The Sunday Mirror paid a visit to David O'Leary at Elland Road last week and found him playing with gold coins spread out over his large desk. Was he counting his shillings, they asked. No. "I'm not a materialistic person," he insisted.

Then they spotted that the coins had hand-written name-tags stuck on them - `Kewell', `Woodgate', `Smith', `Bridges', `Bowyer', etc - and O'Leary was using them to work out his best formation.

Sitting in his unfurnished and slightly grim office, he said: "People ask me why I don't have it done up but I'm not into those things. I just have my desk and my little men that I play with. I just sit here on my own fiddling about with formations. That's the way I do it."

Is it just us or is O'Leary, with every passing day, coming to resemble his Apres Match character more and more and more?