3 days ago
David O'Leary interview: Here's exactly what happened when I was sacked by Leeds
In the grounds of a country house hotel near Harrogate, David O'Leary is having his photo taken. As he follows the instructions of Telegraph Sport's photographer, some hotel guests wander past. It does not take them long to spot who is the subject of the portrait.
'That's David O'Leary,' says one, who is wearing a Leeds United cap. 'He was brilliant for us, the best manager we had in years. Why did they get rid of him?'
It is a question that has grown more pertinent in the 23 years since he was dismissed as manager at Elland Road. In his three years in charge, O'Leary finished no lower than fifth in the Premier League and took his team to two European semi-finals, the kind of heights that the current administration can only dream about. Then in June 2002, after qualifying yet again for Europe, he was at the training ground sorting out a couple of things before he went on holiday, when his phone rang.
'Could I go to the chairman's office?' He remembers the gist of the call. 'I honestly thought we were going to be talking about summer transfers. I go in and Peter [Ridsdale, then Leeds chairman] says: 'That's it, it's over. You've taken us so far, but we need someone to take us to the next stage.' Which was Terry Venables.
'So I see his telephone on his desk and I ask if I can make a call. He says: 'You want to ring your wife?' Well, if I'm honest I've never consulted Joy once on any football decision. She's just not interested. No, I'm ringing my solicitor Michael Kennedy. He answers and I say: 'I'm just in Peter Ridsdale's office. He's fired me so I'm handing the phone to you so you can discuss things.' I walked out the room and that was that.'
As decisions go it was not among the finest by the club. Hamstrung by financial issues, within five years of firing O'Leary the next level Ridsdale had steered Leeds towards was League One. Bizarre as his sacking seems now, the man himself is not one for regrets.
'You can't argue with a chairman when they are going to fire you. You're not going to change their mind pointing out your record,' he says. 'I had a brilliant time at Leeds. And when I go back there, I get such a great reception. People pat me on the back and congratulate me for getting to the Champions League semi-final. Which is nice of them, but I didn't win it did I? I didn't even get to the final. At the end of the day, success is about winning trophies.'
⚪️ Leeds United 3-0 Deportivo, #OTD in 2001 quarter-finals... @LUFC | #UCL
— UEFA Champions League (@ChampionsLeague) April 4, 2021
For O'Leary, Leeds was a late-flowering romance. He was an Arsenal man through and through. Born down the road from Highbury when his father was working for a couple of years in London, he joined the club in 1975 and made his debut when he was just 17. It was, he recalls, a tough apprenticeship.
'One of the first games I played was against Birmingham. Kenny Burns and Peter Withe were up front. I was getting this battering, an elbow in one side of the head, then an elbow in the other, sometimes both at the same time. And every time I fell down, one of them was picking me up saying: 'Are you OK, son?' And I'm going: 'Yes thank you'. After the match Pat Rice gave me a right earful: 'Listen son if you are going to make it in this game you've got to learn quick. You don't thank them for clobbering you. You clobber them first.''
O'Leary learnt quickly. In an era he describes as 'brutal, too brutal' he went on to play for Arsenal a club-record 722 times, during which he was never once sent off and won two league titles, two FA Cups, two League Cups and was nominated for the Ballon d'Or in 1980. He became, too, an accomplished international with Ireland, scoring the decisive penalty in a shoot-out against Romania at the 1990 World Cup.
'I was well down the pecking order at Arsenal, so never got the chance to take a penalty,' he recalls. 'And I absolutely loved that moment, stepping forward to take that kick, thousands of Ireland fans behind the goal. For me it wasn't pressure. It was like taking the putt to win the Masters, a privilege not a worry.'
For his father, back home in Dublin, things were not quite as calm. 'My mum told me he was on the floor on his knees, almost got his rosary out when he saw it was me. 'What are you so worried about?' my mum said to him. And Dad said: 'If he misses, we'll have to leave the country'. Given the amount of Guinness I've been bought since scoring it as a thank you, it's as well I didn't.'
Three years after his winning kick, things came to an end for him at Arsenal after they beat Sheffield Wednesday in the FA Cup final. That night he found himself with the most unexpected match souvenir.
'We'd gone to the winners' reception and, because I knew it was my last game, I was lingering. Everybody had gone, my wife and I were the last ones there. And the FA Cup is still standing on the bar. I said to Joy: 'We can't leave this here.' So we took it in the car home with us. About three in the morning, we've stopped at these traffic lights, Joy's driving and I'm sat there in the passenger seat with the FA Cup in my arms and this car pulls up alongside us and the driver looks in and I swear I've never seen anyone look so surprised.
'Anyway, we got home and I'm thinking if we get burgled tonight, I'll be the man who lost the FA Cup. So we slept with it on our bed. I took it to Highbury the next morning and Ken Friar, the club secretary, is there and he says to me, casual as you like: 'Oh, we wondered where that went'.'
The next season O'Leary headed to Leeds, but injury and age soon put paid to any idea of a lengthy playing association. But when his old Arsenal manager George Graham turned up at Elland Road, he was invited to step into management.
'George had always said to me when I was playing: you could be a manager,' he recalls. 'He worked me so hard as his assistant those first few months. It was: can you go check this player in Newcastle on Monday night, then take training first thing Tuesday, then drive down to London to check out this player Wednesday? I said to Joy: 'I think I'm going to die here'. But boy did I learn.'
His three-year apprenticeship ended when Graham called him into his office at the Leeds training ground. 'He says to me: 'There will be an announcement that I'm going to be Tottenham manager on Monday.' He wanted me to go with him. I thought about it. But I just couldn't see myself there. There's rivalry and there's rivalry. I just couldn't do it. Not with Arsenal running through me like it did. So the next day I said to George: 'I can't join you'. And he said: 'well, you'll not get the job here'.'
