THE End of an Era, 2000. An artist's impression depicting the last Wembley FA Cup final between Chelsea and Aston Villa hangs on the short hallway leading up to the boardroom at Middlesbrough's Riverside Stadium.

Sitting relaxed in his leather armchair at the head of the table sits Steve Gibson, the Boro chairman. He is one of the few in charge at clubs these days whose name is still cheered, not jeered, by supporters.

Despite celebrating a decade at the helm of the Teessiders, Gibson still has the respect of every fan for the way he has guided the club out of the doldrums and into the high-tech world of top-flight football.

In 1997, under the tutelage of Bryan Robson, Gibson's millions helped Boro reach their first, and only, FA Cup final and that arrived just a couple of months after they had lost to Leicester City in the League Cup final.

Defeats in both, then another in the League Cup the following year, left Boro still searching for the first major piece of silverware in the club's history - something they still crave six years later.

As a schoolboy brought up on the harsh Pallister Park estate, in the Park End area of Middlesbrough, Gibson was just like any other young football follower of his generation. He loved to settle down and watch the cup finals, and still does.

That is why the oldest cup competition in the world is held so close to his heart. "Those were fantastic days," he says. "Football was a major part of my life back then, just as it is now.

"We were all working-class lads and I was around in the days of black and white TV so you just played football or threw stones at windows."

Had Boro succeeded in taking one of those trophies back to the North-East, things may well have turned out differently.

"It was extraordinary how the 1997 season went when we got to two cup finals. I know that in that Leicester game at Wembley we were on top.

"We were one up, yet Emile Heskey scored a late equaliser to send it to extra-time then a replay, which we lost," says Gibson, whose chance of glory this year hinges on whether Boro can overcome Arsenal in the second leg of the rearranged Carling Cup semi-final on Tuesday night.

"We had something like eight games in 23 days, which by itself is not the only problem. It was all the travelling we were doing.

"One time we had to play Tottenham at White Hart Lane on a Friday evening and we had had the cup final replay on the Wednesday.

"The team didn't arrive at the hotel until 6am on the Thursday morning! They were shattered."

History shows that Boro were relegated in 1997. Yet Robson led them to promotion again the following year.

The feeling around the club was that their time away from the Premiership was going to prove beneficial in the long run; and so it seemed, initially.

A quick promotion push was the perfect riposte and in the two years that followed Robson appeared to have learnt from his mistakes in the transfer market and they enjoyed their best League campaigns ever among the country's elite.

But then it turned sour. Failure to take the next step towards a top six place and the close friendship shared between Robson and Gibson was about to be strained.

An ageing Boro looked destined for relegation again as they hovered around the drop zone at the halfway stage in the 2000-01 season.

Something had to be done and Robson put the nail in his own managerial coffin when he persuaded Terry Venables to come in and save the club - something he achieved by gaining massive transformations on the pitch from the Boro players. Like Wembley in 2000, The End of an Era. The end of Boro's Robson era.

"What Bryan achieved here has been so under-estimated in its importance because he took us from tenth in the First Division with gates of 10,000 to packed stadiums, three cup finals and two promotions. It was unbelievable," says Gibson, who sanctioned Robson's net spending in his seven years in charge at £35m.

"It was pure theatre and it's unfortunate that Bryan's achievements were perceived as being less than they should be.

"He is also perceived as being a guy with huge resources available to him. That was false because his average spending while he was here was around £5m-a-season.

"The season he went was difficult for everyone. I think we went for a big push that year.

"To achieve that Bryan went for a different style of play. He went for players who were established, gritty, and the football was perhaps not that what we enjoyed when the likes of Juninho, Ravanelli and Emerson were here.

"Bryan, in his seven years here, probably had three bad months and it cost him and cost us."

Gibson is a self-proclaimed realist and he believes he will never be able to lead the club to the Premiership crown.

But under the guidance of the man who succeeded the Robson-Venables team, Steve McClaren, the 46-year-old hopes he has the man who will be able to take Boro on a step further - something his predecessors failed to do.

The jury is still out on McClaren. His net spending is already at £28m in his first two and a half years in charge, £7m less than that of Robson during his seven-year reign.

However, the current boss has reduced the average age of the squad considerably and Gibson concedes the two styles of manager are a complete contrast.

"Steve is a very good professional and a very good coach," says Gibson, who was in the top 300 of The Sunday Times Rich List in 2001 with an estimated fortune of £108m.

"I'm delighted with the structures he has put in place behind the scenes and his professionalism.

"We haven't got the rewards of that yet but that's because there has been so much change at this club in his two and a half years. It's dramatic and it needs time."

Gibson's wealth was a result of him masterminding the success of Bulkhaul - a chemicals and haulage company and one of Britain's top private companies - after setting up in his early 20s by borrowing £1,000 from his father.

It was his business sense that eventually led him to becoming Boro's youngest ever director in 1986, in the heat of the club's liquidation crisis when he was the prime mover in its survival.

Just over ten years ago Gibson saw off the challenge from both Henry Moszkowicz, the majority shareholder, and chairman Colin Henderson to take control.

Since then he has overseen a £20m move from Ayresome Park to the Riverside and the building of the state-of-the-art £10m Rockliffe Park training complex at Hurworth, Darlington.

"There was talk of the club redeveloping Ayresome and being little more than an average First Division club.

"I didn't see it that way and there was a lot of conflict at the time," said Gibson, a family man as father of a daughter, Katie, and husband to Vicky.

With his vision for the stadium and training facilities firmly in place there is now just the 'small matter' of turning the off-the-field success into glory.

Gibson admits football is such that the best teams in the top-flight can no longer be caught unless lesser clubs are fortunate enough to produce a string of young talent.

"I still enjoy being chairman and I would love to take the club forward but it's got harder," he says.

"There's more money in the game now and it's difficult because you have to splash £15-20m on a top striker who will get 15 goals. There are also the wages of the players and it's incredible.

"The Premiership title is unattainable for most clubs unless you have a number of good kids coming through.

"We did in 1986 when we had the class of Mowbray, Pallister, Cooper, Ripley, Slaven and Pears. But that's a once-in-a-lifetime event