Venables on air not on line

A man with the initials JC arrived at Teesside airport on Thursday evening. Unfortunately for Middlesbrough Football Club, Jacques Chirac is not the miracle worker they had hoped to be greeting there. The messiah they had been waiting for was TV - Terry Venables - but while they stood waiting in the rain all week for the man who would lead them out of the shadow of the valley of relegation, Venables was in London trying to find a way in there.

But Venables could not find a way through his thicket of contracts. At 2.0 p.m. yesterday the news came through. He will not be kissing the Teesside tarmac. Just four hours earlier it appeared Middlesbrough still thought he would. Now they are back to square one. Bryan Robson remains in charge.

"I'll tell you one thing," an irritated Robson had told reporters at his regular Friday press conference at 9.0 a.m. yesterday morning, "if Terry Venables says no, I'll be manager of this football club until the end of the season." It felt like a threat rather than a strategy.

A couple of hours later the word indeed was "No", though Middlesbrough inferred both officially and privately it had been they who said it, not Venables. A pay demand of £50,000 per week has been mentioned. Venables is sure to get his side of the story out quickly.

Neither he nor Boro want to look like the villain but in their own way both have left Robson as victim. In being prepared to step down and become Venables' assistant, Robson was tacitly admitting to at least some managerial shortcomings. But he was only prepared to do so because Venables and the Middlesbrough chairman Steve Gibson are two of his most trusted allies in football.

Now he has been exposed by both parties and, if the situation turns ugly, Robson will be caught in between.

"We have concluded that Terry's present and future TV commitments are incompatible with the role we were offering," read Middlesbrough's statement. "We can assure our supporters everyone at Boro will now continue to focus on the Premiership challenge ahead."

Had he said "Yes" Venables' new job would have begun at Upton Park today. He has never been a reluctant saviour in the past, as the fans of Portsmouth and Crystal Palace would willingly testify, it's just that at the moment TV has a problem with TV. In particular, ITV.

Ever since things began to unravel at Palace two years ago, Venables has found himself in television studios more often than on a football pitch coaching players. This has coincided with ITV's expansion of its football coverage, a development that will leap forward next season when Match of the Day closes down on BBC 1 and re-appears on ITV in the guise of a programme with the working title: All The Goals.

ITV see Venables and Des Lynam as their dream team to host this programme and will pay Venables something in the region of £250,000 per year. All The Goals is provisionally scheduled to go out much earlier then Match of the Day, somewhere between 6.0 p.m. and 8.0 p.m. on Saturdays. It will be a prime time event and will be marketed as such. It is easy to see the attraction for Venables, and not just the money. Then, three weeks ago, Middlesbrough rang.

Suddenly Venables had alternatives. Had it been Tottenham or Chelsea or even Palace again, it would have been much easier. Venables would have told ITV he had to think about TV's football reputation, and besides, he would still be in London and could do the midweek stuff, maybe even the odd shift on All The Goals. But no, the call came from The Boro. Up north. Even though the chief executive of Middlesbrough indicated that Venables' ITV contract was about a fifth of what they could offer, and even though Venables had Robson as his number two when in charge of England, Teesside was left wondering when Venables would give them a definitive answer. The Middlesbrough Evening Gazette thought the job required "1,200 per cent" commitment, a new number in football.

On Thursday night it seemed as though Venables had worked out an arrangement with ITV and had contacted those he has used in the past as his staff such as Terry Fenwick. For the first time this cast a shadow over Robson's assistants, Viv Anderson and Gordon McQueen, maybe even Robson himself. Some newspapers ran this as fact. "Shite", was Robson's angry response yesterday morning. This was before the afternoon announcement. We had gathered gloomily at Middlesbrough's lush training ground to be informed beforehand by the club's press officer that, despite it being the only thing on the agenda, Robson would not be taking questions on Venables. Robson sat down alone.

"Just the one chair Bryan?" was the opening gambit, "no-one else to come?" Robson laughed halfheartedly. "Can we start with that, Bryan, what's the latest on Terry Venables?" "There's nothing to report further," Robson replied wearily. Next question: What is it about Terry Venables, Bryan? "Nah, I'm not taking about Terry Venables. I've got an important football match to concentrate on." Middlesbrough, with one point from their last eight games, play at West Ham.

Robson then spoke of "all the garbage in the press". Venables writes a paid-for column in the News of the World, in which last Sunday he revealed Middlesbrough's approach. This Sunday's should be interesting.

Anyway, on we went. "What I'm hoping for is a solid performance," Robson said. "We've got to keep a clean sheet sometime . . . We proved last year we can go to West Ham and win . . . It's been fine for me, I don't look at the newspapers."

After a brief hiatus, groin strain time, the subject turned to how Robson had viewed the job when he took it 61/2 years ago. "After being at Man U, I probably saw this as a stepping stone to better things," he said, honestly. "But I don't feel that way any more. If you are going to succeed in management you should be able to succeed at a club like this.

"I've read the nonsense that I've spent £78 million on players but we've gradually built this club up trying to balance the books. With our Sky revenue and the cup finals, which have helped, we've managed to do that.

"Am I enjoying it? I'm not enjoying getting beaten every week. I've been relegated before and I don't want it to happen again. There are quite a few teams struggling in the way of ourselves, you can take a lot of heart from that. I'm still confident we can turn the corner."

Immediately around the corner was the afternoon news. And now it's Upton Park. Next week, Boro are at Sunderland. Then they host Chelsea. It could be one point from 11 games after those three. Then there will be another convulsion, Middlesbrough will limp toward another appointment and, quite possibly, another disappointment. All the while Terry Venables will be on TV talking about it.