The 2006–07 season was Manchester City Football Club's fifth consecutive season playing in the FA Premier League, the top division of English football, and its tenth season since the Premier League was first created with Manchester City as one of its original 22 founding member clubs. Overall, it was the team's 115th season playing in a division of English football, most of which have been spent in the top flight. Season review The 2006–07 season proved tough for club which skirmished with relegation from the Premier League and ended up finishing in 14th position. The club were again eliminated from the League Cup by a League One team, this time by Chesterfield early on in the season. Ben Thatcher's elbow challenge on Pedro Mendes whilst playing Portsmouth shocked many – a challenge which prompted City to take unprecedented action and banned Thatcher for six matches by the club and a six weeks fine. Pearce called the challenge "indefensible" and the Football Association banned Thatcher for a further eight matches. The side also scored just ten goals at home in the league, and none after New Years Day in 2007, a record low in top-flight English football. In December 2006, the club issued a statement regarding a possible takeover, and on 21 June, the Manchester City board accepted an £81.6 million offer for the club from Thaksin Shinawatra. One of his first moves was to schedule a press conference to announce former-England manager Sven-Göran Eriksson as his new manager – Eriksson's first job since leaving international duty. Team kit For this season, the shirt sponsor for all of the club's kits continued to be the previous season's sponsor, Thomas Cook, while the team kits were produced by the previous season's supplier, Reebok. Historical league performance Prior to this season, the history of Manchester City's performance in the English football league hierarchy since the creation of the Premier League in 1992 is summarised by the following timeline chart – which commences with the last season (1991–92) of the old Football League First Division (from which the Premier League was formed). Friendly games This season not all of the team's friendly games were played during the preparatory run-in to the official start of the new league campaign, with a couple of friendly games taking place during the course of the active season. The first of these games was perhaps just a "belated pre-season