David O'Leary needs time to build his house at Al Ahli

David O'Leary did not need to attend the press conference after the mauling at the hands of Al Jazira last Thursday. Al Ahli's anaemic performance spoke volumes instead.

David O'Leary did not need to attend the press conference after the mauling of Al Ahli at the hands of Al Jazira last Thursday. His team's anaemic performance spoke volumes instead.
The Irishman is starting to realise why no amount of money could have tempted Harry Redknapp, the Tottenham Hotspur manager, to swap White Hart Lane for the Rashid Stadium in the summer.
On Thursday's evidence, even Redknapp's renowned man-management skills would have been tested by the players who performed so wretchedly at the Mohammed bin Zayed Stadium.
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Banished to the stands as part of a touchline ban, O'Leary cut a forlorn figure sitting in the row of seats just above the visitors' dugout. He would surely have started to question whether he has the resolve to see out the remaining two years of his three-year contract.
Judging by the alarming statistic that has seen Ahli go through four managers since 2009, that decision may be taken out of his hands. He may already be checking the small print in his contract.
It is unclear whether Abdullah al Naboodah, the chairman, was at the game last week, but he will not have needed to be told that the performance, which arrived hot on the heels of being held at home by Kalba, hints at a deeper malaise at the club.
Gregory Dufrennes, the French striker who spent one year at the club, suggested as much.
"It was very difficult because I feel some local players don't want to play with me," he said in an interview with The National last month. "Everybody knows about the story with Faisal Khalil. I think he made a big problem for me."
The Khalil brothers, Faisal and Ahmed, posed no problems whatsoever for Jazira's defenders. Ahmed was particularly listless. Roy Aitken, O'Leary's trusty assistant, was apoplectic with him for squandering possession so carelessly in the build-up to Jazira's third goal. Judging by the way the young striker shrugged his shoulders, Aitken was wasting his breath. Long before the end, Aitken and his coaching staff had given up barking orders; they sat cross-legged in the dugout as the floodgates opened. O'Leary had learnt early on in the season that admonishing his players is futile.
"I don't think you can do that here," he said. "We are in a different culture."
O'Leary gained a reputation for forever making excuses during his spells in charge of Leeds United and Aston Villa but he will argue that Ahli sit in fifth after finishing eighth last season and could, with some justification, point to the fact that the club's three foreign players had been selected before he was appointed.
Denying the manager the opportunity to hand-pick his imports, who history suggests are so crucial to the success in the Pro League, is like building a house and trying to put the roof on first. He must have looked on with envy on Thursday night as Abel Braga, his opposite number, fielded the attacking triumvirate of Ricardo Oliveira, Bare and Matias Delgado.
O'Leary, on the other hand, was lumbered this season with the defender Fabio Cannavaro, whose 37-year-old legs are starting to betray him, the one-paced midfielder Pinga and Aristide Bance, who was mysteriously shipped out to Qatar in January just as he started to find the back of the net.
In his place arrived the Moroccan Karim el Ahmadi, a defensive midfielder, just as al Naboodah spoke of the need to improve the defence. O'Leary is understood to want to fortify his attacking options.
Having conceded more goals than two of the bottom three and scored fewer goals than basement club Kalba, Ahli need a makeover at both ends of the field.
Whether O'Leary is afforded the time to apply the brush strokes remains to be seen.
 
kaffleck@thenational.e