THE second of the North-East's big three football managers has fallen. Mick McCarthy, boss of bottom-placed Sunderland, has gone.

McCarthy has paid the ultimate price for assembling a team that is demonstrably not Premiership class - a failing that has been starkly highlighted by the success of the two other clubs, Wigan and West Ham, who were promoted alongside Sunderland at the end of last season.

Given Sunderland's consistent failure to win this season, it is surprising that McCarthy has managed to cling to his job for so long.

But as he has, and as relegation now looks inevitable, it is slightly odd that he should be sacked at all. Sunderland now need a manager with the proven ability to get them promotion again on a shoestring budget - and one of the few out-of-work managers with a suitable CV is McCarthy.

Such ironies are the nature of modern football.

But McCarthy does leave a decent legacy. Unlike the manager of top-of-the-table Chelsea, he always conducted himself throughout immensely trying times with dignity. In defeat, where lesser individuals might hide away, he has always been prepared to face the media and answer hostile questions with a homespun philosophy. He didn't try to deflect the blame but preferred to look positively at how close his team of lower league finds and other people's cast-offs had performed.

The honesty of Mick McCarthy has been a greater asset to football than the histrionics of Jose Mourinho.

The sacking at Sunderland comes just over a month since Newcastle relieved Graeme Souness of his position. Football managers are cannon fodder, ready to be fired at the whim of their chairmen. But just as Freddy Shepherd at Newcastle has had to consider, given his record of making dubious appointments, whether he is the right man to continue at the helm of his club, so Bob Murray at Sunderland must consider whether he has the financial muscle to allow his club to build a position among the wealthy Premiership elite.

But finally, football is just a game. It is not more than life or death. At Sunderland, a man has lost his job, but in east Cleveland there are families whose men went out to pursue their sport - mountaineering - and are not coming back.