Exit the manager of myths and mirth, enter a realist relishing the challenge

An audience with Terry Venables is not what it was. The thought goes through your mind as he stands and shakes hands from the opposite side of a vast desk, after you have been ushered into the Leeds' team-manager's office by his secretary, Karen.

Chameleon-like though he is, it still seems slightly incongruous to witness the man of myths and legends, albeit one clad in a tracksuit, confined by this degree of formality. All rather ill-befitting for a high plains drifter, it strikes you, this Clint Eastwood of a football character, who moves in, does the job, and moves out, a perception reinforced by his previous sojourn, a brief one indeed, at Middlesbrough.

You remind him of the days when such meetings were all rather more, shall we say, ad hoc, specifically in his members-only club, Scribes West, in basement rooms located under Barker's in High Street, Kensington. There was a pianist in residence midweek, and karaoke, in which the insatiable crooner and club owner was a principal performer, on Saturday evenings. Venables was then between Tottenham Hotspur and England, and engaged in a titanic legal battle with the then Spurs chairman, Alan Sugar, who stood between him and the club he had wanted to run.

That was all a decade or so ago, when, in a previous incarnation, this correspondent was prevailed upon to obtain regular updates on Venables' battle plans. A typical conversation would ensue: "Nick [this a reference to the world's best barman, omniscient yet discreet], give us two glasses of champagne, will you?" A protest from your correspondent: "Just a Coke, Terry, I'm not drinking at the moment. Health reasons. Need to lose weight." Venables' response (preceded by that familiar cackle): "Champagne won't make you put on weight. It's good for you." Two hours and an empty bottle or three later (others had invariably joined the Court of King Tel by then), after a series of jokes, impressions, and some irreverent gossip, Venables would ask rather reluctantly: "So, what did you want to talk to me about?" It was a tough job in the trenches.

He smiles at the memories evoked. "It was good for me at the time," Venables recalls of his years as mine host. "I enjoyed it, do you know it was six years in all. As you say, I had a lot of problems and if I was going to come home every night and sit there I think it might all have got to me. Instead I was able to be with friends. It also kept me busy. Yvette [his wife] and I used to go out to dinner most evenings from there. It was just another period of my life. It was good while I wasn't in football."

Not in football. A strange phrase that, in Venables' context, but true. Until he came to Bryan Robson's aid at Middlesbrough at the end of the 2000-2001 season, he had not managed a Premiership club. His stewardship of Tottenham ended in 1991, and there was a hiatus until he was appointed England coach in 1994, culminating in Euro 96 and all that.

Though he has embraced all the oppor-tunities presented to him, whether coaching Crystal Palace in the First Division, television punditry, co-writing novels and TV series, with enthusiasm, you rather suspect that, for him, a potential top-four Premiership club, blessed with countless internationals, is the equivalent of a schoolboy being let loose in a computer- games store.

Thus far, he and his chairman, Peter Ridsdale, appear to be working fully in tandem. "Peter's a very hard worker, which I like, but to be honest I've never had any problems with chairmen – except Tottenham, and Palace, and that was because of the financial situation," says Venables. "People would laugh about that, but I got on very well with them all. Barcelona have invited me back there and I still get Christmas cards from them. I've ended up great pals with the chairman of Australia. No, Tottenham was the only real problem I had."

Already two reverses, though. After successive League victories, the evening before we spoke Sunderland had inflicted Leeds' first Premiership defeat and yesterday Birmingham City followed up with their first League triumph among the élite. Both results bore an unwelcome similarity to some suffered under David O'Leary.

On Wednesday, a few boos had accompanied the retreat of the team down the tunnel. Did they include the caller on Radio Five Live's 606 show last week, you wondered, the one who had eulogised about Venables' appointment. "What a coup," he had said. "It's an amazing situation..." and continued in a similar vein.

These Elland Road supporters can be fickle. But probably no more so than those at Tottenham. And Barcelona. Venables has experienced it all. He is aware that expectations from supporters are grandiose, belief within the club intense.

You ask whether he really handles it all with the aplomb that he appears to. "I've been under pressure many times," Venables says. "I was under pressure up at Middlesbrough, even though people were saying I was in a no-lose situation. I thought: 'Oh, yes, are you mad? It's my name which is on the team if they go down. That's what they will label you with. Terry Venables – the man who took Middlesbrough down'."

But how can he fail to do well with a squad many Premiership managers would kill for, even allowing for the loss of Rio Ferdinand and Robbie Keane? He counsels caution. "We'll see. Everybody thinks they will do well when they look at the names up on the wall." He gazes up at the names of his squad members. "The reality is not always the same."

He adds: "I'm trying to change things slowly, because you can't do too much too soon. At Middlesbrough, it was a different job. It was a case of saying: 'We've got to win tomorrow and stuff it up and make life difficult [for the opposition].' Here, we have got excellent players, we have got to get the best out of them and get some good football going, and results."

Key to that ideal is the form of Harry Kewell, from whom Venables anticipates even greater quality will emerge. "I think so," he says. "He's an honest boy. He feels that he's had a couple of years when he's not fulfilled himself, that's why he's come back working hard and determined. He's got a lot of ability and if he's positive wherever he plays he should be a big plus for you."

