinis that have been City's stock-in-trade for decades.

Eriksson's mistake at Eastlands, as with England, has been to do too well too soon, raising expectations that were going to take a little longer to fulfil than the early results suggested.

Manchester City led the Premier League in August and were still lying fourth in the new year. Since then their form has faltered, although they still completed their first double over Manchester United for 38 years.

More recently, the juniors have won the FA Youth Cup, beating Chelsea in the final, and the club's academy have unearthed a Slovakian winger, Vladimir Weiss, who has the makings of another Cristiano Ronaldo.

Apparently this is not good enough for Thaksin. All City fans know is that finishing in the top half of the Premier League after beating United twice is a Shangri-la that few expected to experience quite so soon. Eriksson, moreover, has been able to leaven his successful foreign signings with a healthy crop of homegrown players.

Off-loading Eriksson after one season would be absurd. City's owner could do worse than note the way Everton have kept faith with the excellent David Moyes, or Aston Villa's steady improvement, over a decent period of time, under Martin O'Neill.

Someone should tell Thaksin that owning a football club amounts to something more than spending a few squillions, then sitting back to watch the team win things. As it is, he is in danger of further vindicating the chapter in Len Shackleton's autobiography headed "The average director's knowledge of football". The rest was a blank page.

Of course Manchester City and their followers have been this way more than once. When Peter Swales took control of the club in the early 1970s, two managers, Johnny Hart and Ron Saunders, were swiftly dispatched.

The team's fortunes did not improve until Peter Reid became manager and twice took them to fifth place in the early 1990s. Then they finished ninth and Reid was sacked two matches into the following season.

Under Reid's successor, Brian Horton, City came 16th and some fans became so incensed Swales's mother was menaced in her hospital bed. Swales stepped down and Francis Lee, an icon at Maine Road as a player, took over.

The usual procession of managers followed; one of them, Steve Coppell, left after a few stressful weeks. Kevin Keegan performed his familiar kiss of life, and Stuart Pearce began promisingly but City were back to their old drifting ways when Eriksson arrived.

Clearly he should be allowed more time to build on sturdy foundations already dug, helped by at least one more summer in the international transfer market. If Eriksson does go now, City will be the losers and Thaksin will be in danger of becoming the next Jesus Gil, who got through 39 managers in his 17 years at Atletico Madrid.