There are a lot of jobs out there for Mick McCarthy and this board has to sit down to decide what it wants for Sunderland. The club is run by the board and they have to do some serious thinking over the next couple of weeks to keep him. McAteer argued that keeping McCarthy might be problematic.”It’s out of the gaffer’s hands. Do they want to go for it again, or do they maybe want to slip away like a Sheffield Wednesday? It really is a decision he’s got to make and he’s running out of time.”Murray, who oversaw the sale of 23 professionals after relegation from the Premiership, is planning more cuts rather than further expenditure and it is unlikely Joachim Bjorklund, Phil Babb, Jeff Whitley and even McAteer himself will be on Wearside next season. Reid’s side of six years ago was a hugely entertaining, talented squad that recovered to win emphatic promotion. Mick McCarthy’s boys of 2004 cast an altogether paler shadow.Jason McAteer claimed losing to Crystal Palace on penalties in Monday night’s play-off semi-final “felt like death”. Like 10 other, mostly high wage-earners, the midfielder is out of contract next month, and he demanded that the Sunderland chairman, Bob Murray, either spend or accept that the club is likely to follow Sheffield Wednesday into long-term decline.”It’s up to the board to get this team nailed down again with contracts,” he said.

But talented players come at a price.”Bob and the board have got to sit down and make a decision. “Bob’s got to decide what he wants to do with this football club because he could lose a lot of talented players. When Sunderland lost their play-off final to Charlton on penalties, their manager, Peter Reid, stopped the team bus as it passed the turn-offs for Peterborough and ordered his squad to get collectively drunk. Whatever the outcome of the investment battle involving Morgan and the Thai prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, which looks set to result in millions of pounds being injected into the club, Houllier already knew that his role was under threat. He was aware that a victory for Morgan in the share battle would most likely have spelled the end for his reign.The club needs the investment from either Morgan or Thaksin if they are to buy the top-class players required to push the team forward, while also developing a stadium that would generate the funds the Merseyside club needs to compete in the longer term with Arsenal, Chelsea and Manchester United.Houllier has one year left on his contract, and only a stronger challenge for the Premiership title will satisfy the fans. That could entail the Frenchman being offered the role of director of football but he might not see that as a job he could accept.Last night’s talks signalled a remarkable twist, coming so soon after the board rejected an investment plan put forward by the wealthy supporter Steve Morgan, who is a critic of Houllier and the players he has purchased. Gerard Houllier is facing a crisis at Liverpool and may be sacked even though his side did sneak into the Champions’ League qualifying by finishing fourth in the Premiership.

Moores and Parry have stood behind Houllier before but there have been signs of their support weakening over the past few days.Even before last night’s summit meeting Houllier knew he would go into the summer with a cloud hanging over him. The meeting broke up with all parties pondering the future, but the word from inside Anfield last night was that Houllier could be forced out or pushed upstairs amid major changes in the managerial team.Houllier thought he had kept his critics at bay and saved his job when Liverpool secured fourth place and the possibility of a Champions’ League place, but there now appears to be a move under way to find a younger man with new ideas for leading the club forward. There has been speculation that Ranieri, who steered Chelsea to second place in the Premiership – their highest position since winning the title in 1955 – will work with a new regime at Tottenham.Trapattoni, whose English is about as good as Ranieri’s, was quoted yesterday as saying that if his wife had agreed they would “probably” have been Tottenham-bound already, “but I am still very enthusiastic about the job”.. Talks with Trapattoni, 65, have already stalled and he revealed in an interview with the London Evening Standard yesterday that his wife Paola’s reluctance to move from Milan was a big factor.