The inside story of Tony Mowbray's three years at Rovers

Mowbray hadn’t met the club’s owners prior to taking the job on February 22 2017, his first visit to India not coming until after relegation had been confirmed. But the owners had clearly been impressed enough to ensure that retaining his services was the most important issue to resolve in a bid to turn the club’s fortunes back around.

As Mowbray began to come to terms with the club sliding in to the third tier for the first time in 37 years, he admitted his future was in the hands of the owners, but their minds of who they wanted to lead the club forward had already been made. They made retaining his services their top priority within minutes of the final whistle sounding 33 months ago.

Facing the prospect of another new man in the managerial position just six months after deciding to remove Owen Coyle from his post, and heading in to life in League One with so much uncertainty would have set Rovers back even further. But the stability that sticking by Mowbray, and him committing to Rovers, has been able to provide wouldn’t have been afforded had results not followed on the pitch.

He achieved his initial goal of promotion back to the Championship at the first attempt, stabilising in the first season back and is now building a team capable of achieving the overall goal of getting Rovers back in the Premier League. And there is a faith and belief within the walls of Ewood Park that Mowbray can be the man to deliver that, hence the decision to reward him with a new three-and-a-half year contract in November 2018.

A trust has grown between the owners and the manager, while a solid structure behind the scenes has seen the club's hierarchy at Ewood Park taking on more of the day-to-day decision making.

There have been undoubted highs during Mowbray’s time in charge, but some tough times to overcome, including the early days in League One, but also earlier this season as dissenting voices grew louder.

But chief executive Steve Waggott says Mowbray’s experience and characteristics mean he has maintained the full faith of the club’s board.

“He’s 100 per cent a proper football person, he understands the game and has loads of experience. He understands he will lose a few and get some stick, like he did after Barnsley (in November) and I think the boos did get to him a bit,” he explained.

“We’re all putting many hours in at the club, it is your life, so sometimes when you get hit like that then it can be a bit of a push back.

“He has a lot of experience, knows the league well, knows all the leagues well. What the club needed when he came in, it needed stability and a steady hand.

“I was brought in to support Mike (Cheston), Suhail (Pasha) and the board with a steady hand off the pitch and experience is vital when you’re trying to navigate through to where we’re trying to get to.

“Tony has all the attributes to do that.”

Mowbray’s use of transfer budgets has been a talking point among supporters, but never something questioned by the club’s owners.

The £750,000 spent on Bradley Dack 2017 gave them enough confidence to hand him a budget of £10m following promotion back to the Championship, with Ben Brereton and Adam Armstrong two seven-figure signings that summer.

But in subsequent windows money has gone unspent, not least in the most recent January window, and while the owners would have listened to requests for more funds should the right player have been identified, they now see fit to allow those at the club to spend the agreed budget as they see fit. No longer is there a need to run everything by India.

Many of Mowbray’s signings have been 23 or under, with the average age of the side gradually reduced as time has worn on, and several of the experienced players he inherited now having either moved on, or getting less game-time.

And with the club continuing to fund a Category One Academy to the tune of around £4m a year, the opportunities handed to the likes of Ryan Nyambe, Darragh Lenihan, Lewis Travis, Joe Rankin-Costello and John Buckley, hasn’t gone unnoticed.

His interest in the club's brightest prospects sets Mowbray apart from some of his predecessors, his faith in them part of the decision to walk away from several deals last month.  

“The owners and board have a great deal of faith in Tony by the amount of investment each year we’ve put in to the team,” Waggott added.

“The squad has got better, more expensive, more depth, more quality and experience and that comes from the owners trusting in us as a board and Tony as a manager.

“The fans see the strength in the club staying solid, even in turbulent times. You will get a minority who will say ‘let’s change everything’ but as time tells over and again, it’s not the way to do it.

“It’s a very mature approach. Tony would be the first to say he wants to leave the club in better shape than what he found it.

“If it means that with young players you get the high energy, but also the highs and the lows and inconsistencies and he knows that. But we’ve got a Category One Academy that costs £4m to run, so why would you want to be delving in to other clubs for 18 or 19-year-olds when you’ve got a Category One Academy.

“Your manager has to believe in it otherwise you might just say ‘let’s just do a Brentford and a B squad and invest that money in to talent across Europe’.

“The Academy have to produce the players and the manager has to have the culture and ethos to put them in as and when required. This situation means he has to push a few more in, the last few matches we’ve had four from the Academy in the starting XI. That’s great to see.”

Rovers made the decision to sack Coyle after the FA Cup fifth round defeat to Manchester United on February 19 2017, with the timescale to appoint his replacement set for before the trip to relegation rivals Burton Albion five days later.

Mowbray was interviewed the day after Coyle was let go, with Rovers having drawn up a shortlist of applicants to replace the Scot who had been in charge for eight months.

A one hour meeting at the Tickled Trout, near Preston was scheduled for 7pm, but Mowbray’s passion and enthusiasm saw this extend well in to the evening. A day that started with him sharing a coffee with Garry Pallister, as Storm Doris swept the UK, ended with Mowbray finalising terms on becoming Rovers boss, back in work six months after choosing to leave Coventry City.

It was that meeting that persuaded those making the appointment, including then director of football and operations Paul Senior, he was the right man, giving Mowbray the chance to prove he could do more than just talk a good game.

His appointment was announced at 11am the next morning, his willingness to work with the coaching set-up already at the club setting him apart from another of the candidates in the running for the job.

Owners Venky's took a back seat in the negotiations, trusting those at Ewood Park to make the right call, hence why Mowbray hadn't spoken to the owners prior to his unveiling.

Mowbray's values as a person, and manager, struck a chord, built from a working class background in Teesside that would resonate with the people of East Lancashire. 

And it’s that straight-talking that has been a key part of his reign, and something that many have bought in to, a refreshing change from what had gone before.

Mowbray certainly isn’t in it for himself, his desire to hand opportunities to young players and build for the long-term in an environment where everything is needed tomorrow is testament to that.

“Every manager I’ve ever known they all go through bad spells, it’s just how, as a board, we hold our nerve alongside Tony with belief,” Waggott added.

“You can always see the sign of a club in decline, you can smell it. If things go drastically array Tony and I know the game, we’ve been in it a long time, but there will be blips and ups and downs and it’s how you navigate through them.

“He will draw on his experience and to be fair, with the squad he’s currently got, he’s getting us through games and probably when other clubs would think we’d be losing ground on them, we’re actually catching up on them without the likes of Dack, Holtby, Rothwell, Evans, four key players.

“He’s pulling up trees at the moment.”

It is not just on the pitch that Mowbray has been backed by the owners. He has visited the Rao family in Pune now on five separate occasions, with improvements made to the training ground and recruitment departments results of the faith placed in him.

And Waggott says there is a strong togetherness at the club, in which Mowbray is playing a key part, that has seen things improve both on and off the pitch.

He added: “The good thing is that with the board, the senior management team, everyone is aware of what’s going on on the pitch, and Tony is aware of what’s happening off the pitch.

“There’s a harmonisation between the two.

“He knows that one action will have a reaction over here and vice-versa.

“In some clubs you can have a training ground that’s like an island and you’re not allowed to step on to it and it’s not like that.

“We’re one Rovers and we’re all in it together and Tony buys in to that culture as well which is very important.”