HE hasn’t had a season ticket hurled in his face like his predecessor, Steve McClaren, but it is fair to say that Gareth Southgate is not exactly the flavour of the month amongst Middlesbrough supporters at the moment.

Many wanted him out in the summer, more want him out now. When even your own support are singing ‘You’re getting sacked in the morning’, it is clearly going to be a difficult process to turn things around.

Southgate didn’t get sacked in the morning of course, but his position is undoubtedly under threat ahead of tomorrow’s game at Reading. Steve Gibson has shown no desire to dispense with his services so far, but will Middlesbrough’s eternallyloyal chairman be able to keep the faith for much longer in the face of mounting discontent and ever-decreasing attendances?

Personally, I hope he does. Having given Southgate an opportunity to atone for last season’s mistakes in the summer, this is not the time to pull the rug from under the Middlesbrough manager’s feet.

Now that the dust has settled from Tuesday’s dispiriting defeat to Leicester, it is possible to take a more dispassionate view of proceedings.

After ten games of the season, Boro are fourth in the Championship table, three points behind West Brom in the second promotion place. Not brilliant, but not exactly disastrous either. Certainly not a scenario that makes a change of manager inevitable.

If the West Brom aberration is removed from the equation, then their two league defeats this season have been narrow ones – away at Bristol City and at home to Leicester – and their five victories have all been achieved by at least a two-goal margin.

Whatever else it is, this is not a team in crisis.

There are, of course, problems, and Southgate would be the first to admit that crucial questions have been raised in the club’s last three matches.

Where are the goals going to come from now that Championship defences appear to have become wise to the threat of Adam Johnson? Why does there still appear to be a vacuum at the heart of central midfield? Is Brad Jones really a better bet between the sticks than Danny Coyne?

The fans appear to have seized on these issues as proof that Southgate has failed to address failings that were apparent for most of last season, but the issue is hardly as clear cut as that.

In the wake of relegation, Southgate has been forced to sell Stewart Downing, Afonso Alves, Tuncay Sanli and Robert Huth, and it is noticeable that Boro’s slide has coincided with the departure of the latter duo.

In their wake, he has only been allowed to spend £500,000 on the purchase of Mark Yeates, with a further sum committed to the possible capture of Sean St Ledger at the end of his loan deal in January.

The incomings don’t add up to the outgoings, but that is what happens when a team is relegated.

Southgate is having to make the best of what he has, and given that the bulk of the players at his disposal are under the age of 23, a degree of inconsistency is surely inevitable.

It is all very well comparing Middlesbrough with the other relegated team from up the road, but Newcastle have been able to call upon the experience of players like Alan Smith, Nicky Butt and Kevin Nolan, largely thanks to the financial security provided by an average attendance of more than 40,000.

Boro are struggling to attract even half of that, so their frame of reference should surely include clubs like Sheffield United, Coventry, Sheffield Wednesday and Nottingham Forest, all of whom are currently below them in the table.

The Teessiders were never going to run away with things at this level, and having decided Southgate was the best man for the job in the summer, Gibson can surely not have expected him to oversee a 20-game winning run without the occasional blip along the way.

He probably didn’t expect the reaction to that blip to be quite as vitriolic, however, and the attendance figures could be every bit as important as the results column in coming weeks. If the supporters continue to vote with their feet, Gibson might be forced to act.

At this stage, however, that remains an ‘if’, and it is hard to see what a change of manager at such an early stage of the season would achieve. If Gibson thought Southgate was the right man in the summer – and he clearly did – then he is still the right man now.

SOME footballers don’t like communicating with either the media or the fans. Fair enough. The supporters might ultimately pay their wages, but there is nothing in their contracts compelling them to form a relationship with the outside world.

I don’t have a problem with anyone who chooses not to speak to the press, but I do find it distasteful when they then immediately jump on the media bandwagon when their career is at an end.

So my stomach immediately turned when I flicked over to Sky Sports News on Wednesday night and found Dennis Wise delivering chapter and verse on Chelsea’s Champions League away game at Apoel Nicosia.

That’s the same Dennis Wise who consistently refused to speak to the media during his ill-fated spell at Newcastle, and the same Dennis Wise who treated members of various news organisations with rudeness and disdain during his time in the North-East.

He turned me down on countless occasions in the past, but I went one better on Wednesday. I turned him off.