Leeds United 1 - 2 Aston Villa

	Alan Smith battles as Leeds lose to Villa (LGriffiths/Allsport)

Yes, there was heavy significance in the mere presence of Keane with his expensive backside plonked on the dug-out bench.

But that significance meant little to Villa manager Gregory - only to his opposite number, David O'Leary.

For 67 minutes, Keane, a somewhat reluctant fugitive from Italian football, found himself forsaken again at Elland Road. A distinctly temporary fate, you must suspect.

When he left the touchline it signalled that no longer could O'Leary, for all his remarkable managerial success, plead those long-favoured alibis that the football nation knows only too well.

The excuses began, of course, with the line about attempting to take on the mightiest in the Premiership with a team of mere infants. Then there was the naive boss bit and, finally, the declaration that others had more financial power to complete with the game's elite.

No more, David, no more. It needs to be recognised that this aspiring manager must place himself in the sort of exposed position occupied by the established figures of Ferguson, Wenger and, maybe, even Houllier.

O'Leary knows, we all know, and certainly it is already very much the focus of the rightly-appreciative Elland Road audience, that only one word counts now for the man in charge. He must, with well in excess of £100million on the park, deliver.

'Without any doubt,' he honestly conceded, 'we are under-performing in the League considering the quality of player we have at this club. I am definitely expecting more. It's up to us to do something about it.

'I didn't come here to manage this club in 12th place. We are all here to compete at the top. The players have to grow up.

'But I've always been under pressure from the moment I arrived at Leeds. It comes with the job.

'Others have bought expensive players but I think in Ferdinand and Keane we have spent the money well. It doesn't, though, put any extra pressure on me. It's always been there.'

Villa rival Gregory would argue otherwise and, before the game, pointed out that the pressure had indeed mounted on O'Leary.

Gregory was certainly in dispute with Leeds over his claims that his team deserved to take all the points and trample all over the opposition in the process.

And he's not been slow to point out, either, that O'Leary's significant investments have now placed him in the big league.

For Gregory, mind you, there was the satisfaction of victory, along with the extra relish of placing three points where his famously loose mouth normally rests.

On such a point, he not only won the match he also edged the debate. 'We just didn't fire up front,' admitted O'Leary.

Leeds didn't, in truth, enjoy the abrasive combat in midfield either. An extra man for Villa in that vital area, along with the graceful influence of Paul Merson and the more fundamental purpose of George Boateng, were too much for a team missing Olivier Dacourt and David Batty.

Out on the Villa fringes we had the compulsive viewing of David Ginola's sideshow. Last week he was the fatboy and this Saturday came the role of cry-baby.

He is a footballer of truly mesmerising talent, but with the showman's instincts comes the burden of an histrionic nature.

In the end, the Frenchman reacted as he was substituted in the 83rd minute to the goading of the Leeds terraces and a cruel chorus that he is no more than a cheat.

Wisely, Gregory intervened, ushering his man to the dug-out and diffusing a potential spat.

'I didn't think all that stuff was deserved,' observed Gregory. 'After all David got smacked in the mouth a couple of times, but in England we tend to get on with that anyway.'

Villa have lost only five of their last 39 Premiership games. Such fundamental statistics are impressive.

One, singularly ominous, must be obvious to O'Leary. Last Christmas Day he was a point ahead of eventual champions Manchester United. Come Monday, he will be 18 points adrift of the Premiership leaders.

He argued that he had been 'mugged' by the goals of Gareth Southgate and Boateng in the 43rd and 88th minutes.

The solitary consolation was delivered from Jonathan Woodgate's header, when time had already run out for Leeds.

O'Leary, meanwhile, was left to contemplate the turn of the New Year and demand, sooner rather than later, that his players hoist themselves into the top three.