Milestones or anniversaries aren’t something Tony Mowbray will be concerning himself with.

Whether it be time or matches in charge, number of wins or manager of the month nominations, Mowbray may well be clocking up the achievements, but he’s not giving them too much thought.

Victory over Middlesbrough was Mowbray’s 104th win as Rovers manager, overtaking Sir Kenny Dalglish’s 103, which means only five men in the club’s history have chalked up more.

He is closing in on Bobby Saxton’s 257 games in charge which would leave only Jack Marshall (329) ahead of him in the post-War managers, while Bob Crompton 116 wins is the next man for him to catch in those standings.

 Though don’t expect Mowbray to pay much attention should he reach that.

“My whole life is about football and my family,” he said.

“Accolades? Someone was saying to me the other day, ‘how did you not get manager of the month?’

“You get a little glass trophy, I’ve got 20 of them stuck in my office, why do I want another one? It’s about winning football matches on Saturday and Tuesday night.

“It’s not about your accolades or how many games you’ve won. If you don’t win enough games then you won’t be a manager for very long.

“That’s what football is. It doesn’t matter to me what the stats are saying.

“If I want to manage another five or 10 years, hopefully I can do it because I’m helping teams win football matches.

“If I don’t win, people will say ‘when are you going to retire, Tony?’ I think football retires you, really.

“You don’t win football matches, the phone doesn’t ring when you’re out of work and then you’re retired.

“That’s the harshness of it and I understand it, I have from the day I started. I have to find a way to win with the group of players I’ve got and find the best way to play with this group of players to win the match.

“Whether that’s total football or total defence, or whatever it might be, you have to win.

“Football fans only really care at the end of the day about three points.”

That’s not to say that Mowbray doesn’t have ambitions of his own which he will look to fulfil in the remaining 18 games.

He has managed two of the clubs he served as a player in Middlesbrough and Celtic and won the Championship with West Brom and also led the Baggies out at Wembley in an FA Cup semi-final.

His one season of Premier League management ended in disappointment with West Brom in 2008/09, Mowbray the opposition manager for Tugay’s farewell game in May 2009.

And the 58-year-old has ambitions of managing in the Premier League once again and break the stereotype more recently associated with top-flight coaches.

If he is to do that, he believes he will have to take a team up from the Championship, a prospect he has with Rovers who currently sit second in the Championship standings.

A student of the game and football nut, Mowbray would want nothing more than to pit his wits against some of the best coaches in the world and fly the flag for what he deems more unfashionable managers.

He told the Lancashire Telegraph: “I want to manage against Pep Guardiola and Jurgen Klopp and you don’t have to be a sexy foreign manager to achieve.

“I’ve been in the Premier League for a season with West Brom at a time when it was very difficult.

“It appeared to me at the time they wanted to go up and down so they got the money, then the parachute payments, build the infrastructure.

“Jeremy Peace was my owner at the time and he bought it for about £7m and sold it for around £150m.

“Did we have a chance? We spent £4m the season we got promoted, we played with the same team in the Premier League.

“The second half of the season we would have finished 10th with that form (over the whole season), they needed to adjust and they didn’t.

“But they did the following year and got promotion straight back and stayed there for seven years.

“I’d like to manage in the Premier League, I truly believe that you have to take a team up to manage in the Premier League, it’s very unlikely as a Championship manager that you’re going to get a job in the Premier League.

“It does happen, Graham Potter did, it can happen, but it’s very unlikely if you’re not a sexy, young manager.

“If you’re a 58-year-old man it’s probably not going to happen.”