But he was asked by Ridsdale to hold the fort until the new boss – the board were hoping it would be Martin O'Neill - arrived. And it was what he did in temporary charge that changed the trajectory of his career.
'Over the previous couple of seasons, I'd seen these kids coming through the youth team, [Jonathan] Woodgate, [Alan] Smith, [Harry] Kewell. I was constantly nagging George 'you've got to put them in the first team'. He'd say 'no, they're not ready'. Then the day I took over from George, I went and sat in his office and I thought to myself, as I'd been banging on about the kids, I'd better play them. I thought I'm not going to be here long, so I'll do it my way. And it worked.'
It worked all right. Under his tutelage, the young Leeds team electrified the Premier League. He brought in top prospects too, like Rio Ferdinand from West Ham. What he did not know at the time was that his purchases were being financed by debt procured against future income.
'I had no idea what was going on money wise. To be fair to Peter, he'd ask me who I wanted, I'd tell him and he'd sort it. I remember the first day I went to Aston Villa, Doug Ellis [the then owner] said to me: 'Get your notes ready, there's a board meeting this afternoon.' And I'd never been to one at Leeds.'
'The night Doug sacked me I had the best night's sleep'
It was at Villa Park, where he went after a legal claim against Leeds for unfair dismissal had been settled, that he learnt a very different approach to football finance.
'I knew all about Doug Ellis, there was no way I fancied taking on the job,' he recalls. 'But my solicitor said to me that it was known that he was trying to sell the club at the time. So this might be the perfect opportunity to get in there and work with a new owner. Trouble is, Doug was not selling quickly. And I don't want to say too much about a guy who's not around to speak for himself, but he was an absolute nightmare to work for.'
After being at Leeds, where the assumption was that money grew on trees, some of the strictures were comical. 'You know they say that when someone is planning to sell their house, there's not a lot of point spending money improving the place? Well that was Doug's attitude.
'I'm not sure penny-pinching covers it. I had a separate phone just for him and I came to dread it ringing. He'd call me about everything. I remember once I went to see a game at Arsenal, and on the way back home I filled the car up. I put the receipt in as an expense and he calls me on the phone. 'What's this for?' Well, I told him, I'd gone to see Arsenal who we were playing the following week. And he goes: 'You played for them for 20 years, haven't you seen them enough?''
It was not a sustainable relationship.
'By the end, it was getting to me. I remember the night I got sacked I went home and had the best night's sleep I'd had in ages.'
'It's amazing how quickly you get forgotten'
When he left Villa Park, O'Leary was only 48, still young for a manager. He did not get another job for four years, however, when he went out to Dubai to take charge of Al-Ahli. Well, nominal charge.
'They were averaging four managers a season, so I thought it might not be a long-term thing,' he remembers. 'But the offer was so ridiculous that on the flight over for the interview my solicitor says to me if I didn't sign the contract he'd personally get me committed to the Priory.'
His brief in Dubai was to assess the team, work out what he needed and rebuild. But when, after three months, he went in to discuss with the owner who he might bring in, he was gifted a swift introduction into how things worked in the Emirate.
'I'd thought out what I needed – and it was a lot. So we go though the team. The first name on the list, the goalkeeper, I'm saying: 'We need improving there'. And he's gone: 'Well, he's the favourite of the Crown Prince's daughter.' So he's staying. Then the right-back, we definitely need a new one: 'Well, his family are close to the Emir's in-laws.' And so it went on. I came out and said to my assistant, Roy Aitken 'there's not going to be any changes round here'. Well, except the manager.'
His time in the desert was over almost before it had begun. When he returned, he took some time out to be with his dying father. But that, as far as his managerial career, was that: Someone who, when he was at Leeds, was reckoned the brightest young boss around, has not worked in a dugout since.
'It's interesting this,' he says when asked why. 'I've never had an agent. These days, chairmen only speak to agents. And it's amazing how quickly you get forgotten.'
He has had the occasional offer – he says he regrets turning down the chance to manage Newcastle – including an inquiry four years ago from the then owner of Leeds, Andrea Radrizzani. 'I wasn't sure about the idea of going back, but there was no harm talking. I went for a meeting in London I thought was private. I get a cab from the station and the cabbie says to me 'oh are you here about the Leeds job?' And I'm thinking: right, not that private then.
'And I go to the meeting and it is not good. I'm not impressed by the man, even worse, he had his sporting director with him, who was an absolute fruitcake, jumping up and down. I tell them what I think is needed, and they don't really respond. They're all fiddling on their phones. It's no way to deal with someone. I was getting more and more peed off with their attitude. So I walk out and never hear from them again.'
And he remains an unemployed football manager. Though it has to be said at 67, he looks 10 years younger, his life these days of playing golf, watching Arsenal and going to lots of sporting events – this summer he has been to Ascot, Queen's and Wimbledon – is clearly a lot less stressful than managing a football club.
'Listen, if someone rang me tomorrow with a good offer, I'd be right back in there,' he says.
Which leads to the inevitable question: What would he do if he were in charge of Leeds as they prepare for a critical season as arrivals in the Premier League? 'What they've got to do is be hard to beat,' he says. 'I know it sounds easy, but you have to be. Under [Marcelo] Bielsa, all that 'we'll not change, we'll play as we did to get promotion'. Well you can't do that. Otherwise you get turned over. As they did.'
So does he think Leeds will adapt? 'I hope so. They have to stay up if they want to rebuild the ground and all that. I really hope they can stay up. I love that club.' And he pauses for a moment before smiling. 'Almost as much as I love Arsenal.'
