Manchester City chief denies mocking player’s cancer-stricken mother via email

Manchester City chief exec Garry Cook has claimed that his email account was hacked into after defender Nedum Onuoha's mother received a vicious email from his address.

Dr Anthonia Onuoha, mother and agent of the player, has since said that she has asked the FA to investigate the email, which is purported to make light of her battle with cancer.

According to The Sun, Onuoha's mother had originally written to the club's director of football Brian Marwood about a contract dispute between her son and the side.

She then received an email which was apparently written by Cook but was meant to be sent to Marwood. The email includes a passage with the lines "Ravaged with it!! ....I don't now how you sleep at night. You used to be such a nice man when I worked with you at nike."

Both Marwood and Cook had worked at Nike, the former as a marketing manager and the latter as leader of the Nike project 'Brand Jordan'.

"When I opened my emails and saw the message, it was the worst day of my life, even worse than being diagnosed with cancer," Dr Onuoha told The Sun.

"I couldn't understand how anybody could behave like that. I just cried and cried for hours. I'm critically ill and at that point I was undergoing chemotherapy. I was just so shocked but I couldn't tell Nedum or any of my family because I didn't know how they would react."

Dr Onuoha added: "When Cook replied to me, he said that he was confused, that he'd been away on holiday in South Africa and that somebody had hacked into his email account and whoever sent the email to Brian Marwood meant it as a practical joke."