Reid could be toast at breakfast crisis talks

The Nottingham Forest manager had strong support within the Elland Road boardroom when Reid was seen as a firefighter with an eight-game brief to ensure survival. Harry Kewell, then still undecided about his own future, let it be known that he would welcome the return of Hart to the club where he had nurtured the talented young brood that David O'Leary inherited.

Hart was on a four-man shortlist to succeed the sacked Terry Venables along with Micky Adams, Gordon Strachan and the out-of-reach Martin O'Neill. The Forest boss is even thought to have had preliminary talks.

But having been charmed by Reid's personality, McKenzie insisted the former Sunderland boss was the man for the job and a surprise 3-2 win at Arsenal on the penultimate weekend of the season clinched the job.

Now it will cost McKenzie more than the basic £850,000 of Reid's rolling one - year contract to decide at this early stage of the

Premiership season that his judgment of six months ago no longer holds water.

McKenzie would have to admit that he got it wrong, and, if Hart were to take the job, shareholders would question whether his appointment in May might not have avoided the Kewell debacle this summer.

The chairman hailed as an astute professor of economics when he succeeded Peter Ridsdale in March was able to bank only £3m when Kewell opted to join Liverpool rather than renew his contract.

Moreover, the knock-on effect for Reid has been to deprive Leeds of the creativity Kewell brought to a side that struggle to prise teams open and have won only one of their first seven League games.

It is that statistic that has pushed McKenzie to hover over the panic button, for the last time Leeds started a season so badly 22 years ago they went down - a catastrophe that would now plunge them into administration.

However, Reid has been given so little to work with, bulking up on cheap loan players rather than buying quality, that common decency cries out for him to be given at least a little more time to turn things around.

Time is what McKenzie can illafford, since Leeds' cash crisis has been shelved rather than solved. Refinancing work continues on an £80m debt, but the club's very existence depends on staying up.

Leeds' annual figures, not expected for a month, would normally be out by now, last year's record £34m loss was reported on September 26, and there is a real fear of a further huge, damaging deficit. If Leeds were to go down next May still shipping cash alarmingly, and facing the £25m impact of exile to Division One, there would be a major question mark against the club's future existence.

Leeds players are genuinely shocked that Reid's job is already on the line, and skipper Dominic Matteo yesterday insisted that the team, not their manager, should be on the ones to suffer for the shortcomings.

But McKenzie, now almost as high-profile as his predecessor mocked as ' Publicity Pete ' , knows that he and not Ridsdale would be remembered as the man who led Leeds into oblivion.

As McKenzie battles to avoid that epitaph, the first casualty of a long, harsh winter may well be Peter Reid.