Dacourt: time to put bounty before mutiny

The Leeds crisis: French midfielder calls on players to rally round, roll up their sleeves and fight in the right way

It may only be early November, but Olivier Dacourt describes the next seven days as the most important of Leeds' season. Wins against West Ham United today and Hapoel Tel Aviv on Thursday would go some way towards appeasing the increasingly restless supporters, as well as giving the players much-needed breathing space. Defeats, however, would spell the end of the club's lofty summer ambitions, not to mention further weaken the status of an already weakened manager. "The stakes are super-high," the Frenchman admits.

Forget the Tories' traumas, it is Terry's troubles that are dominating the news in Yorkshire. Rumours abound of internal feuds at Elland Road, the most recent of which was said to have spilled over in the dressing room following the 2-1 Worthington Cup defeat by Sheffield United. The club have strenuously denied the allegations, stating that there were no more than heated words exchanged, but there can be no denying that Terry Venables is at the helm of an extremely rocky ship. There has been no mutiny – yet – but the former England manager is on borrowed time.

Considering the way he has been treated in recent weeks, you might expect Dacourt to be one of the leaders of any rebellion. The midfielder, though, remains loyal to "the club and fans I love". So far as he is concerned, the moment has come for the current set-up to stand up and be counted. "We're in a mess, and we have to get ourselves out of it," Dacourt says. "It's high time we start understanding what's gone wrong and do something about it. There's been too much moping around and finger-pointing going on of late. What we need now is to pull together, roll up our sleeves, and begin the fight. Forget pretty football – it's all about results from here on in."

Starting today, with a visit to fellow strugglers West Ham for what Dacourt calls "a six-point match". "Well, let's be honest about things," says Dacourt, who is fit again and available if required. "There's no point in denying the fact that we are in trouble. This is a relegation-type battle, and we have to treat it as such.

"We've become so used to playing one of the leading roles that we have forgotten what it's like to have to fight at the wrong end of the table, but that is exactly the challenge facing us. We have to stop living on past achievements and start realising that we are not the fourth club in the land any more."

Leeds' form this season is best described as erratic. Two early wins have since been followed by six defeats in 10 League games. The dramatic slump in form is due, in no small part, to their poor home form. "I'm not sure why we haven't been able to reproduce the performances of the last couple of years," Dacourt admits. "I think some of the players might be feeling a little bit intimidated by the vociferous crowd. The fans can be ruthless, but they have every right to be. They pay a lot of money for their seats, so are entitled to have their say."

The one consolation for Leeds is that results on their travels have been significantly better than at home. Better still, today's opponents have yet to win a match at Upton Park. "It's true that West Ham are in a bad way," Dacourt says, "but then so are we. We're not going to go down to London and waltz to victory. We will all have to be at our very best. Neither team are playing well at the moment, so the result will depend on very little. It will probably take a piece of magic from someone to win the game, but that does not mean we can sit back and wait for a miracle. We have to go and make things happen. I think it will come down to which team have most desire."

Dacourt has never been short of that particular commodity, so it is perhaps a little surprising that he has been used so sparingly this season. He is too diplomatic to say much on the subject, but you sense that he is a tad baffled about the rejection. Perhaps the most telling incident was when Dacourt sat on the substitutes' bench and then in the stands in the same week as he had been selected for the French squad.

The 27-year-old is not the type to blow his own trumpet, but he does concede that the team's most pressing need is some good old-fashioned Yorkshire spirit. "Yeah, definitely," he says, "I'm not saying it's war from now on, but it's going to be close. I mean, every match until the end of the season is a must-win. It has to be if we want to dig ourselves out of this hole."

Strange as it may seem with only a quarter of the new campaign gone, Leeds have had to review their targets. The championship is gone, as surely is the chance of Champions' League football. The only question remaining is whether Venables' men can somehow crawl their way up to an InterToto place via the League, or a Uefa Cup spot by winning the FA Cup.

Dacourt is not sure. "I think we have to put a cross on European qualification through the League right now," he says. "That's almost a certainty, so we should concentrate on solidifying our position instead. But Europe is still important and that's why we have to make sure we don't slip up in the two remaining Cup competitions."

Leeds do not enter the FA Cup until the third round in January, of course, but they do have an imminent knock-out engagement. On Thursday, the team travel to Florence to play Hapoel Tel Aviv in the second leg of their Uefa Cup tie. Leeds lead 1-0 and cannot slip up. "It's going to be a massive game for us in every sense," Dacourt says. "From a football point of view, a club like Leeds just can't lose to Tel Aviv. We owe it to ourselves not to let that happen. For the fans, the season would become quite boring if we were only fighting for Premiership survival.

"We need to have glamour and excitement at Elland Road. And then there's the money. Financially, we simply can't afford to miss out on the opportunity to progress in the tournament. If we can get through another couple of rounds we might draw a big European team in the quarter-finals, which would give us some extra income."

It must be difficult for the Leeds players, including Dacourt, to get their heads around the current predicament. "It's weird, but you have to be very careful not to live on the past," he says. "All those Champions' League and Premiership results mean nothing. It's time to start again as quickly as possible. If we don't, we run the risk of letting the problem spiral out of control."