Leeds Utd - 2 Blackburn Rovers - 1 Peter Reid is not a quitter by nature but, in the case of Leeds United, he very nearly made an exception.

A useful win against Blackburn may have elevated him to a new position of strength, but Reid is painfully aware he might be on "borrowed time", his relationship with Prof John McKenzie has suffered irreparable damage and even his coaching staff left Elland Road uncertain whether he was planning to break the habit of a lifetime and give up his job.

Today he will announce that he has no intention of resigning - not yet, anyway - but it has become apparent the idea has figured prominently in his mind, and may do so again in the near future.

It is not paranoia that leads him to suspect last week's reprieve was merely a stay of execution. He knows it is more than likely he will be out of a job anyway before Hallowe'en. So if he is being set up for a fall, as he strongly suspects, why delay the inevitable when he could have manufactured a departure guaranteed to cause minimal damage to his reputation and maximum discomfort to McKenzie?

If Reid were to have cleared his office after a result that hoists the club within a point of the top half of the table, only three points behind Liverpool, there would have been even greater criticism of Leeds's directors than there was directed at Manchester City's for sacking him after a fifth-placed finish 10 years ago.

Nevertheless, he did not broach the subject when he spoke to McKenzie directly after Saturday's game, and yesterday's reports that he was planning to go through with it omitted several important factors, not least the might of his desire to return Leeds to something approaching normality.

Resigning would have meant jeopardising his chances of a severance payment, and there is no way Reid was going to let McKenzie get away with that. He did not like the idea of leaving a job half-done (at best) and, besides, there was the question of loyalty to his assistant, Kevin Blackwell, who is buying a house in west Yorkshire this week and admitted he did not know whether he was "coming or going".

Reid is also entitled to believe his public trial and the assumption (wrong or not) that he will probably be sacked after the next defeat will have a debilitating effect on his players, as could be gauged by the tension that disfigured their performance once Dino Baggio had scored for Blackburn.

Overall, though, this was a hugely satisfying display, capped by Seth Johnson's first-half goals against some dubious Blackburn defending, and with David Batty's display on his first league start for 18 months epitomising the team's efforts. Their vibrancy should encourage Reid that their next three matches, against Manchester United, Arsenal and Liverpool, need not necessarily be a degrading experience. It was in a genuine tone, rather than the usual clichéd claptrap, that Alan Smith and Dominic Matteo spoke out on his behalf afterwards.

For the time being, though, there are more significant matters to address, and McKenzie being in Japan on business for the rest of the week does not help. Whether the nutty professor truly thinks Reid is equipped to turn the club around remains open to debate, but he might note that Paul Hart, the Nottingham Forest manager and Reid's apparent successor-in-waiting, has just taken one point from four games.