Brian Viner: A little job insecurity can go a long way for managers

Gareth Southgate captained three clubs and played more than 150 games for each of them, a testament to his virtues both as a footballer and a man. He also won 57 caps for England, and ballsily offered to step forward in the penalty shoot-out to decide the outcome of the semi-final of Euro '96. Yet if he is remembered for one thing as a player, it is the feeble execution of that penalty, which handed Germany a place in the final.

To management, Southgate has brought many of the virtues he exhibited as a player. He is thoughtful, articulate, and a splendid ambassador for the game, rarely criticising referees and championing Middlesbrough's academy system. Yet if he is remembered for one thing as a manager, it might well be Boro's relegation from the Premier League, which could happen this afternoon, depending on results elsewhere.

Thus are reputations forged in football; qualities such as affability, intelligence and decency are ultimately as meaningless as the colour of a man's hair. Yet for all that, it is Southgate's manifest niceness that appears to have saved him from a weekly match-day harangue from dispirited fans. At the Riverside there have been no orchestrated chants of "Southgate out!", just a burgeoning feeling that he is not quite up to the job. This is partly down to supporters' respect for the chairman, the admirable Steve Gibson, yet on Teesside now there are the stirrings of exasperation even with Gibson for assuring Southgate that he will stay in charge if Boro go down. The prevailing feeling, I was told yesterday by the sports editor of Middlesbrough's Evening Gazette, is that a little professional insecurity might have focused the manager's mind these last few months.

As it is, I am reminded of Gordon Strachan, when at Southampton, who felt that he lost his authority once he had told his players that he intended to leave at the end of the season. The same thing happened to Tony Blair in another walk of life. But perhaps the equation also works in reverse. The Boro players might have scrapped harder, not knowing who their boss might be next season.

The perfect tool to show Gayle the errors of his ways? Howzat!

The defiant response in this house to Chris Gayle's depressing admission that he looks forward to the extinction of Test cricket has been to stage a series of England v Australia Test matches with the "longitudinally hexagonal die-cast lead dice", as they are somewhat wordily described by Wikipedia, that constitute the marvellous game of Howzat!. I fight the X-Boxification of children's leisure time by periodically introducing my three kids to the wholesome games I played in the 1970s, although paradoxically it is 21st-century technology that facilitates the indulgence: our 14-year-old son Joe's Christmas present was an elderly Subbuteo set, bought on eBay, to which, after scouring the internet, we added two teams – an Everton and a Manchester United – hand-made by a clever chap in north Wales who somehow manages to add recognisable features to figures barely a centimetre high. Thus Mikel Arteta is clearly distinguishable from Tim Cahill, and Cristiano Ronaldo from Wayne Rooney. And Paul Scholes is a perfect little ginge.

At first I wondered whether my sons would warm to a Subbuteo set almost as old as their father, but for a few weeks they played with it endlessly, and Howzat!, too, has kindled their imagination. To my delight I recently found it still on sale, priced £4.99. The dice come in a smart velvet bag rather than the tin box that lived permanently in the pocket of my school blazer 35 years ago, and it used to be called "Owzthat!" rather than Howzat!, but otherwise it's just the same, and is proving an excellent tool for explaining to my boys the intricacies of the longest, and, pace Gayle, the finest form of the game. Regrettably, though, on the landing carpet shortly before bedtime last night, England were made to follow on.

Politicians not the only ones with appetite for a free lunch

It might surprise you to learn that journalists, the scourges of liberty-taking politicians, are not always paragons of rectitude themselves in the claiming of expenses. Not that they feather their nests, or dredge their moats, from the public purse, but it still seems timely to cite the example of a divorced sports writer who, some years ago, used to claim for entertaining a contact every time he took his young son out for supper, which he did on alternate Sundays. Eventually the chap's editor queried the frequency with which "Kiddie Meal" showed up on his expenses, to which, thinking impressively on his feet, he responded that jockeys have very small appetites.

Eric scores in Ginola's goal

Pardon the flagrant marketing, but a selection of my football interviews in The Independent has just been published. My first interview, in January 1999, was with David Ginola, then at Spurs, and I was interested on re-reading it to see that Ginola, even then, held ambitions to act in the films of Pedro Almodovar, no less. So he is doubtless un peu miffed that it was his compatriot Eric Cantona who made a splash at the Cannes Film Festival this week, as the eponymous star of Ken Loach's Looking For Eric.

The Football Interviews, by Brian Viner, is published by Cult Figure Publishing, priced £11.99 (www.cultfigurepublishing.com)