The first question that needed asking of Peter Ridsdale was “why do it?” and the former Leeds United chairman yesterday sought to explain why he has written a book raking over his ultimately calamitous stewardship of the club. So far his memoir has succeeded only in embroiling its author in back-page rows with an outraged David O’Leary and an infuriated Martin O’Neill.

It is not for profit because all money raised will go to a Leeds hospice and, in any case, it remains to be seen if there will be many takers. The intended audience is Leeds fans, but, as they lie in what used to be called the third division, do they want to read how their club was brought to its knees?

“It’s an apology,” Ridsdale said and he hopes, optimistically, that Leeds supporters will allow him to hold a book signing in the city centre. In part, United We Fall can be seen as a 292-page plea that he be able to park his car near Elland Road without returning to a burnt-out wreck.

But it is also about sharing out the blame, however much Ridsdale tries to deny it. “It is not a ‘get David O’Leary’ book,” he said, but it undeniably adds a fresh smear to the Irishman’s already battered reputation. Sympathy for O’Leary will be limited in football, where he remains unwanted even by Ireland, and the innuendo is likely to make it harder still for him to return to management.

While the revelation of an exclusive deal signed by O’Leary for Rune Hauge, the tainted agent, to recruit Rio Ferdinand is an old story, the book makes fresh allegations that the former manager also tried to hijack negotiations to sell Olivier Dacourt. “To this day I’ve never been able to satisfactorily resolve in my own mind why he would get involved in a potential transfer like that,” Ridsdale said. O’Leary has consulted his lawyers but, so far, has limited his retaliation to calling his former boss “deranged”.

The ludicrously high payments to agents by Leeds led to Ridsdale being dubbed Father Christmas at the time. He now admits that he was “a coward” in not taking a tougher stand on player signings. “But what I do think is hypocritical is that there are many others who made similar mistakes and yet the personalisation of the vilification is far greater for me than any others,” he said. “[Juan Sebastián] Verón went from Manchester United to Chelsea and then on again at enormous sums and with enormous agents’ fees. Is that in the papers every day? What about Kléberson, [Eric] Djemba-Djemba [moving to Old Trafford]? But I sign Seth Johnson and that makes me incompetent.

“When you are a fan, we all think about what we’d do if we were a manager or chairman, but do you really understand what comes with it? This book is trying to show that and to show how nothing could prepare me for a plane crash, the arrests of Lee Bowyer and Jonathan Woodgate, the Galatasaray issues [when two fans were killed]. I am not saying ‘it wasn’t me, guv’. But I am saying that I have lived for 4½ years being persecuted, being told I couldn’t come back to Leeds, being called every name under the sun. But I haven’t murdered someone. I made honest mistakes.”

The book’s veracity has also been questioned by O’Neill, who, Ridsdale reveals, was persuaded to make a written undertaking that he would move from Celtic to Elland Road in 2003. Under false pretences, the Aston Villa manager has now said. O’Neill was persuaded to sign because Ridsdale is engaging company and a plausible salesman. He is also sufficiently thick-skinned that he has worked at Barnsley and Cardiff City since being hounded out at Leeds.

He has invested about £500,000 of his own money for a 10 per cent stake in Cardiff. Having secured a good deal with the council to fund a new stadium, he will resign when it opens in the summer of 2009 or sooner if promotion to the Barclays Premier League comes first, which, with the team struggling, seems unlikely.

He spent Sunday last week responding personally to 100 angry e-mails but, for all the buffeting, football has not been too unkind to him. He expects to leave Cardiff a millionaire.