FOR all his famed loyalty, Steve Gibson will have spent at least some of the last week thinking about sacking Aitor Karanka. You don’t scale the heights Gibson has ascended without a streak of ruthlessness, and as Gareth Southgate, Gordan Strachan and Tony Mowbray can all attest, even Middlesbrough’s faithful chairman is willing to wield the axe if he feels the point of no return has been breached.

So there will have been thoughts this week about whether last weekend’s 2-0 defeat at Stoke represented a logical end point for Karanka. There will have been discussions too, initially with chief executive Neil Bausor, but almost certainly also with footballing confidante Peter Kenyon, who has become a trusted sounding board in the last few years. This isn’t a case of Gibson fiddling while the Riverside burns.

Yet here we are six days on from the bet365 Stadium battering, and Karanka remains in position. He will be in the dug-out for tomorrow’s FA Cup quarter-final with Manchester City, and continues to breathe defiance as he seeks to salvage Boro’s season.

Why hasn’t Gibson acted? Presumably because he doesn’t feel he has to, and for all the understandable anger and concern that has built up during the ongoing ten-game winless run, it is worth remembering that Boro are still pretty much where everyone expected them to be at the start of the season.

The Riverside hierarchy will have anticipated a situation like this coming around. Steel yourself, hold firm, and trust in things coming good before it is too late. That was the stance last spring, when Karanka’s training-ground histrionics threatened to derail the promotion push, so it should not be too much of a surprise that Gibson is adopting a similar approach now.

Yet there could also be an alternative explanation for Karanka’s survival – namely that the type of manager that is required in the short-term is not the type of manager that would be wanted for a long-term rebuilding job.

At some stage, Karanka will leave, either through his own devices or because he is dismissed. At that stage, Gibson will have to appoint a successor, but having spent a lot of time, energy and resources overhauling the structure that supports the head coach, the last thing the Boro chairman will want to do is completely dismantle everything he has constructed in order to start again.

Ideally, technical director Victor Orta would remain in place, along with the scouting network that has been developed under Karanka’s watch. There would have to be backroom changes, but it would be a case of evolution rather than revolution because in the last few seasons, there is a sense that Boro have been on the right track.

Yes, this season has been a disappointment, but the ‘Karanka project’ has still delivered Premier League football after seven barren years. Improvement has been gradual but tangible, and there will be an understandable reluctance to return to the days of Strachan or Mowbray, where an ‘old-style’ manager effectively had carte blanche to do as he wished. Millions were squandered in those days, and Boro remained in the no-man’s land in the middle of the Championship.

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The ‘head coach’ model has been successful, and it is a decent bet that when Gibson does eventually appoint Karanka’s successor, it will be along similar lines. David Wagner at Huddersfield perhaps, given his ability to quickly develop an identity and ethos that appears to have permeated through the whole of his club? Or maybe Eddie Howe if Bournemouth’s fortunes were to nose-dive and create a situation where the current Cherries boss could be persuaded to leave the south coast?

Either of those could slip fairly seamlessly into Karanka’s shoes, but it goes without saying that it would have been all-but-impossible to have persuaded them to move to Middlesbrough if Gibson was to have pulled the trigger this week.

They wouldn’t leave their current positions, and most talented head coaches would be in the same boat with just two months of the season to go. Furthermore, even if that type of candidate could be persuaded to replace Karanka, would they be a better bet to keep Boro up?

Coaches like Wagner or Howe need time to transmit their ideas to their squad and persuade the players they inherit to buy into their style. It is a gradual process of cultivating cooperation, not the kind of short, sharp shock that can often prove so effective with a side struggling in the bottom three.

If you’re going to change head coach with ten or 11 matches to go, you want an immediate reaction. Hence the success of larger-than-life figures such as Sam Allardyce and Tony Pulis when they take over at a club in trouble. Burst in with all guns blazing, create an immediate sense of chaos, and shock players out of the comfort zone they have slipped into.

It could be argued that is exactly what is required at Rockliffe Park, but even if there was a fire-fighting candidate available – and there doesn’t seem to be – where would that leave Gibson once the initial reaction wore off?

It would saddle Boro with an old-school firebrand at a time when the club were ideally wanting to move in completely the opposite direction. You might get a reaction over the next two months, but it could set you back two or three years once you start tearing everything down to accommodate your new boss’ long-term wishes.

That is the dilemma Gibson will be wrestling with as he ponders what to do next. If Boro are heavily beaten tomorrow, and if the home fans turn against Karanka and demand his dismissal, it will become increasingly difficult to do nothing.

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But sacking Karanka now creates as many problems as it solves. Wait until the summer, and if you decide change is necessary then, you at least have time to enact the kind of forensic surgery that tends to lead to successful long-term solutions. With two or three months in which to operate, it would be infinitely easier to achieve at least a degree of continuity.

Act now, and chaos theory takes over. It could be transformative, but it could also be disastrous, and after three years of patient rebuilding, that would be a huge risk to take.