It was, perhaps, only when David Mellor labelled David O'Leary "a garrulous idiot" for publishing a book so soon after the trial of Jonathan Woodgate and Lee Bowyer, an insult that sounded rather like a self-portrait by the former Tory MP, that it seemed the tide of condemnation swamping the Leeds United manager might turn. After all, with enemies like that friends are oft aplenty.

It wasn't to be, though. That O'Leary was bringing out a book at all, at the most sensitive of times, was tawdry enough, but its serialisation in the News of the World 48 hours after the trial had finished smacked tastelessly of "cashing in" - even if he insisted he didn't receive a penny from the tabloid (ignoring the likelihood that the anticipated profits from the serialisation had been factored into his deal with Little, Brown, a reported £100,000 sterling advance plus a cut of the royalties).

At times it seemed that almost as much opprobrium was being heaped on O'Leary as the men accused of assaulting Sarfraz Najeib in Leeds city centre two years ago. Commentators accused him of "profiteering", "insensitivity", "hypocrisy", "greed", "venal opportunism" and being the author of the "shoddiest of literary enterprises". James Lawton, in the London Independent, concluded that O'Leary had "more faces than Eve, and more positions than the Kama Sutra".

The spokesman for the Najeib family accused him of accepting "blood money" in his deal with the publishers, others pointed to the irony of O'Leary fining Bowyer and Woodgate for their behaviour on the night of the attack, while profiting personally by writing about the affair in a book.

Mark Lawrenson said O'Leary "should be ashamed of himself if he receives a single penny from the book sales", while John Barnwell, head of the League Managers' Association, was also critical of the timing of the publication. The Guardian's Mark Lawson, a life-long Leeds supporter, simply called O'Leary a "prat" for publishing the book.

The most stinging personal attack on the beleaguered manager, in the midst of this outcry, came in a Guardian profile by Bill Bradshaw when an unidentified former Arsenal team-mate, who evidently felt the time was ripe to put the boot in, claimed "he has always been an arselicker, that's why he's so nice about (Leeds United chairman, Peter) Ridsdale".

"He's the kind of person who will move away from you when you're chatting if he thinks someone more important has just walked into the room," he added.

When asked if the book was evidence that O'Leary was "cash-conscious", he replied: "He's not necessarily tight with money, but he is always looking to make it."

Yet more criticism of the book came from the last man O'Leary might have expected to rebuke him.

"Do I wish it had not appeared? Of course I do," said Ridsdale, who already had enough on his plate attempting to restore the image of the club. "It would be fair to say the timing of it has been anything other than helpful - David knows how I feel," he added.

Not well-received, then. O'Leary, surely, must have felt he was the author of the least loved book since Mein Kampf. Unfair criticism? No. This, by all accounts, inherently decent man has been foolish enough to embroil himself in the indecent publication of this pitiful book. And if he couldn't get out of his contract with Little, Brown, he should at least have had the nous to acknowledge that the project was in poor taste and announced that the profits would go to charity rather than defiantly defending it.

A cultured, gifted defender through his distinguished career, maybe, but even O'Leary could never defend the indefensible, which, in truth, is precisely what this crass, inconsiderate effort is.

"The book is not about the trial," he has insisted. The title of the tome? Leeds United On Trial. Hmm. "The title was a mistake," he conceded, "if I regret anything, I regret the title of the book."

"Deliberately ambiguous," as publisher Alan Sampson described it, or "ironic" as David Walker, the book's ghost writer and Leeds United's director of communications, put it. "Wretchedly cynical" would be more apt.

While the substance of the book barely seems important - the fact it exists at all is the snag - some folk have been disingenuous about its precise content. "There's only one chapter on the trial," O'Leary claimed. Incorrect: three of the nine chapters concern Woodgate and Bowyer's brush with the law, the third a hastily added reflection on the verdicts, with references to the trial and re-trial liberally sprinkled throughout the other six.

Just as the trial hung over Leeds' entire season, it hangs over this book from cover to cover. If it was a "football book" there would, surely, be more than two chapters devoted to Leeds' dazzling, thrilling run in the Champions League.

The chapters concerning "footballing" matters are as dull and unrevealing as the contents of most books in the genre. It is difficult to imagine that even your most dyed-in-the-wool Leeds supporter would learn anything he or she didn't know already about the club (other than, perhaps, the revelation that Mark Viduka blessing himself, after scoring his fourth goal against Liverpool, "provoked outrage among a small number of supporters in the Loyalist areas of Belfast" - and didn't impress Liverpool's Gary McAllister too much either).

For £15 sterling you get 181 pages that you'll get through in a couple of hours. The account of the footballing season reads like a long match report ("Mark Viduka put us ahead and we looked to be cruising to a victory until Chelsea grabbed a late equaliser from a hotly-disputed free kick") and his protestations that he's managing a squad with as much big-time experience or market value as Dagenham and Redbridge (note: he has spent £86 million on players in three years, 20 of his squad are full internationals) are wearisome. It should also be noted that the publisher's claim that "it is the football book of the year" was made when 2002 was a week old.

