As the players of Middlesbrough and Arsenal walk on to the pitch at the Riverside stadium this afternoon, consider just one of the many differences between the two clubs. Match-day receipts. Boro’s revenue from a season’s worth of home games is approximately £8m, while Arsenal take in £3m every time they play at the Emirates. Then remember that in this world, inequality explains everything and excuses nothing.

Sitting in the stand above the action but hopelessly immersed in it will be a 44-year-old Teessider. As an Englishman who owns his hometown Premier League club, Steve Gibson is a rare breed. Perhaps rarer still, he runs the club with common sense and treats its principal employee, the manager, with decency. He doesn’t see the club as a business but as an integral part of the Teesside community.

Boro have remained a Premier League club since 1998. Gibson’s wealth and leadership have been the key factor. But as some rivals find new sources of income and others become better organised, the challenge for the club, based in a city with just 120,000 people, grows ever greater. Third from the bottom, Boro is the only one of the bottom five with the manager it had at the beginning of the season.

For Gibson, the question of sacking Gareth Southgate does not arise. “All clubs are different and have different pressures. I’m not saying we have a secret because we haven’t. What I know is that I have a very decent man, a very good man and a very intelligent man in Gareth Southgate. What he doesn’t have is a huge amount of managerial experience but he has the intellect to learn very quickly. What I asked him to do, to leave the dressing room and lead this club, was unfair. I was asking him to perform miracles. In this situation, things were occasionally going to go wrong and Gareth needs my support and the support of everyone at this football club. We are where we are not because of bad management, not because of bad planning, not because of bad football.

“We are where we are because of circumstances working against us, some important injuries, games that might easily have been won ending in draws, and I like to think we’re better than our current position indicates. I may be wrong because the judgment will only come at the end of the season. I read ludicrous things in newspapers, no they’re not really newspapers, more comedy strips, saying, ‘Gareth’s got two games’. He knows that isn’t true, I know that isn’t true but other people don’t appreciate the strength within the club “I gave Gareth a five-year contract because I wanted him to have the time to take a much longer-term view of the club. He had a lot of changes to make because he inherited an ageing squad with quite a number of the older players on extended contracts. I didn’t want the players, I didn’t want the supporters and I didn’t want the media thinking that Gareth was a stop-gap manager. What we’re trying to do at the football club is create the best possible environment and atmosphere for those whose jobs we can’t do.”

Not all of Boro’s fans are as supportive of Southgate as Gibson and during the most recent home game, against Aston Villa, the disenchantment was audible. Loved by the supporters, Gibson will listen to what they say and chant but insists it must be seen in perspective. He tells a story from the first Premier League game at the Riverside last season.

It was just three months after the team had played in the Uefa Cup final and as the chairman walked from the car park to the stadium entrance, he was approached by about 20 fans who each congratulated him on the club’s performance the previous season. As he drew close to the entrance, he was approached by a fan who came not to praise but to complain bitterly about the hike in the price of the club programme, from £2.50 to £3.

“He offered a volley of verbal abuse and did a lot of swearing, which I didn’t like. ‘Firstly, don’t swear at me. Secondly, you didn’t have to buy the programme, and if you’re not happy with it, there’s three quid and give me the programme back’. As I walked into the ground, I was muttering away to myself because I had gone from this nice atmosphere with lots of people being gracious and polite to a situation that was bloody awful.

“I mentioned it to a friend who said, ‘Be realistic, you had 20 great people and one who was abusive, that’s not bad’. It’s the same with a football crowd, you mustn’t think the vocal minority speaks for everyone. We have a knowledgeable crowd at Middlesbrough and Gareth has a special relationship with the majority. They remember him as the most successful skipper we ever had, the kind of player who gave 100% every time he played.”

Gibson became involved in the mid-1980s when the club was in the old Third Division and on its knees. Unemployment was 27%, the shipbuilding industry had gone and the steel industry was in decline. “Big companies had come in, emptied the area of its natural resources, disappeared and left lots of working-class people to fend for themselves. The last thing the town needed was the demise of its football club.

“Every time you pick up a paper, you see Middlesbrough described as an awful town, how ugly it is. When you’re from the town, you don’t see it that way. We’re surrounded by some very beautiful areas and we take pride in our town and the spirit of our people. We have great people who would do anything for you. And we wanted the club to be a great community asset.”

