LEEDS CHIEFS REFLECT ON HARROWING WEEK

The former Arsenal legend has had to try and do his job under the shadow of the Sarfraz Najeib trial, in which two Leeds players faced charges of GBH and affray.

After last Friday's verdict, in which Lee Bowyer was found not guilty on both counts and Jonathon Woodgate received 100 hours' community service after being found guilty of affray, O'Leary claims that only finding US terror suspect Osama Bin Laden could have taken the media spotlight off the West Yorkshire club.

"We had a saturation coverage of September 11, which was a very sad day," O' Leary said.

"But last week, we had a similar situation with regard to how this club was covered. Afghanistan was on the back-burner last weekend compared with what happened here.

"Everybody was back from Afghanistan and were camped out here. The only thing we didn't have around the place was the US marines.

"Even Bin Laden had been forgotten about, in the nicest possible way. I think I needed him to be found to help me out a bit.

"The last two years have been a nightmare and I don't know when it will be over."

Chairman Peter Ridsdale has also found it a difficult week and says the past seven days have felt like a year.

However, he has defended the club's involvement in the case stating they could not have handed the affair better.

"I am totally satisfied that, if we had to go over everything again, we would do so in the same way," he said.

"Nobody has been able to describe to us what we could have done differently, given the knowledge available to us at that moment in time."

Leeds have come under fire from both the Najeib family and their representatives over their lack of sympathy for the attack, which left Sarfraz physically and mentally scarred for life. But as Ridsdale points out, it was not Leeds United in the dock and they were instructed to make no contact with the Najeib family because it could have been misconstrued.

Meanwhile, Ridsdale says it would have been unlikely that he would have stopped O'Leary from releasing his controversial book Leeds United On Trial, but wishes it had not appeared.

The timing of its release could not have been worse for Leeds coming just days after the trial.

"Why must I have known about the book? The first I knew about the serialisation was at the press conference last Friday," he said.

"The implication is that, if I had known, I would have stopped it. But I probably wouldn't have stopped it.

"Do I wish it had not appeared? Of course I do."