'They should have given me time to finish job'

Terry Venables believes he has been denied the opportunity to finish the job of turning round Leeds United's Premiership prospects. The Leeds chairman, Peter Ridsdale, was wrong to sack him on Friday, Venables insisted yesterday, just eight months after he took over the manager's job in the wake of David O'Leary's dismissal.

Venables believes that Ridsdale and his fellow directors should take their share of the responsibility for Leeds' poor season, during which a host of players have been sold. Leeds issued a statement on Friday saying that Venables' departure was mutually agreed. But in an interview on television last night, the former England coach disputed that version of events.

He said: "I decided to go to see Peter Ridsdale to clear the air. He said, 'I still feel we should get better results'. I said, 'If you can sell £55million worth of players and still get results, that's a clever trick. Why isn't everyone doing it?' But Peter Ridsdale said, 'Results aren't very good and maybe it's time to have a change'. I said, 'That's your call'."

Ridsdale's call was to replace Venables with Peter Reid, the former Sunderland manager, until the end of the season, even though Venables had proved his ability to rescue a sinking side from relegation by stepping in late last season to help save Middlesbrough from relegation.

Ridsdale had persuaded Venables to succeed O'Leary last summer but it is unlikely that the "Cockney chancer", as he was seen by Leeds fans, would have taken the job if he had known that six international players were going to be sold by the end of January. Rio Ferdinand was sold to Manchester United for £30m, a deal followed by the off-loading of Robbie Keane, Lee Bowyer, Olivier Dacourt, Robbie Fowler and Jonathan Woodgate.

The £9m sale of Woodgate to Newcastle on the final day of the January transfer window, after Venables had been assured that the sale of Fowler before meant Woodgate could stay, was a bitter pill for Venables to swallow.

Heavily in debt Leeds were paying the price for failing to reach the Champions' League for two seasons running but at an Elland Road press conference the day after Woodgate's departure Ridsdale, sitting alongside Venables, rubbed salt in the wounds by claiming Leeds had not needed to sell Woodgate.

Venables said yesterday: "I find it hard to believe that the club didn't know the extent of the financial position when I took the job – not when it turned out to be so bad. Losing Woodgate was the killer – a massive blow. To then hear it didn't need to be done seemed to show no sensitivity to the football end of the business. We really needed him. Central defence has been a problem for us all season because of injuries and with him there we could have coped. He could have been the difference. Maybe he could have got us to the FA Cup final.

"As the squad grew weaker we had to fight harder and harder. Then the chairman says the results aren't good enough as if the two things [selling the club's best players and losing matches] are unrelated. The manager and the chairman need a trusting relationship and we had problems in that area."