Win, lose or draw in his 100th game as Albion manager tonight, Mark McGhee will keep a level head.

The words of Rudyard Kipling might have been written for the meticulous Glaswegian.

Whether it is triumph or disaster at Hillsborough, McGhee will treat those twin imposters just the same.

That is the way it has to be when, against the odds, you are trying to keep the Seagulls in the Championship.

Maintaining equilibrium has been tested to its limits by the last two results.

That oh-so-sweet success at Crystal Palace last Tuesday came just 72 hours after a home defeat by Cardiff which plunged Albion to the foot of the table.

"The way I've worked here has had to be very calculated," McGhee said. "I've had to face certain realities and I think we have dealt with them pretty well.

"There has been a classic example of that over the last week. On the Saturday night after Cardiff everybody was suicidal and then by Tuesday night at Palace everybody was absolutely euphoric.

"What I've managed to do in my time here is to realise that is the way it is going to be and not get too excited one way or another, keep a very level head.

"One thing we have become very good at as a squad is dealing with that. Regardless of the result, we are able to put it behind us very quickly.

"I've said to the boys last year there were probably 30 occasions, excluding a couple of good draws, when we went home on a Saturday really disappointed because we hadn't won and yet at the end of the season we had a big celebration.

"The individual games, in terms of satisfaction, don't really matter. It's the end result at the end of the season."

McGhee wishes his sense of proportion was more widely shared. Expectations, it seems, have risen to unrealistic levels both inside and outside the club.

"After we lost to Cardiff I was very disappointed by a lot of other people's reaction," McGhee revealed.

"If people cannot accept that this is what we are, that we are going to lose games and occasionally play poorly, put it behind us like we do and move onto the next game, then I think they are either stupid or unrealistic.

"We've still got a lot of players who are still to prove they can even play at this level and yet people are getting down because we lose a game. I'm not prepared to allow myself to be like that because I know we work as hard as we possibly can to get the results that we get.

"When we play poorly we've worked ******* hard to be as poor as that! And that's all we can do.

"Last Monday morning I had 15 outfield players to choose from. Iain Dowie (Palace manager) had 15 strikers to choose from, so I'm not going to allow people to get me down."

It was Dowie who coined the phrase 'bouncebackability'. That too was made for McGhee's Albion.

They snatched victory from the jaws of defeat in the play-off semi-final against Swindon in his first season, then rallied when it really mattered at the end of last season after a slump in form jeopardised their Championship place.

"When we came back against Palace that was a typical example of what we've done since the day I've been here," McGhee said.

"That more than anything is something I've had to instill in the players, because I know we are going to have bad days.

"It's a defence mechanism, not only for me but for them. It's a way of me almost allowing them off the hook for a bad performance, because we've got another game to put it right.

"Don't get me wrong, there was a bit of despondency on the Sunday morning after the Cardiff defeat. The way we dealt with it was to put in an extra training session.

"Instead of doing what we would normally do, train Sunday and Monday, travel on Tuesday, we trained on Tuesday as well.

"I felt very strongly we needed that extra training session to get in their heads because players have been getting a bit of stick, which is ludicrous."

Unjustified abuse from pockets of supporters in the south stand at Withdean hurts McGhee as much as his players. A cheery disposition creates the misleading impression that he is not the deeply caring type but he takes defeat badly and personally.

"I was mortified when we were bottom of the table," McGhee said. "I don't care if I only had 11 outfield players to choose from and no money to spend and the smallest budget in the league. I never played in a team that was bottom of the league.

"It's never where I've been and I don't like it at all. As far as I'm concerned it means the other 23 managers in the division are better than me.

"Forget about the team and the players, I have a look at myself. I talk to people in the street and friends and relatives and people say to me where are you in the table tonight?

"If I have to say bottom then not everybody understands the dynamics of it. They think 'he must be crap' and I don't enjoy that."

He won't enjoy it either if Albion lose at Hillsborough tonight but he'll soon shrug it off. As McGhee often says himself "onwards and upwards." There's always Ipswich at Withdean on Saturday.