England’s caretaker manager is known for his good manners and integrity but his approach should not be mistaken for softness as he steps into the void left by Sam Allardyce’s unexpected and embarrassing departure

Midnight had struck when Gareth Southgate emerged from the Riverside Stadium’s main entrance. The manager was unusually late in leaving but the fan waiting to bid him “good evening” supposed he must have been celebrating the win over Derby County that had left Middlesbrough riding high in the Championship.

In reality Southgate had just been sacked and was full of shock and anger when he spotted the familiar wheelchair by the security railings. The man waited for him after every home fixture, offering congratulations or commiserations and the former England defender never failed to stop for a chat.

Southgate was desperate to be in his car and on the road home to Harrogate but where others might have walked on without a backward glance, he halted before removing his club tie and presenting it as a farewell gift.

Sam Allardyce: a history of suspicion and a dream job that ended after 67 days Read more

Seven years on the Football Association see such innate class and impeccable good manners as the antidote to the deposed Sam Allardyce’s boorishness and brazen greed. It would, though, be wrong to confuse the England caretaker manager’s niceness and integrity with softness.

Anyone who has dealings with the 46-year-old quickly realises much of his life has been spent proving that behaving with gentlemanly courtesy is not necessarily incompatible with constantly challenging established orthodoxy, refusing to suffer fools and being ready to confront big decisions.

Years ago a reporter (OK, this one, then working for another newspaper) had an interview with the then Aston Villa captain, in which he, logically yet ruthlessly, eviscerated Villa’s transfer strategy. It was strong stuff but, reluctant to get such a patently “good guy” into trouble, the writer omitted the relevant passages from the copy. Perplexed, Southgate swiftly organised a television interview and repeated the complaints live on air. Villa reacted furiously but he stood his ground.

The sense he was not a man to be taken lightly heightened when, as the Middlesbrough captain, his leadership skills and powers of communication brokered a rapprochement between the manager, Steve McClaren, and a suddenly querulous dressing room. Harmony restored, Boro reached the 2006 Uefa Cup final that season and McClaren ended it by being named the England manager.

Impressed by Southgate’s role in helping stave off a potential relegation battle, Steve Gibson, Boro’s owner, promptly made him manager. Considering he lacked the requisite coaching qualifications, was required to preside over a drastic cost-cutting operation and suddenly had to drop some high-maintenance former team-mates, he did not make too bad a fist of it. “It annoys me when people say I’m too soft,” he says. “I don’t buy it. I went from being a team-mate of people like Mark Viduka to being their manager. That’s a tough school.”

Boro survived in the Premier League for three seasons, finishing 12th and 13th before suffering relegation – he was sacked the following October with the team fourth and only a point off the second tier leaders – playing some pleasingly intelligent passing football along the way.

In December 2007 Arsenal suffered their first Premier League defeat of the season at the Riverside, and Arsène Wenger could not praise his young counterpart highly enough, even suggesting Southgate might coach England one day. “I really believe Gareth has a chance to make a good career,” said Arsenal’s manager. “I have confidence in him. Sometimes young English managers aren’t rated highly enough.”

Nine years on Southgate has a chance to not only fulfil Wenger’s prophecy but remind everyone the signings of Mido and Afonso Alves, not to mention a regrettable fallout with an admittedly fading Gaizka Mendieta, were pardonable mistakes.

“I can’t emphasise enough how ugly the job was that I gave him,” Gibson has said. “It was a time when the club had an ageing squad and needed great change on the playing staff. You needed a strong hand at the helm.”

A career that produced 57 England caps and facilitated astute investment in property had left Southgate a wealthy man and he used his freedom well, combining football punditry for ITV with taking his wife and two children on assorted journeys around some of the world’s less obvious destinations.

Having also gained his pro-licence qualification and made comparative studies of American sports, Southgate joined the FA, initially as the head of elite development before assuming responsibility for the England Under-21 side.

Widely read, well-versed in current affairs (his knowledge of Prince William, Prince Harry and Brexit runs a bit deeper than Allardyce’s) and adept at thinking left-field he is in some ways a modern version of Howard Wilkinson, whose impact on the FA as technical director has been widely underestimated. Like Wilkinson before him, Southgate has never been afraid to challenge the blazer brigade, notably proving a prime supporter of the England women’s team.

Fans will want to know precisely how good a manager he is. If the overall evidence remains inconclusive, his leading of the under-21s to victory in this summer’s Toulon tournament can be seen as encouraging. Particularly as it was Southgate’s brainwave to replace the team’s 4-2-3-1 formation with a much more effective midfield diamond augmenting two strikers.

As recently as July, Southgate was minded to oversee the under-21s in next summer’s Euro 2017 in Poland before returning to club management, most probably at Championship level. Now the right results in England’s next four matches could see him redirecting his ambitions to Russia and the World Cup.

Whenever he steps down, Southgate will lobby for an English successor. “It should be our players, our manager, our coach, our kitman and our faith healer, against the best of the rest of the world,” he says. “I don’t see the point of having a national team, with a national anthem and patriotism but a foreign coach.”