Garry Cook is standing outside the City of Manchester Stadium. Behind him work is taking place on a £4million office block that will remind Manchester City's subterranean staff what daylight is. In the foyer, a pensioner is buying a couple of corporate tickets for tomorrow's final home game of the season. In the offices a sponsorship deal with Etihad Airways, by far the biggest in the club's history, is being finalised in advance of an announcement today.

Where the outside world sees a team languishing in the middle of the Barclays Premier League after a disappointing first season under the ownership of the Abu Dhabi United Group and the management of Mark Hughes, Cook, the chief executive, sees progress and boundless potential.

It is the same confidence that led him, seven months into his first football job, to say that AC Milan were “bottlers” and that Kaká, the former World Player of the Year, was missing out when a proposed move to City predictably collapsed last January. But Cook believes: in Manchester City, in his staff and most certainly in his manager.

Cook on Hughes

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“Mark has done an outstanding job. If you look back over the season, people will say ‘not great', but the mechanics of having a great season were interrupted by things we didn't know were going to happen. We called it the bowling-ball syndrome. Every time you opened a cupboard, another one landed on your head. Mark has dealt with it exceptionally well. People talk about the previous season under Sven-Göran Eriksson, but for the second half of it we were close to relegation form. Since then it's a clear upward trend and that will continue.

“Mark had an appraisal of his performance for the year, like any employee. We didn't fill in forms, but we talked about challenges. When you go through that process of review, names come up, but that is only ever done internally. There was no need to take that process externally because we have a manager in place that we're very happy with. We have never talked to José Mourinho or anyone else. The only manager we have spoken to is Mark Hughes.”

Cook on transfer policy

“There are budgets. People talk about a list like it's the back of a fag-packet and some names. We have thick files on each individual. It's a rigorous process and it always starts with Mark. It's not us saying, ‘Hey, Mark, we've got a great guy who would be great at Disney. Fit him in.' We might look to sign people who can lift the profile of the club, but only if they have the ability and the character to fit into Mark's structure.

“What the Kaká episode told me is that signing these players is more possible than people gave us credit for. We don't have a concern over people joining the club. The concern we have is that they are joining for the right reasons. I could give you a list of people we've turned down because they wanted to come here for the wrong reasons. We know we're not in the Uefa Cup or the Champions League next year, but when we get in front of the right people and we talk about our plans, we are confident they will like what we tell them.”

Cook on Carlos Tévez

“Would it be a good idea to sign a Manchester United player? If they can make the team better and Mark likes their attitude and it feels like they fit in. It has been done before. Denis Law, Peter Schmeichel. Some are bigger than others.”

Cook on the present squad

“Mark admits he made an assumption that players wanted to come in, train hard and go through their dietary requirements. He made the assumption that gym and medical facilities were Premier League quality. Then he got here and realised they weren't.

“We want people at the club who want to build with a culture of success. Mark knows the ones who want to be here and those who don't. It's his choice.”

Cook on the owners

“We are blessed with our owners. They love football and they are enjoying building a club for the future and helping the game, I think, to get back to what it was all about, which is investing in youth, investing in people, investing in the community and looking to commercialise.”

Cook on the future

“At Old Trafford I had to ask David Gill [the Manchester United chief executive] if they could stop wheeling all their trophies in because it was driving me nuts. I want to be competing with them one day and I have no reason to think we won't be. What

we're building is an infrastructure that will make success attainable and sustainable. It's about building a club that is a successful business whose core competency is football. That means not having Take That or whoever there in the summer.”

Cook on Cook

“It wasn't nice being criticised over Kaká. People weren't aware of the facts of that deal. But this year has been a great learning experience. It has been a rollercoaster. I cried when we equalised at Blackburn. I had to ask for a cigarette after the penalty shoot-out in Aalborg in the Uefa Cup. My wife Wendy picked up The Times and said, ‘So you've taken up smoking now, have you?' But nobody feels the emotions quite like Mark. He's a winner and he's the ideal person to create a culture of winning at this club.”