In the grim solitude of the away team's dressing-room at the Riverside Stadium, the succession of cheers from the home supporters told Richard Dunne that a chastening afternoon had become the most dispiriting of his Manchester City career.

He had suffered the trauma of relegation, but nothing could prepare him for the embarrassment of an 8-1 defeat by Middlesbrough as a campaign that began with a bright false dawn came to an inglorious conclusion in May.

Dunne was sent off that day for the foul that allowed Stewart Downing to score the first of Middlesbrough's goals from the penalty spot and, as he sat in the dressing-room, it crossed his mind that he may be wearing the City shirt for the final time. The Ireland defender was attracting interest from Newcastle United, Portsmouth, Tottenham Hotspur and West Ham United and, at the end of his eighth season at City, disillusioned by the treatment and the imminent sacking of Sven-Göran Eriksson, he wondered whether it might be time to go.

“That was the lowest it got, the bottom of the pit,” Dunne said yesterday. “There was just nothing positive coming out of the club and it didn't look like anything was ever going to improve. Everyone's head was down. The fans wanted Sven to stay and the players were the same.

“Nobody knew what direction the club was going to take and it was pretty much the same for a month after that game. We didn't know who was in charge or what was happening. Everything had come to a head. Everyone was fed up.”

Cut to a conference room at an hotel near Manchester airport yesterday afternoon and Dunne is positively beaming at the launch of Fifa 09, the new video game. For the Irish version, Dunne is featured on the front cover along with Ronaldinho, the Brazil playmaker. Not long ago the juxtaposition would have been considered a uniquely Irish joke. A month or two ago, after Ronaldinho had turned down City to join AC Milan, it would have been a glimpse of what might have been. Now, with City revelling in the wealth of their new Arab owners and with the phenomenally talented Robinho having taken up the challenge that his compatriot turned down, Dunne wonders aloud whether Ronaldinho is kicking himself for joining Milan, the seven-times European Cup winners, rather than City. And this time it was not a joke.

Dunne laughs as he is asked about the feel-good factor that a combination of Robinho, Shaun WrightPhillips, Mark Hughes and Sheikh Mansour, the new owner, have brought to the blue part of Manchester in the past 3 weeks, notwithstanding the Carling Cup defeat by Brighton & Hove Albion on Wednesday. He recalls the “mad day” of September 1, when he woke up to hear that City were about to be taken over by Sheikh Mansour and went to bed with his head spinning after the club broke the British transfer record to sign Robinho from Real Madrid for £34.2million.

Like everyone else at the club, Dunne is effusive about Robinho, a player whose variety of tricks, he says with a nod to his hosts, belong in a video game. “Elano's tricks are good, but Robinho is a different level,” Dunne says. “Everyone has criticised him, saying, ‘Why has he gone there?' But Robinho is just the first of many. Everyone will want to play for City in three or four years.”

That is the type of statement that has ruffled feathers at Old Trafford and beyond, with Sir Alex Ferguson, the Manchester United manager, suggesting that the new regime at City are “all talk” and reminding them that they have won nothing yet. “That's true,” Dunne says. “It won't happen overnight and, no, we haven't got the history of Manchester United, but this is just the beginning.

“In the next five or ten years it will probably be a regular occurrence that City win trophies. People might dismiss us now, but nobody should think it can't happen.”

Dunne's words echo those that attracted snorts of disdain when the notion of City as a global force was raised only five weeks ago, before the takeover, by Garry Cook, the club's executive chairman. In that same interview Cook tried to explain the pressing need to sign a superstar or “global franchise entity”, such as Robinho, by saying that “no disrespect, but the name Richard Dunne doesn't exactly roll off the tongue in Beijing”.

The player cracks a smile, saying, diplomatically, that it was “not the best thing to say”, but, now that he has Robinho for a team-mate, he understands what Cook was saying. So do the rest of us. City believe that they are on the verge of something big. And whatever it might be, their captain is relieved that he stuck around to be a part of it.

Richard Dunne is the face of Fifa 09 in Ireland. Fifa 09 is out on all formats on October 3. For more information go to www.fifa09.ea.com/uk