Rovers boss Tony Mowbray on the emotions of management

Not unless you have stood on the touchline fighting for three points on a Saturday afternoon, does he say those feelings can be fully explained.

And the Rovers boss admits it is the lingering thoughts in defeat, down to the fine details of what went wrong, that can cloud a whole weekend.

Mowbray has been in football for all of his adult life. His playing career at Middlesbrough, Celtic and Ipswich, took in close to 700 games, while his number as a manager passed 600 in August.

A passionate character, Mowbray said: “That period after a game you will never know unless you’ve stood on the touchline and your team has either won or lost. It’s a unique feeling I would suggest.

“While supporters are very emotional about their football team, I don’t think it stays with them until Monday or Tuesday to the point where it’s actually spoiling their life and they don’t want to take their kids out in the garden to play footy because they’re still fuming about left winger not tracking the full back.

“That’s how football is. I’m trying to give you the emotion of how we work.

“You come in early and watch videos, sitting with my staff, ‘who’s going to play, will they do that which means we have to do this?’

“That’s a football manager’s life.”

Mowbray had a six month break out of the game before taking on the Rovers job in February 2017.

His family are still based in the north east and he heads home after matches to spend time with his wife and three young children.

But the non-stop world of football is all encompassing for the boss, who added: “You do all the preparation work, the sitting there for hours, keeping the analysts from their families, sitting and watching videos, going back and deciding on the opposition’s strengths and weaknesses.

“You work hour after hour, I live away from my family and don’t see my children all week, Saturday someone does something stupid and you lose a goal, and you go home to see your family, have breakfast on a Sunday morning but you don’t want to know because football is ripping your guts out with what’s gone wrong.

“Whether it be through social media, the media, radio, the local paper, it’s all there in your face non-stop.

“Sometimes managers question whether it’s all worth it, but I love football and coming to work, I want to build a team of human beings who work hard and I like them.

“Football is all consuming, you work for a matchday, for 90 minutes, and then you can have the elation when it all comes off. But then it wears off quickly because you’re moving on to the next game and your preparation starts again.

“If you lose then it lingers for probably too long but you have to come back in on Monday and prepare for the next game and start the process again.”

Mowbray has known no different though, leaving school at 16 and embarking on a playing career which spanned 20 years.

He is now in to his 16th year as a manager, with Rovers his seventh club.

And he admits his experience makes dealing with the emotions easier.

“I’ve been kicking a ball about since I was two or three,” he said.

“The first day I left school I went to work at Middlesbrough Football Club and have never really been out of football since then.

“When you become a coach or a manager you’re occasionally out for a few months but I find myself 54-years-old and never having known anything other than football.

“You build up a resistance to it but it’s what you do, you plan, you prepare, you go to bed thinking about your team, your formation and drift off to sleep. Then when you wake up you’re thinking about talking to this player and telling them that they aren’t playing.

“You are dealing with human beings so you have to show them respect and I try and have a logic, explain my selections to them, because they all want to play.

“They give me the eyes when it comes to Friday and we work on the shape of the team and they are the ones in the red bibs and they know they’re not playing, I can see the sadness in their faces.”