What connects Wikileaks founder Julian Assange and former Arsenal and England defender Tony Adams?

Not much has been heard of Tony Adams since he upped sticks nine months ago and moved to Azerbaijan to manage Premier League side FC Gabala.

Adams’s managerial credentials were on a downward spiral. The 44-year-old had endured unsuccessful managerial spells at Wycombe and Portsmouth, sandwiched by a period coaching in the Dutch Eredivisie, and taking a job in one of Europe’s footballing backwaters - in 2009-10 the Azeri league was ranked 38th in the UEFA confederation, above Iceland but below Georgia - was seen by many as the last desperate act of a dying football career.

Gabala were seeking to challenge the domination of Azeri football by clubs from the country’s capital, particularly Inter, Baky and Neftchi, who between them have won titles in six of the last seven seasons. The town of Gabala is something of a backwater, even by the standards of Azerbaijan, having a population of just 19,000. But, bankrolled by the Heydarov family, an influential political dynasty regarded as the second-most powerful family in Azerbaijan after that of the country’s President Aliyev, Gabala went on a spree.

Along with Adams, others with Premier League experience were brought to Gabala, namely former Manchester City winger Terry Cooke and ex-Derby and Sheffield Wednesday striker Deon Burton.

“I could imagine that some time I might play under the management of Tony Adams, but never would I have guessed that this would happen Azerbaijan,” Cooke said after joining Gabala in August.

“I know about Gabala’s plans in the coming years, and I was interested in taking part in this process,” Cooke added.

The ‘process’ didn’t begin well for Adams and Co, as the club lost its first three matches of the season. Their fortunes begin to turn, however, and Adams guided Gabala on a 12-match unbeaten run which only ended with the final game of 2010 against Baky. The team goes into Azerbaijan’s winter break well-placed for a top-six finish in the league of 12, which will allow them to compete for the title and European places.

Even the imports were beginning to settle - an adaptation which shouldn’t be underestimated.

“All the difficulties are already behind me,” Deon Burton told the Azeri press last month. “Only the first month was hard, as I had to deal with things that I’d never seen before in my life.

“I think six months from now I’ll be able to express myself in your language,” he continued. “As far as football’s concerned, the only thing that bothers me is the state of the pitches.” The only long-term irritation Burton has had to contend with is the Azeri media spelling and pronouncing his name “Deon Barton”.

So far, so good. But while Adams may be getting his side together on the pitch, off it things have taken an interesting turn following the release of several pages of US diplomatic communiqués concerning Azerbaijan by Wikileaks.

The club president of Gabala is Taleh Heydarov. His father, Kamaladdin, heads Azerbaijan’s Ministry of Emergency Situations (the fact that the country needs one suggests much) and is named by the US as “the man behind the power…he might be even more powerful than the President himself”.

The leaked document cites the Heydarov family’s many business and political interests. It mentions Taleh Heydarov’s interests in Azerbaijan’s fruit juice industry, where he enjoys a virtual monopoly: “When USAID tried to support the production and distribution of pomegranate products in Azerbaijan, they quickly learned that no one sells pomegranate juice, concentrate, or derivatives from Azerbaijan without Heydarov’s permission.”

Add to this rumours that he holds the licence to distribute Red Bull, British American Tobacco and Beluga caviar and you start to realise where Gabala got the money to tempt Adams and his foreign legions.

Heydarov Jr also got himself into something of a scrape last August when a story emerged about the daughter of an Azeri minister studying in London who had fallen in love with an Armenian man. Azeri/Armenian relations have historically been extremely frosty, especially since the fall of the Soviet Union when the two countries embarked on a war over the territory of Nagorno-Karabakh; hence the Azeri government declared the London-based romance to be a dishonour upon Azerbaijan.

Tale Heydarov ordered the relationship to be ended, but when it continued he allegedly travelled to London himself and beat up the poor Armenian boy, then dragged the Azeri girl back home.

But here, amusingly, is where football comes in: the Wikileaks documents also name FK Gabala directly as part of Heydarov’s empire. The club is described as “a small-scale effort to replicate the Chelsea antics of Russia’s Roman Abramovich”, which is a withering description by any measure. “The Gabala squad is a virtual United Nations team, with players from across Europe, Latin America and Africa - the best team money can buy, at least for central Azerbaijan.”

All in all the Heydarovs are clearly not people to be messed with, and there may well be plenty of skeletons in the FK Gabala closet (should that be dressing room?).

Not that any of this should particularly concern Tony Adams. But if there’s one achievement the former Arsenal man can reflect on during his time in Azerbaijan so far, it’s that he’s possibly the only football manager in the world to have made it onto Wikileaks.