David O'Leary is in the frame for the Malaysia job.
Naturally Philippe Trousier, who has only been linked with 724 vacant international positions in the past couple of years, was a hot tip earlier on in the betting. But, that deal fell through last month. The other live candidates for the role are former Sunderland boss Peter Reid, the Italian Fabio Lopez and the absurdly cool, chain-smoking Czech-Italian attacking football Zdenek Zeman.
O'Leary's last job was as manager of United Arab Emirates' side Al Ahli Dubai. He was sacked after just nine months following a 5-1 defeat to Al-Jazira. Now, you would think that when a team featuring Fabio Cannivaro is beaten by a television station*, the manager is just asking for the sack, but O'Leary won a fairly sizeable compensation case against the club, and was awarded £3.34 million.
O'Leary did an okay job with Leeds United but paid the price for profligate spending and failing to reach the Champions League in either 2001/02 or 2002/03. Contrary to popular opinion, his time at Aston Villa was not a complete failure. In his first season in 2003/04, he took Villa to sixth place (an improvement of ten places on the year before under his predecessor Graham Taylor). However, his time there finished badly as Villa slumped to 16th place.
*The television station is of course spelt 'Al-Jazeera'
