Hello, is that you Tel? Steve Gibson here. Sorry to hear the viewing figures for The Premiership are not too good. And you must be sick already of loading up that stupid Prozone.

"We've got a smashing new manager here at the Boro. Lovely feller, and a great coach. But our defensive organisation just doesn't seem to be what it was when you were around. Don't suppose ITV could spare you for a couple of days a week, could they?"

The telephone call to Terry Venables may be a few weeks away yet, but had it come from any other Premiership chairman than Gibson this week's vote of confidence for Steve McClaren would have sounded extremely ominous.

Gibson's loyalty has always been admirable, but when will he get his reward?

In the wake of a 4-1 home defeat by Newcastle, the question of McClaren spending time with England was bound to arise.

Having supported the dual role in the first place, Gibson cannot backtrack at this early stage. But a crowd of fewer than 4,000 for a Worthington Cup victory is not going to balance the books, and unless his luck turns soon the chairman will have to act.

It is obviously preferable to have your manager present full-time. But the counter-argument is that McClaren is a fanatical learner and he cannot fail to learn from Sven Goran-Erikkson.

How long will it be before those lessons filter through and turn Boro into crowd-pleasing challengers for silverware?

In the old days a patient chairman might have taken the view that it would be best to drop down a division and rebuild from there.

But the financial cost of losing Premiership status is horrendous, and if the slide isn't halted immediately men like Gordon Strachan are out of a job.

It helps, of course, if you don't have the misfortune to have your goalkeeper sent off while the custodian of the opposing net commits a similar offence and stays on.

I understand this was because in the one case a goal would have been scored, but not in the other. But I'm not convinced of the logic of a rule which says in the former case the keeper must be dismissed.

It seems extremely harsh that a keeper can spend long periods standing idle and when he is called into action and follows his instincts to their natural conclusion he gets his marching orders.

Mark Schwarzer wasn't the only unlucky goalkeeper last Saturday as Ipswich's Matteo Sereni was also sent off after an innocuous collision with Leicester's Robbie Savage, who went down like a sack of spuds.

Leicester salvaged their first point with a late equaliser, so hopefully that other highly-rated young boss, Peter Taylor, will be able to reassure McClaren that his luck will turn.

SPORT has been a little squeezed for space in the last few days. In the hysteria following any disaster there are those who deem sport irrelevant, when in fact we need it to maintain our sanity.

With a disaster of this scale, however, we may need to re-assess some of sports reporting's vocabulary so that words such as carnage, tragedy and horrific are not misused.

Some people in the business would have us believe that New York's first tragedy of the week occurred at Flushing Meadow on Sunday.

Pete Sampras's crushing defeat by Lleyton Hewitt in the US Open final was described as "harrowing" by a Sky commentator.

It was, in fact, a simple reminder that there comes a time when the legends of any sport will be humbled by someone ten years younger.

The signs were there at Wimbledon when Sampras struggled to beat Barry Cowan, from Ormskirk, then lost to a 19-year-old Swiss. The message is that in tennis you're an old man at 30.

IT will be tempting for golf fans to use the word "tragic" if the Ryder Cup is called off. The Americans have hyped up the event over the last ten years, dubbing it the "War on the Shore" at Kiawah Island before last year's Battle of Brookline ended with a green invasion.

Such nonsense has now been put firmly into perspective by events in New York and I suspect the recovery time available is too short for the Americans to muster any kind of stomach for the contest.

That would be a pity, because they could use it to restore the old traditional, friendly rivalry to the event.

There was a time, after all, when Jack Nicklaus conceded a four-foot putt to tie the match to Tony Jacklin, saying: "I don't think you would miss that, but I'm not going to give you the chance."