Yet, for all his coaching talents and playing assets, Venables is aware that some commentators are merely awaiting his downfall. It is a perverse condition of membership of the sportswriting clan that you either have to support Terry's All Gold Association or join with those who prefer to become cardholders of the Venables Is Just Veneer Society.

Some of the latter condemn an apparent inability to concentrate on one project for any length of time. He has never displayed the constancy of, say, a Ferguson. "Alex and I are two different people," he insists. "Not better or worse, just different. But it's not true what they say about me anyway. I was four years at Crystal Palace [the first time, in the Seventies], the same at Queen's Park Rangers. The first seven years I wasn't in the top league, then we got promoted and in our first season we qualified for Europe. So, I achieved something there. Then I had three years at Barcelona, which was a record at the time [during a period in which Barça won the league title and lost the European Cup final only on penalties to Steaua Bucharest], then it was back to Tottenham for another four years [in which they won the FA Cup]. This thing about me not staying in a job. It's a bit of a myth really."

He remarks as an aside: "But then there's a few."

Like the assumption, you suggest, that the air might be a little rarefied this far north for a man who was born in Dagenham, played for Chelsea, Spurs, QPR and Crystal Palace and has a home in west London. "Yeah, somebody said to me recently that this was the first time I had left London for a job. I thought, well, Barcelona's quite a way and Australia's a little bit further!"

At present, Venables has a rented property near Leeds' Thorp Arch training complex, but plans to buy. He is at the training ground virtually every day, apart from match days. Those employed there, and not just the players, say that his presence has lifted the whole mood of the place after a year when the Bowyer-Woodgate court case, the coincidental publication of O'Leary's autobiography, indiscipline on the field and the failure of Leeds to fulfil the expectations demanded by the club's expenditure concluded with the dismissal of Venables' predecessor. And, it scarcely needs to be added, the departure of Rio Ferdinand.

"I've said to all the players, the past is the past," he says. "It's a clean sheet of paper and we start from here. I just want to go forward. We know there's been a lot of stress for everybody. I'm just trying to take the stress out of it off the field and concentrate on the football only."

But that could prove difficult, you remind him, with Lee Bowyer still facing a possible civil action over the assault of which he was cleared in the criminal court. "I'm sure he could do without it; we could all do without it," says Venables. "Obviously I've known there's something in the background, but I've kept my nose out of it. It's not helpful, is it? I'd prefer it to be settled, but if it's there, you've got to deal with it."

Both Bowyer and Jonathan Woodgate can be considered for England again. The former has been outstanding. The latter's progress has been more gradual because of injury. Together with Danny Mills, Alan Smith and Paul Robinson, they are among five possible contenders for next Saturday's friendly against Portugal.

Though Venables is not predisposed to criticise the England coach, Sven Goran Eriksson, and his World Cup campaign too deeply, he does take issue with the Swede's contention that many of England's ills can be ascribed to fatigue. "I think we should have a [winter] break, it would cure many problems," says Venables. "Get everyone's injuries cleared up. Yet, having said that, I don't think that's the whole story. The clubs play a lot of games, but the players don't necessarily play more than they did. I think it was Ferdinand who played most games in the season and he didn't look tired. [Dietmar] Hamman played more games than the England players in the Premier League, and he went all the way with Germany." He adds: "I've always said that I don't think successful teams get tired. Nobody suggested we were tired until the last game. Nobody said it after Denmark, did they?"

While Eriksson prepares for Euro 2004, one of his predecessors could not be more gratified to be back at the zenith of club football. Yet, Venables maintains: "I never missed it. I was just getting on with a different kind of life. It was to do with football and around football, which is what I enjoy. When this possibility came up, it was too big a challenge to resist and I thought I'd give it a shot. Peter [Ridsdale] rang me in Spain and said he'd like to come over to see me. I thought it was fair to make an assumption what it was about. It wouldn't have been anything else, would it? By the time he'd arrived I'd already thought about it and the answer had to be yes."

Will there be a return to the champagne days he enjoyed at Barcelona and Tottenham? We await that answer with fascination. His experiences this week do not bode well. One thing you always know about Venables, it will be a treat finding out.

Biography: Terry Venables

Born: 6 January 1943 in Dagenham.

Playing career: 1958-66 Chelsea (202 League games, 26 goals); 1966-69 Tottenham (115, 19); 1969-74 QPR (179, 19); 1974-76 Crystal Palace (14, 0). Club honours: League Cup winner 1965; FA Cup winner 1967. International honours: England caps at Schoolboy, Youth, Amateur and Under-23 level, two full caps.

Management career: 1976-80 Crystal Palace; 1980-84 QPR; 1984-1987 Barcelona; 1987-91 Tottenham; 1994-96 England; 1996-97 Australia; 1998-99 Crystal Palace; 2000-01 Middlesbrough; 2002- Leeds. Honours: Won Second Division 1979, 1983; FA Cup winner 1991. Spanish League 1985.

Also: Director of Football, Portsmouth, 1996.