By Stuart Roach BBC Sport Online

O'Leary was sacked by Leeds in June 2002

The managerial merry-go-round can be a nauseating experience, but David O'Leary can't wait to jump back on.

O'Leary has been out of work since June when his four-year reign at Leeds came to an acrimonious end.

That acrimony continued until this week, when Leeds finally agreed to pay O'Leary �3m compensation having accepted that his Elland Road departure was not 'by mutual consent' after all.

The old adage of one door closing and another swinging open is not quite true in O'Leary's case.

Odds for the sack

Glenn Roeder 6-4 Terry Venables 3-1 Jean Tigana 100-30 Howard Wilkinson 11-2 Steve Bruce 16-1 Gary Megson 16-1 Sam Allardyce 20-1 Kevin Keegan 20-1

Having already declined the chance to apply for the Republic of Ireland job, O'Leary must now feel like a befuddled businessman in a hotel corridor, searching for the right room with the wrong key.

But some doors to the Premiership managers' offices are beginning to creak ajar.

"I am hopeful I will be able to return to football in the near future," O'Leary hinted.

But where?

Fulham, with the whiff of unrest hanging in the corridor between managers' office and boardroom, might be the most obvious destination.

Manager Jean Tigana's contract expires in the summer and the common concensus is that Cottagers chairman Mohamed Al Fayed is in no hurry to renew it.

Defender Rufus Brevett fuelled the flames of that particular fire when he moved from Fulham to West Ham last week.

The 33-year-old defender revealed there were "things going on behind the scenes" at the London club.

And rumours are rife that O'Leary has been closer to negotiating a Fulham contract than Tigana.

Tigana's Fulham future is in doubt

Bookmakers William Hill were quick to cut Tigana's odds to 100-30 to be the next Premiership manager to depart.

Hills are so convinced that O'Leary knows his next move that they are refusing to open a book on his destination of choice.

"David O'Leary probably knows where he is going next but we don't, so we are not about to offer odds on it," William Hill spokesman Graham Sharpe told BBC Sport Online.

"For all we know, he could be about to step into a job at Fulham, Leeds or West Ham in the next couple of days."

Hammers boss Glenn Roeder is the 6-4 favourite to next face the Premiership axe and Venables is 3-1 second favourite, despite assurances that he intends to stay at Elland Road until the end of the season.

And when one door swings open, the merry-go-round will begin to spin again.

O'Leary is delighted to have ended his Leeds dispute

If Roeder gets the push at Upton Park, then the clamour to lure Charlton's Alan Curbishley to West Ham may offer a two-sided window of opportunity.

And then there is the intriguing prospect of a return to Elland Road.

O'Leary clearly had a lucky escape when he was thrown clear of the Leeds disaster area just before the big explosion, and it is unlikely he would return to get his fingers burned again.

But someone, somewhere, may already know what the football world now holds in store for O'Leary.

Brevett perhaps, after he claimed: "There are things going on behind the scenes at Fulham which I don't want to talk about."

It may be that O'Leary's reported visits to the Fulham chairman's office were simply to order his Christmas hamper.

After all, he needs something to spend his compensation on.