It is hard for Tony Mowbray to keep a low profile on Teesside given his status, and was described this week as ‘a living legend’ by counterpart Jonathan Woodgate.

However, Mowbray admits he might not be too popular come 3pm as he looks to plot the downfall of a club he served for 12 years as a player, and three as a manager.

Mowbray will try and mastermind a third consecutive victory for Rovers to keep them in play-off contention, but knows the task at hand against a Middlesbrough side who are unbeaten in nine at the Riverside.

Saturday will be Mowbray’s 154th in charge of Rovers, the most of any of his managerial spells, eclipsing the 153 he had as Boro boss, who he also made 350 league appearances for.

He said: “I won’t be that popular on Saturday and I’ve already had a few people shouting over the road saying ‘I hope you get beat this weekend’.

“I took my son to his training and I was trying to keep my head under my hat, I got a few shouts from a distance.

“Boro will always be close to my heart and why I started going to watch matches with my dad at the age of 6.

“Fortunately for me I was selected as an apprentice when I left school, so I’ve never known anything but school and football.

“I was there for 12 and through a strange period, the liquidation of 1986 when the gates were padlocked and the people of Teesside rallied around, Steve Gibson was part of that.

“It’s always going to be close to me because of the adversity we went through as a group of players at that time.

“I think Boro fans of a certain age will always have an affinity with that team. The older fans, there will be a great respect for that team.”

Rovers moved up to 10th with victory over QPR in midweek and are level with last season’s tally of 43 points at the 29 game stage.

Middlesbrough have enjoyed an upturn of fortunes in the last six weeks, after a difficult start to life in charge for Woodgate. And Mowbray believes it will take a performance similar to that at Sheffield Wednesday to chalk up a third consecutive win.

“We have to go there and try and win,” he added.

“They have a particularly good home record, unbeaten in nine, so if we’re going to go there and win it will have to be some performance. They base it off hard work, energy a crowd that can drive the team on.

“Let’s hope there’s a big crowd, a good game, they have a young, athletic teams with threats in the wide areas.

“It’s a tough game as those statistics suggest, they’re hard to beat at home.

“We’ll go there with confidence from how we performed in our last away game, and the result on Tuesday night, and go there believing we can get a result.”