Stress is strain for O'Leary

O'Leary is a devout defender of his players when he feels they are unjustly targeted, He sometimes claims that a Leeds player only has to crook and elbow for an opponent to mime a sack of spuds. "Sadly, it's the way the game has gone. People go down too easily."

But this is all part of the same demise into the cheating/anything-goes attitude of modern football. Surely managers could stop it with the ramrod discipline Brian Clough once wielded.

"Clough: when you used to fine players in those days, it hurt," said O'Leary. "When you fine players these days it doesn't hurt because they're paid too much. The fear factor's gone out of the dame. Alex Ferguson, Brian Clough traded on fear. But is there fear now? What's two week's wages?"

This sounds ominously like a doctrine of despair. A game out of control. "I didn't say. What you've got to hope is you've got a group of people that respect you. I think there's a big onus now on players to control themselves. What can a manger do when they go out on the streets?

"I think the conduct of players on and off the pitch has got to improve unbelievably all over. Will it? I don't know. We're dealing with the England mentality here. A good night out in England is to get absolutely legless.

"Do they grow up? Footballers are very privileged, most things are done for them, agents take most of the weight off them.

"All they've got to do is kick a white ball about and get paid a lot of money for it. You try to do your best with them. You can't be with them 24 hours a day. I think every manager would love to be able to park them up in a cage and just take them out every day."

Dear God, this is a Premiership manager as though they're a tribe of Orcs (bad teeth, small brains) from Lord of the Rings. Then he defends them to the hilt. "I will happily put my hand on the Bible and say, in football terms, I've never had one ounce of problem with Bowyer or Woodgate."

He exists at the fulcrum of a moral dilemma. How to discipline offenders you simultaneously need to encourage. He cleverly accomplishes this by disassociating words with deeds. Bowyer and Woodgate were "disgraces". Bowyer and Woodgate are in the team. Personally, I'd have sacked them.

Criticism does not hurt him. "I've had reports that an ex-colleague said that what I'm doing up here is a fluke. A lot of jealously comes with this job... I've been doing this job for three-and-a-bit years and it feels like 33.

"We've come a long way and I think I've done a good job. But so many things detract from the football side. I'm totally fed up... When it all eventually goes away, I think football will be a doddle."

But with his track record, "eventually" might be a long time coming.

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