Matteo: let's fight to break the fall

Leeds in crisis: The bottom line, according to the club captain, is that the players just have to take responsibility

The huge headline on the front of the Yorkshire Evening Post read "Down and Out", but turned out to refer to the defeated leader of Leeds City Council; Leeds United were not down and Peter Reid, their manager for the past six matches, was not out.

For them there is still work to do, starting at Highbury, of all the unpromising venues, this afternoon for a task made more precarious by West Ham's win over Chelsea yesterday. So the back-page lead was "Battle stations" and inside Peter Lorimer, an Elland Road hero from happier times, was warning that relegation from the Premiership would mean "the end of Leeds United as we know it".

How did it come to this? Dominic Matteo, the club captain, who has had more opportunities to look on from the sidelines than he would have wished during an injury-ridden season, shakes his head with frustration and bewilderment: "At the start of the season I thought we'd be having a go at the Champions' League, maybe having a good run in the cups and Uefa Cup. I didn't expect to be sat here today talking about the position we're in." Anyone suggesting the bottom six, let alone relegation worries, and cup defeats by Sheffield United (twice) and Malaga, would certainly have been given short shrift.

Matteo, a native of Dumfries now adding some Yorkshire vernacular to his Scouse brogue, declines to hide behind the chaos in the boardroom these past 12 months when seeking reasons for the shambles on the pitch: "There's no doubt we've lost some quality players and I can't say any of us would be happy about that, but that's the way it is. We just have to get on with it, even though we've lost some good friends and fantastic footballers. There's nowt we could do about it. It's not been too difficult to concentrate on playing. We don't go delving into what's happening at board level. We come into training and work hard, then go home. People stop you round the town and ask what's going on, but you just try to cheer them up, tell them it's not that bad."

The good folk of West Riding must take some convincing. They would be more likely to agree with the captain's assessment about the esential lack of consistency he and his team-mates have shown, whoever the manager – losing at home to Sunderland and beating Manchester United for Terry Venables; six at Charlton, and the pits at Southampton under Reid.

"We can be brilliant one day and sloppy the next," Matteo admitted. "We keep thinking we've turned the corner, then go out and get a bad result. I'm gutted about it and I think the others are. We've not had any real consistency throughout the campaign, especially at home, where we've let ourselves down. It's difficult to play at home sometimes. The fans don't mean it, but there's that little bit of anxiety floating in the air. The more games you lose, the worse it gets."

Five home Premiership defeats in a row last autumn and then the Uefa Cup loss to Malaga looked as bad as it could get for Venables, before the team characteristically went to Bolton and won 3-0. Four successive wins over Christmas and New Year even turned supporters' ire away from the manager and on to the board, though it was Venables who departed first, barely a week before the chairman, Peter Ridsdale, stepped down.

Matteo says that work under Reid, as might be expected, has been less technical and more emotional: "The new gaffer's maybe given us a little bit more edge. We were for a while playing a bit more individually but he's got us back playing more as a unit, given us a bit more bite and told us to get back to the work ethic. The best teams work the hardest, don't they? But it was great working for Terry. He was such a good geezer, he was first in and last out every day and he loved football. He used to get me in his office and just talk football and I love those kind of people."

So do the players feel they let Venables down? "I hope they do. Soon as we go out on that pitch we've got to take responsibility. Terry picked some good teams and good systems and the bottom line is we didn't perform."

Reid's earthier approach – Leeds' foreign contingent must have improved their command of idiom – has brought the best out of Mark Viduka without tightening the defence or improving consistency; the Australian has bagged 11 goals in seven games, yet finished on the losing side in four of them.

Reid's philosophy in times of trouble (and after Sunderland he has known enough of those) is to get back to basics, "working hard and not giving the ball away". He knows that failure in either category will be catastrophic against Arsenal, whose 4-1 victory at Elland Road in September brought premature comparisons with the best club sides ever seen: "Even three months ago, you'd have said they were the biggest certainties in football [to win the Premiership]. But that's the beauty of football, nothing's nailed on."

Uncertainty extends to his own position, though, perversely, relegation might improve his prospects of continuing; the argument being that neither Martin O'Neill nor Gordon Strachan, believed to be the two contenders ahead of him, would be interested in a First Division club.

"Pressure on Reid" the newspaper shouts, while reporting denials from the club that Micky Adams of Leicester City will be interviewed about the job. "I've come to do eight games and I've got two to do," is all the current incumbent can reasonably say. Oh, and he can promise everyone at Old Trafford that Leeds will be going for it against Arsenal: "A certain manager will want us to do our best. And I don't want to fall out with him."