NINETEEN years after leaving Middlesbrough as a player, Tony Mowbray has become the Championship club’s latest manager and outlined a desire to bring passion and excitement back to the Riverside Stadium.

With a hundred or so supporters standing between the Ayresome Park gates to meet and greet their returning hero, Mowbray delivered an emotive first media conference that should have helped unite the club’s supporters once more.

But there is a determination on his part to deliver to those from an area where he hails from himself, knowing just what a successful football team can do for the town.

Middlesbrough as a football club may no longer be on its knees as it was when he would train under Bruce Rioch in a local park, putting his sweater down for a goalpost, but he is well aware of the task at hand.

He is convinced, though, that he can succeed; succeed in bringing the good times back to a club that has seen attendances drop from more than 30,000 to under 15,000 inside the last four years.

“I have been a Middlesbrough fan since I was six or seven. I used to stand on the terraces at Ayresome Park with my dad so this was an opportunity I wanted to take,” said Mowbray, who will be assisted by his long-term Hartlepool-born No. 2 Mark Venus.

“I want to steer this club back to the Premier League. Every manager wants to manage in the Premier League, the supporters want to see the best players and we have to get this club moving in the right direction again.”

The 46-year-old took charge of his first training session at Rockliffe Park yesterday encouraged by what he had to work with, while admitting that changes to the team’s approach are required.

It is Mowbray’s intention to bring with him the free-flowing, entertaining football that he became renowned for at Hibernian, West Brom and Celtic, even if he was sacked for failing to deliver the Scottish Premier League title in April.

During his time at Parkhead he granted Gordon Strachan permission to sign Scott McDonald, Stephen McManus, Willo Flood and Barry Robson, which has led to claims that he will face immediate unrest in the Middlesbrough dressing room.

Mowbray, however, said: “Footballers understand the way football is. There was no fall out. They were all sat in the front row today when I met the squad, looking at me straight in the eye, and hopefully looking forward to it.

“There’s some quality Scottish players here. It is easy to blame the people the came in because they were the last arrivals, but even the players who were at Rangers I know about.

“Kevin Thomson I worked with at Hibs, he is a fantastic personality and fantastic player. Kris Boyd scored for Kilmarnock in my first game with Hibs, we lost 1-0. They are good players and they know their jobs.

“There was no forcing players out of the door at Celtic. When I sat in front of them today it was ‘how are you gaffer? Good to see you. Good luck.’ We get on with it.”

It might have been his record of succeeding at West Brom and Hibernian that helped to persuade chairman Steve Gibson to bring him back to Teesside, but his return should have galvanised sections of the supporters.

And, after signing a rolling contract, is keen to see the Riverside, awash with empty red seats in recent times, return to its former glory.

“On my first day, when I took training, I got back in to the office and I had seven or eight messages on my phone,” said Mowbray, whose first match in charge will be Saturday’s visit of bottom club Bristol City. “I have been away for 19 and a half years and every week my phone goes and it tells me how Middlesbrough have got on, how Middlesbrough have played. I’m pretty sure that will intensify now.

“Middlesbrough is a special place. I go on holiday and there are Middlesbrough people everywhere. You need that passion channeled in to the club once more.

“That is when the Riverside is bouncing and we need them back. I’m very proud of being at the helm of trying to steer this ship in the right direction.”