Tom English: ‘Tony Mowbray is a manager of substance, but just not here’

WHEN Tony Mowbray exited Celtic Park in March 2010 with all the grace of a man falling out of a tree, there can’t have been too many observers of his demise who would have bet so much as a brass farthing on him bouncing back anytime soon.

Hailed as the great redeemer in the wake of a Gordon Strachan era that – laughably then and even more uproariously now – wasn’t to the liking of many Celtic supporters – the trophies weren’t won the Celtic Way, it seems – Mowbray was chewed up by the intensity of life in Glasgow and spat out when results became horribly disfigured.

He departed after a crushing loss to St Mirren, by which time Mowbray was a beaten docket, a distracted man, hushed and conspiratorial, willing to believe that there were forces at work against him in Scottish football – referees and the like – a theme that was sadly continued thereafter.

A woe-is-us mentality took a hold of Mowbray’s team and it suffocated them. The kind of guys who might have rid them of these cop-out notions – Barry Robson, Scott McDonald, Gary Caldwell, Stephen McManus, Paul Hartley – had all left of their own accord or had been moved on. Mowbray sank and it wasn’t pretty.

His renaissance at Middlesbrough is an uplifting story. It shows that Mowbray is, indeed, a fine manager but one – à la Paul Le Guen – who just couldn’t handle the burden of Old Firm life. After yesterday’s 3-0 defeat to Championship leaders Southampton, Mowbray’s team are sitting fourth in the league, six points off top spot. He has dragged the club up the table despite having to take a blow-torch to the budget, slashing the wage bill from £26m to £12m, the ramification of the failed Strachan experiment that went before him.

Strachan splurged £20m and it just didn’t happen for him. When the time to smell the coffee arrived it was Mowbray doing the sniffing. Valued back-room staff departed in the cull. He had to go through the squad he inherited and eliminate many of the high earners. “I had to make some horrible decisions,” he said the other day. “We had to get players out. I had to say to them, ‘Look, don’t get upset, but we’ve got to tout you around’. I had a list of players, with their wages on it, and every decision was made with the budget in mind.”

The Celtic experience might be behind him now, but do you ever truly forget something like that? “I didn’t enjoy it, the intensity of it,” he said. “I try to be open and honest, maybe that’s naive up there. You would have thought I was the devil incarnate. The fit wasn’t right. I came back to a safe environment for my openness and my aim to build teams that play exciting, attacking football.”

He’s entitled to his view of what happened to him here. Some might agree, many would disagree. What is unarguable, though, is that he is more at home at Middlesbrough than he ever was as manager of Celtic, despite the hype that surrounded his arrival, hype that was whipped up by the likes of John Reid, who truly did him no favours. He did himself no favours either, but that is history. He has a new life now and it’s going well. Mowbray is a manager of substance, but just not here. He’s a decent man, too. You can only wish him well in his search for a return to the bounty of the Premiership.