Tel still singing a redemption song

The Football Association Challenge Cup competition has twice in the past enabled Terry Venables to thumb his nose at critics and unbelievers while simultaneously delivering what Dagenham vernacular would call a kick in the crown jewels. As a result, the Leeds United manager approaches this morning's quarter-final down the road at Sheffield United as one of the distinguished group who have won the world's most famous domestic competition both as player and manager. A third success this season and more detractors will be forced into wincing retreat.

It is 36 years since Venables first found the Cup a perfect vehicle for confounding his doubters. The 1967 final brought together Chelsea and Spurs, and having been transferred from one to the other and found it hard to settle at White Hart Lane, the crafty Cockney was a natural focus for attention.

Chelsea's manager, Tommy Docherty, never one to make discretion the better part of verbal valour, provided extra incentive by announcing: "I don't think Terry Venables is as good now as when he was playing for Chelsea. I don't anticipate too much trouble from him.'' His former captain laughed loudest and longest – Tottenham Hotspur 2, Chelsea 1.

Thwarted, coincidentally by Spurs, after leading Queen's Park Rangers from the Second Division to the 1982 final, he was back at the Lane for the 1991 competition, redeeming his managerial reputation following a difficult couple of years with victory over Nottingham Forest.

And so, via the English and Australian national teams and last season's firefighting stint at Middlesbrough, to Leeds, with the grand old competition offering a possibility of further redemption. Successively trickier ties away to Scunthorpe, Gillingham and Crystal Palace should have prepared the team well for today's derby, likely to be played on a Yorkshire pudding of a pitch.

"Venables out,'' was heard above the clattering of ripped-up seats as Leeds lost at the same venue in a Worthington Cup tie four months ago, beaten by two goals right at the finish. "We felt we'd done enough during that game,'' he said on Friday. "They got an absolute wonder goal which we couldn't have done anything about and scored in the 91st and 92nd minutes. Their record at home in Cup ties is one anyone would envy. They've been pretty consistent. They're direct and very solid but they can play their way out too. They've improved since the first game, but then so have we.''

At that time, the Bramall Lane defeat looked like the low point of Venables' stewardship. A series of home defeats, culminating in elimination from the Uefa Cup by the unheralded Malaga then set a new mark before what he believes to have been the turning point of a 3-0 victory at Bolton in December. A run of daunting Premiership fixtures, bringing defeats by four of the top five clubs, has subsequently re-emphasised how far the Champions' League semi-finalists of two years ago have fallen, but the Cup has cheered and supporters have too – after Leeds lost a little unluckily to Manchester United at Old Trafford on Wednesday, they gave the team an ovation. "The League position's not good but we're in a good position in the Cup,'' Venables added. "So this is a huge game. Tough for both teams, a real knife-edge game.''

His enthusiasm for the competition has transmitted itself to Leeds players throughout. "The moment we won against Crystal Palace, Terry was rubbing his hands together and saying we could get to Cardiff,'' said Paul Okon, the midfielder who has served under him for Australia, Middlesbrough and now Leeds. Knowing the manager better than most players, Okon was less concerned than some that their present relationship might end prematurely when the bad results came to a head.

"A lot of people were thinking Terry might walk, though having known him for quite some time I believed he wouldn't leave what I think he still sees as a big challenge. Now I think he wants to stay on after this season. The job isn't finished and there are still a lot of good players here. A lot will depend on the club's ambitions in the summer. But it's very very important for the future of the club that he stays.''

Leeds being Leeds, there will doubtless be more convulsions to come. Even as Venables was rallying his troops at the training complex on Friday, the club's £4,000-a-week operations officer, David Spencer, was being made redundant as part of a £3m cost-cutting purge promised by the chairman, Peter Ridsdale, at a fraught annual general meeting. Meanwhile, Ridsdale was in London explaining to the FA's compliance officer, Graham Bean, how so many agents, including the disgraced Norwegian Rune Hauge, came to be involved in Rio Ferdinand's £18m transfer from West Ham three years ago. Once a new chief executive is appointed shortly, Ridsdale is expected to have less day-to-day control of the club.

Venables, after his demoralising experiences with Sir Alan Sugar at Tottenham, looks these days like a man happy to keep politics to a minimum and concentrate on what he does best, out on the training pitch. "It may seem I'm always talking about jam tomorrow,'' he wrote in a recent match programme. Followers of Gillingham and Palace believe Leeds' Cup run has been jammy enough already. But a little more of the sweet stuff would go down well at lunchtime today.