From the Third Division, Middlesbrough returned to the highest level. Gibson brought in Bryan Robson, invested millions in new players and created a club that has become a vibrant symbol in a depressed region.

“In certain parts of Teesside, we have the lowest life expectancy in the country. Yet on our boundaries we have the most powerful politicians, Tony Blair, William Hague, Alan Milburn, Peter Mandelson – what the hell have they been doing for Teesside? People here have been dying 30 years before their time.” It is not a surprise that Middlesbrough are top of the PFA table that identifies the teams whose players do most work in the community because that is the ethos that Gibson and Southgate are fostering at the club. As admirable as it is, that spirit on its own will not be enough against Arsenal this afternoon. Gibson is gracious in his praise of how the Gunners play and recalls how he regretted publicly questioning Arsenal’s contribution to English football last year.

“I realised I was wrong. I rung David Dein and asked him to convey my apologies to Arsène Wenger. I wish we could produce a team that could one day play like Arsenal. I wish the circumstances for this game were different and there wasn’t such pressure on us to get a result. We just have to make sure that at the end of the match, we’re proud of the way we played. I can accept losing the fight, but I do mind when there’s no fight.”

In Peter Ridsdale’s recent book, United We Fall, he recounts the story of being called by Gibson, who was incensed that Leeds were trying to poach his then manager, Steve McClaren. I mention this episode because the anger Ridsdale talks about seems so far from the softly-spoken and mild-mannered man so generous in his praise of Arsenal’s football.

All it takes is the linking of Leeds and McClaren to reveal Gibson’s passionate side. “I haven’t read Peter Ridsdale’s book but I was angrier than I would have seemed to him in that call. I would have been diplomatic. But Steve McClaren wasn’t being allowed to go to Leeds, and his agent would never be seen at this club again.”

He then tells the story of how McClaren, after buying a number of expensive players in 2002, was prepared to jump ship and go to Leeds. “I rang McClaren and I just knew from our telephone call that he was ready to go. He didn’t know that he actually wasn’t first choice at Leeds, Terry [Venables] was and we knew that. But that wasn’t the only time he was going to jump ship, he was also prepared to go to Chelsea and Newcastle.

“We’re friendly enough now, we shake hands when we meet but he’s never been back since he left and he’s not on my Christmas card list. And we never want to get into that situation again, I don’t want a guy who is always thinking about the next rung on the ladder. If Steve McClaren said to me the grass is green, I would go out and check. He can be charming but he had this streak of ambition that was absolutely bloody ruthless and you can’t go through life always trying to achieve your ambitions at the expense of others.

“He just saw us as a stepping stone and if you can make enemies at a club like ours, you’re going to be in trouble when things go wrong. Having said that, he has something as a coach and a manager and I do believe he will come back. But managing England should be your last job, not your next job. Steve’s ambition couldn’t see that.”

The measure of Gibson’s style as chairman is that even though he believed McClaren was prepared to leave for another Premier League club on three separate occasions, he continued to stick with him. “But we had got to the end of the line at the time the England job came up. We were shocked when the FA seemed to offer the job to Scolari.”

Then the passion subsides and the chairman is again serene and making the case that of all the bad things that can happen in life, relegation is not the worst of them.

He feels the team will play its way out of trouble but after almost 20 years of involvement, he’s accepted the realities. “I don’t panic, I try to enjoy each game and, like every fan, I don’t enjoy when we’re awful. But I have accepted, there’s always someone bigger and better than you out there.”

This afternoon, Gibson’s club will try to turn over one of the league’s bigger and better teams.

Sharing the TV jackpot

- The Premier League has reacted to complaints from Middlesbrough and other ‘unfashionable clubs’ about the distribution of TV revenue. Last season clubs picked up a £250,000-£340,000 ‘facility fee’ per match. This season that goes up to £460,000, with all clubs guaranteed at least 10 payments even if they don’t play 10 televised matches n The current three-year Premier League TV rights deal is worth £2.7bn. This season clubs will share 50% equally, topped up by 25% in TV facility fees. The remaining 25% is distributed as prize money depending on how high they finish. The champions will pocket around £50m and the bottom club £30m