Tony Mowbray has strong feelings on the type of manager Rovers should appoint as his replacement – but says he hasn’t communicated those with the club.

Mowbray met with chief executive Steve Waggott last week at the Senior Training Centre as his time as Rovers manager comes to an end after five years.

Rovers are set to confirm Mowbray’s impending departure to draw a line under what has become a drawn out process ever since he confirmed he would leave at the end of his contract last month.

It leaves owners Venky’s searching for their eighth permanent manager since taking over the club in November 2010, with Mowbray having been in charge for 267 matches across his five year spell.

While the players have had some time off in the wake of the season finishing, Mowbray and his staff are in this week to debrief the 2021/22 season.

Decisions on players have been made, pre-season friendlies and trips away lined up, while recruitment work has also been an ongoing process.

Although his contract runs until June 30, with the process of finding a new manager under way, Mowbray doesn’t expect to see that out.

He believes the next manager should be someone able to guide and nurture Rovers’ group of talented, but young, players if the model is to remain the same.

While he has discussed that openly in his press conferences, Mowbray says that wasn’t something brought up during his chat with Waggott who he has backed to take a ‘sensible approach’ to the new manager search.

Asked if he’d communicated his thoughts on who Rovers should be looking at in their managerial search, Mowbray said: “I think Steve knows.

“They haven’t asked me for an opinion on the next manager, so I would never offer it, other than surreptitiously in these chats and people will either pick it up, or they won’t.

“That’s because I have a feeling for the players.

“I’ve been a player when we’ve had a real coach and then a bully come in, and it’s massively different, yet everyone expects the results to keep coming.

“I just hope they get it right, Steve is long enough in the tooth, he’s been around football a long, long time and I’m sure the club will take a sensible approach.”

Mowbray said he would thank the Rao family for the opportunity to manage the club for such an extended period should he speak with them about his departure.

He has outlined areas of the club he feels need improving, including the behind the scenes operation, and those are understood to have been issues he would have raised should any talks over extending his contract been had.

Mowbray has raised areas he feels need to be addressed, such as investment in the first-team, issues he said would raise with the owners through an email.

“I’m leaving, I don’t want to be that guy,” he explained after the win at Birmingham

“I will write them an email and I’ve started writing something that I haven’t sent yet.

“Those are just my thoughts to them.

“They either will rip that up and throw it in the bin, because I’m not there and it doesn’t matter and they discuss it with the chief executive and Suhail.

“Or whether they’re not interested, I don’t know.

“I’ll send them an email and thank them for the opportunity they have given me.

“When I arrived, I believe the relationship wasn’t great between the supporters and the football club. That was the message I got.

“I feel that’s got better, I don’t hear the supporters singing against the Venky’s every week.

“I feel as though we’ve mended that.”

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