SOCCER/Leeds Utd sack Terry Venables: Another painful episode in Leeds United's wretched recent past concluded yesterday with Peter Reid replacing the sacked Terry Venables until the end of the season.

But Peter Ridsdale, the Leeds chairman, has already begun looking to the summer, beyond his latest appointment, and has targeted Celtic's manager Martin O'Neill as his preferred long-term successor to Venables.

Reid, despite his wishes, has little chance of winning the job permanently, but Ridsdale's latest investigation into O'Neill's potential availability, a familiar and hitherto unsuccessful pursuit, will leave seasoned Leeds-watchers with a familiar sense of déjà vu.

Ridsdale may need an impressive appointment to save his own job, but he is likely to find that Leeds no longer have the players or finances to attract the highest-profile names, leaving the club in a state of disarray going into the summer. The prospect of O'Neill being tempted to Elland Road after twice disappointing Leeds before is so remote that Reid's main threat will emanate from three former Leeds players: Paul Hart of Nottingham Forest, Gordon Strachan of Southampton and Leicester's Micky Adams.

Reid made it clear yesterday that he will seek a full-time contract if he successfully picks up the £500,000 bonus on offer for preserving the club's Premiership status. Yet his short-term appointment, after what Ridsdale described as a "whirlwind morning", was greeted with a mixture of deflation and bemusement on local radio phone-ins.

Judging by the lukewarm and occasionally hostile calls, the former Sunderland manager will have to inspire a huge improvement to win over the Leeds fans after a season that has seen half the first team sold, Ridsdale employing a personal minder after receiving threats to his life, and the possibility of relegation to the First Division with the club lying 15th, seven points above the relegation zone.

Hart, recognised as a prolific discoverer of young players in the English game, would be Ridsdale's next choice after O'Neill, although the support for Strachan is bound to increase if Southampton reach their first FA Cup final since 1976. Of the trio, Adams is the least fancied but, like Hart, would not turn down the opportunity to multiply eight-fold his annual salary of £250,000.

Any of those three would be a popular choice with the club's supporters after the chain of events that saw Ridsdale summon Venables for one last meeting on Thursday night, then telephone Reid at 9 a.m. yesterday to offer him a route back into football, five months after his departure from Sunderland.

"I snapped Mr Ridsdale's hand off," said Reid. "We didn't even have to talk about money. When the chairman of Leeds United asks you to do a job, you don't say no."

This in itself provoked a certain amount of suspicion, given that Reid has hardly counted among Ridsdale's admirers in the past. During his seven years at Sunderland, Reid believed Leeds had made illegal approaches to Michael Bridges and, after newspaper reports linked the Yorkshire club to Kevin Phillips, he accused Ridsdale of deliberately trying to unsettle the striker.

"I prefer to do things face-to-face but he (Ridsdale) seems to like doing it another way," he said at the time. "There is a right way and a wrong way and an unwritten rule that you don't talk about other clubs' players in public. But Mr Ridsdale prefers to do it that way and I'm sick and tired of it."

Yesterday, however, that all seemed to be forgotten. Reid was in jovial mood, joking that he had only just gone to bed when the call came from Ridsdale. "I never got any assurances about the future, and I didn't ask for any, but it's a great opportunity for me," he said. "There have been problems here, but that's history now and I've got eight games to make an impression. You would have to be an idiot not to want to manage Leeds."

As if to illustrate the point, Reid announced he would name David Batty in his first squad for tomorrow's game at Liverpool, a calculated public-relations exercise in the light of Venables' ostracising of the midfielder. The coaches Eddie Gray and Brian Kidd will stay at the club, for the time being.

Ridsdale, meanwhile, detailed his reasons for ending Venables' reign 255 days into a two-year contract worth £4 million, describing their two-hour meeting as a "dignified conversation" and denying it had descended into shouting.

"I sensed it was time and I got the impression that Terry sensed it as well. Over the last eight games we have not accumulated many points and I'm disappointed we have to look over our shoulders. From my perspective the next eight games were too much of a risk."

Venables will take £1 million in compensation and another hefty cheque from selling his side of the story in which he will claim Ridsdale "sold him the club from the wrong brochure".

Yet 10 wins from 30 matches is dismal by anyone's standards and questions have been raised about Venables ever since he began his eight-month tenure by missing part of the club's tour of Australia because of "other business interests". It now transpires this was to spend a week in the Seychelles for an episode of Channel 5's holiday programme Cleo Worldwide.

Ridsdale, having taken another significant gamble, must hope Reid inspires a revival. Steve McClaren of Middlesbrough would be another option but, if approached, would join O'Neill in giving Ridsdale short shrift.

Or how about David O'Leary? The former manager would not be averse to returning. However, there would be one condition: that Ridsdale is removed from the board.