I'm weary of moaning O'Leary

The young, inexperienced squad he keeps banging on about are all older now. The resources problem he so often complained of looks a bit thin now he has spent £100 million and the club is mortgaged to the hilt to pay for it.

No wonder chairman Peter Rids-dale said this week that if the club failed to qualify for Europe then players would have to go.

If I were O'Leary, I'd be worrying about my own future. It may not be long before he's asked to make way for an older man.

As is obvious from the example set by Newcastle manager Bobby Robson, who is 69 later this month, age is no impediment to success, and no one will handle the Aston Villa situation better than Graham Taylor.

At 57, Taylor, who has managed Villa before, knows the club's chairman, Doug Ellis, only too well.

Not that Doug is the ogre some make him out to be. He's just a bit frustrated. Wouldn't you be? John Gregory lashed out £70m of his money and still spent most of his time whining while a lot of his most expensive buys underachieved.

Which brings me to Sir Alex Ferguson. Now that my hopes of Barry Fry being Manchester United's new manager have been dashed, for the moment at least, what are we to make of this last-minute change of heart? Is it because Lady Ferguson became appalled at the thought of Alex hanging around day in day out?

Or was it a recognition that the United board cocked up announcing Ferguson's departure before a successor was in the frame?

Far better to have agreed with Ferguson that he would make way as soon as the right man became free and leave that as a private matter between them.

That I suspect, three-year contract or no three-year contract, is what will now happen. We will wake up one morning and he won't be there.

This turnaround has been widely praised. United are back on top of the Premiership and everything in the garden is rosy. Or is it?

Ask again in a few weeks' time when the next phase of the Champions League is over and United will have had a few more games against the best in the Premiership rather than the worst. It may all look different then.

On Saturday, Beckham protested as the ball was moved to the edge of the area, fearing he wouldn't be able to dip it enough, and astonishingly wasn't allowed to stay where he was. Surely, since the aim of this rule is to benefit the side taking the kick, it should be open to them to stay put if they want.

As it happens, he scored anyway. Others wouldn't be so lucky, or rather so talented. If the referee got that one wrong, surely Graham Poll was right to step aside and let Jimmy Floyd Hasselbaink take his free-kick before West Ham were ready on Wednesday. They were faffing around, and if it makes others more alert and less inclined to protest and time waste, so much the better.

Take Ade Akinbiyi. It is now the accepted wisdom he cannot hit a barn door from five paces, though I hope Crystal Palace will find him a man transformed.

More than anything else the striker sealed the fate of Peter Taylor as Leicester manager, and the struggling club has lost nearly £3million dumping Akinbiyi. But did anyone in our all-seeing, all-knowing media suggest Taylor was wrong to buy him when he did?

The answer, you won't be surprised to learn, is no. Similarly, when Sam Allardyce invested £250,000 in Michael Ricketts, did anyone say this would be the buy of the season? Of course not. We were all too busy marvelling at the purchase of Juan Veron for £28m. By the way, whatever happened to him?

Ricketts is now on the edge of an England call-up and, less than a year on, £10m would not buy him. Sam Allardyce, a thoroughly decent and gifted man, will rightly bask in the reflected glory of Ricketts' prowess. But did even Allardyce appreciate what a diamond he had unearthed?

He is too honest to say he did, but he won't mind the job security young Ricketts has brought him.

Even if Bolton do go down, Allardyce won't get the blame. But if he had bought Akinbiyi, it would have been a very different story.

But through it all this superb athlete has kept going, even showing himself to be a man of courage by having the guts to speak out against Gordon Taylor's ludicrous fat cats' strike. Now he's playing the football of his life, as even Chelsea fans at Wednesday's FA Cup game would concede. He deserves to go to the World Cup and, with David Seaman injured and Nigel Martyn fading, may end up as England's No1 goalkeeper.

There is always a chance he will make another calamitous error but his all-round athleticism, wonderful reflexes and superb distribution should surely allow us all at long last to take a fairer and more balanced view of his abilities.