The chapters concerning Woodgate and Bowyer (or "Woody" and "Bow", "decent boys", as O'Leary calls the two cherubs), though, are, naturally, the chapters of most interest.

Where to start? Well, the overwhelming feeling you get from O'Leary is that he is a good man who means well, but at times his tactless and clumsy comments on the trial and surrounding events are bewildering.

Indeed, it is difficult to dodge the sinking feeling that he still hasn't quite grasped the gravity of the affair, nor is he able to see it in any other light than a botheration on the club.

Or, bizarrely, a liberal conspiracy of sorts to "do" his boys. "I couldn't escape the feeling at times the process was being driven by a misplaced idea of political correctness and an eagerness to make the most of an opportunity to bury two high-profile Leeds footballers . . . My gut feeling was that there was a political undercurrent to the Leeds case was reinforced when . . ."

In the chapter on his father's illness, he writes: "When you work in football, it is easy to lose sight of the bigger issues in life and you must take care not to allow your perspective to become distorted".

A commendable sentiment - yet, in the rest of the book he is to be found bemoaning the effect of the trial on the team's fortunes, through the months when Najeib was undergoing a string of operations to remove fragments of bone from his nasal passage. As Fergal Keane, the man behind Panorama's programme on the case, put it when he heard this eruption of self-pity: "Ah sure, God help us, you poor craythur . . . you can imagine how Mr O'Leary's distress was received in the Najeib household."

Certainly, the practical difficulties presented to O'Leary by the trial were very real and ones the football manager had to deal with, but they paled next to "the bigger issues in life", such as Najeib's welfare and the wider implications for the club, such as its relations with the city's Asian population - not least at a time when three northern cities were blighted by riots involving whites and locals of Asian descent. O'Leary should have been sensitive to this and kept his frustrations to himself because, ultimately, their importance was negligible in comparison.

In his attempts to prove to the readers that there is "no hint of racism at Leeds United", rather than discussing at any length the club's admirable efforts in recent years to rid itself of the affliction, he tells us that "you need only look at our training ground, there you will find Clive Brown, our black masseur, massaging Lee Bowyer and Jonathan Woodgate on a daily basis."

And then he recounts the time "Woody" made his first public appearance in the reserve team after the first trial. "It was Harpal's shoulder he was leaning on out on the pitch as he did his stretches. That wasn't a set-up, it was totally spontaneous". Harpal Singh is the club's Leeds-born Asian player. And? Indeed.

Inconsistencies? A few. He castigates Bowyer and Woodgate for being "boozed up and running through the streets", for "failing to behave as professional footballers should", "their conduct was an utter disgrace. I was ashamed of them."

But, at the same time, he castigates the English FA for not picking these model professionals for the national team. "To me this was another act of political correctness," he says, returning to his favourite theme, "there were elements of New Labour in the way it formed its policies. Would David Beckham and Alan Shearer have been treated the same way," he asks.

Probably not, David, not least because, hard as we might try, it is difficult to imagine tee-total Beckham or "model professional" Shearer behaving in the same dismal way.

But? When he writes of his loathing of racism, his disgust with the "booze culture", his abhorrence of Woodgate and Bowyer's behaviour "that" night, his concern for Sarfraz Najeib and his desire for his players to be decent, respectful human beings, you never doubt O'Leary for a minute.

In fact, there is no difficulty in accepting that O'Leary would have found Bowyer and Woodgate's behaviour more incomprehensible and repugnant than most, because he was your classic model professional through his 20-year career, during which he had an unblemished disciplinary record. He deserved better than to be landed with the task of dealing with the repercussions of the players' behaviour.

Equally, however, O'Leary should have known better than to involve himself in the publication of the tackiest and most inconsiderate of books, or to lose sight of the fact that there are "bigger issues in life" than the pursuit of three points.

Gospel according to David

"Revie's team was not one that won the hearts and minds of the sporting

nation. Take Johnny Giles, for example. He was a terrific player, but he was renowned for going over the top in tackles. I didn't want that from my team".

- On his determination to change Leeds United's on-field image.

"In many ways he could have been a priest, he is that good a human being."

- On Brian Kidd.

"An incredibly touching gesture".

- On Lee Bowyer presenting him with an autographed shirt at the end of last season.

"I have to say there was an element of The Sweeney to their

approach."

- His criticism of the police in their efforts to interview Woodgate and Bowyer about the attack on Sarfraz Najeib.

"Decent boys."

- Description of Woodgate and Bowyer.

"I pointed at Bow and Woody and said: these two have disgraced us all.

They were running around Leeds drunk that night. The terrible consequences

of that evening were that a human being was left lying on the floor as

though he were nothing more than a piece of meat."

- On his condemnation, in front of the Leeds squad, of

Bowyer and Woodgate.

Leeds United on Trial by David O'Leary (Little, Brown) st£14.99