Ridsdale shows faith in O'Leary

Pressure taken off manager David O'Leary

Leeds United chairman Peter Ridsdale has pledged his full support for manager David O'Leary - and told him there is no pressure on him to succeed this season.

Leeds led the Premiership for four months last season and still finished a respectable third.

Now some may feel the Elland Road faithful would demand silverware this time round.

With Leeds playing the first leg in the qualifying round of the Champions League against TSV 1860 Munich this week, Ridsdale has revealed his satisfaction with the club's progression.

"David and I had a long chat on Friday and we are both excited by our prospects," said Ridsdale.

"We're very pleased with the progress we have made so far.

Exciting

"Finishing third in the Premier League and reaching the semi-finals of the Uefa Cup was exciting last season and I'm very proud of what we achieved.

"But there's no pressure from me on David to succeed.

"All I'm doing is saying to David 'let's do the best we can, strengthen the squad when we can and let's see what that brings'.

"We're certainly not sitting here saying 'if we don't win things then it's a disaster'.

There's certainly no pressure because life isn't that easy in terms of just going out and winning things

  Peter Ridsdale

"What we're saying is 'what can we do to take us to the next stage to make further progress'. Whatever comes out of that we will take.

"So there's certainly no pressure because life isn't that easy in terms of just going out and winning things.

"All I can say is that the last three seasons in which I have been chairman, I've been very pleased with the progress, and I'll be delighted if we continue to progress this year."

Leeds have attracted multi-million pound sponsorship deals with Nike and Strongbow, while BSkyB have pumped £13m into the club, allowing O'Leary to make a number of significant summer signings.

New arrivals

Olivier Dacourt has arrived at Elland Road for £6m and striker Mark Viduka was recently given a work permit to complete his £7.2m record transfer.

New signing Olivier Dacourt

It would also appear the cheque book at Leeds will be out again shortly.

"The stage we are at now means the sort of players we're prepared to spend money on are clearly players other clubs don't want to let go, so deals always take longer," said Ridsdale.

"But we have seen a change in that the higher-priced players do want to come to Leeds United, and that's a credit to David O'Leary and the job he has done.

"I'm still very confident we will add to the squad before the Premiership kicks off in two week's time.

"We, as a board of directors, have never failed to back the manager, whether it has been David or any other manager.

"We've demonstrated that with our spending power and there is still plenty of cash in the bank to fulfil David's ambitions with the players he would like to bring in.

"Let's just hope we can get through this qualifying round and into the Champions League proper. That will certainly help our cause."