Tony Mowbray this week returned to the club he calls home, when he took over as Middlesbrough manager. Following his unveiling on Tuesday, Chief Football Writer Paul Fraser met up with the man considered a legend on Teesside, a manager who knows how far his club has progressed since his playing days at Ayresome Park.

DESPITE accepting times have changed financially at the Riverside Stadium in recent years, Tony Mowbray was not the name on every Middlesbrough fan’s lips when he emerged as the leading contender to succeed Gordon Strachan.

By the time he had finished his first media conference as the club’s new manager this week, Mowbray had gone some way towards winning over his doubters.

While his reign will ultimately be judged on results, his love for the club he has supported since his primary school days shone through. He responded to every question thrown at him with the sort of answer fans have been looking for.

There was no sense Mowbray was speaking with the supporters in mind, spinning things just to ensure he got off on the right note.

He was talking from the heart, recollecting memories of his time supporting and playing for his boyhood club.

For someone who turns 47 next month, he has plenty to recall. Having been taken to his first match at Ayresome Park, he spent the next ten years becoming a regular figure in the Holgate End before fulfilling his dream of playing professionally in the shirt he wore as a boy.

Throughout the days of watching John Hickton blast in penalties in front of the Holgate End, an excited Mowbray became addicted to the smell of Bovril and it became almost impossible to miss a home match.

The events of a topsy-turvy ten-year career as a commanding centre-back under Malcolm Allison, Willie Maddren and, most famously, Bruce Rioch, remain fresh in his mind.

The days of liquidation in 1986 followed by instant backto- back promotions up to the top-flight cap them all.

But since his £1m sale to Celtic in 1991, it has taken Mowbray 19½ years to return.

He has been to matches – “my phone goes every week to tell me how the Boro got on” – but it has taken him until October, 2010, to make a professional return.

Mowbray is an experienced manager – this job is his fourth post since accepting the Hibernian role in 2004 – but even he would have to admit his latest is that little bit different.

He might not have the pressure to succeed which existed at Celtic, but he faces a different kind of pressure now.

“It is a proud moment because it is a team I supported. But let’s detach, I have to. I am a professional,”

said Mowbray, who remains as ambitious as ever even if the goalposts, so to speak, have changed quite a bit.

“I want to manage at the highest level I can. Let’s hope that is with Middlesbrough in the Champions League in five years’ time. I am proud to manage this team and hopefully I can achieve all my ambitions at the highest level with this club.

“I am a private person, so I know how to detach and deal with the situation I am now in.

“It will probably be harder for my mother when she goes out shopping in Redcar or my brother, Darren, when he hits Boro on a night out.”

Undoubtedly, parallels can be drawn with Mowbray’s early days at Ayresome Park.

The modern day Boro might not have the financial problems which existed in 1986, when Mowbray captained them through adversity out of the old third division after emerging from liquidation, but there are similarities.

Sitting third bottom of the Championship, the worst position the club has found itself in since Mowbray’s penultimate season as skipper, there have been real fears that a failure to emerge through bleak times soon could have major implications on the club’s economic well-being.

The alarming drop in attendances at the Riverside Stadium in the last five years is more significant now Middlesbrough are outside the riches of the Premier League.

“The club is nowhere near what it was in 1986,” said Mowbray. “Walking around the training facility here, it is unbelievable to see where the club is today.

“I think back to 86, training on parks, school fields, removing any dog dirt before you started training. It is a massively different club now.

“I remember the RIP above the Ayresome Gates, I remember Bruce (Rioch) saying ‘report to the ground and see where we will train’.

“Then we’d get back into our cars, bring our own kit, and head off to Billingham Synthonia.

“ Generally some of us would have to put our sweaters down for goalposts.

“Somehow Bruce managed to mould a team together. It was a bit of a fairytale story, football has moved on so I doubt it can be done again.

“Today we are at the wrong end of the Championship. We need the supporters back in hard economic times.

“People from the Boro, when people are all fighting for the same cause, they will come and hopefully we will be more successful.

“I have been to the Riverside with 35,000 THERE and I just hope together we can turn the boat around, steaming towards success.

“There are thousands out there who at this moment can’t see why they should come back. Hopefully we can draw them back, that’s the aim.”

Mowbray still owns a framed picture of the promotion winning team of 1987 standing in the directors’ box at Ayresome Park in front of thousands of fans who had invaded the pitch to celebrate after a goalless draw with Wigan.

With 18 points separating Middlesbrough from second spot 23 years later, it would appear unlikely he can repeat the heroics in his first year in charge.

His record as a manager, guiding Hibernian to a UEFA Cup place and West Bromwich Albion to promotion to the Premier League, offer an indication of his ability.

Many felt he had lost his touch after failing to lead Celtic to the Scottish Premier League title before he was sacked in March, but he remains adamant he was not the failure that was portrayed north of the border.

“My job is to create a football team and an entertaining side,” he said. “It wasn’t my decision to leave Celtic, that’s fine, that’s football.

“ I am confident in my own ability that I can build football teams. I am here to get on with the job. It is a big job of course because we don’t want to be third bottom of the Championship.

“What happened at Celtic hasn’t knocked my confidence.

Let’s put it into context, they weren’t relegated.

“We got to the semi-finals of the Scottish Cup, went out in the Champions League to Arsenal.

“I have no fears about the process of change. It is a chapter that has gone and I’m focused on trying to build a football team again.”

While other candidates were mooted, Mowbray’s achievements stood up alongside the best the rest of the candidature had to offer.

What should also bode well for the future with the fans, provided he is given the time to build his own team, is that Middlesbrough should play attractive football.

“I had a West Brom fan speak to me the other day to tell me how he had not been to a West Brom game for 15 years until he happened to go to one of the matches while I was in charge,” said Mowbray.

“He now has a season ticket for him and for his son, he was basically saying ‘thank you’ to me. I now want to bring the fans back here.”

Ever since he stepped into coaching towards the back end of his playing days at Ipswich Town, where he was caretaker manager for a short time after George Burley’s dismissal, Mowbray has been striving for the perfect brand of football.

“For me every manager should aim for football utopia, an ideal team,” he said. “This fast flowing machine that wins game after game.

“It is a process you go through. How long it takes will depend on a number of things.

“The process starts here, I have to put the pieces of the jigsaw in place. In doing that we will have to entertain the supporters.

“There’s no magic wand that creates fast, free-flowing football. It is putting it together bit by bit. It happens over time. I try to preach good habits. Utopia is having this free-flowing passing.

“When I went to Scotland I got hammered for this so I have to be careful of using it.

But when you watch Spain you see Iniesta, Xavi, great players passing the ball to each other, with the perfect weight of pass, easy on the eye football.

“That is close to football utopia. Yet Del Bosque and Guardiola are still looking to add to that all the time.

“Football can be a science if you want to make it a science.

In Spain and Barcelona, I see football intelligence, I see soccer nous. Players who know where to go, how to suck a defender in and exploit it.

When you have 11 players, or 20, who understand then you are closing in on football utopia.”

Such an outcome is a million miles away from where he now finds himself, eyeing up a route out of the Championship’s relegation zone that must start against Bristol City today.

After a dreadful start to the second season outside the Premier League, the Boro fans would settle for three points today rather than entertaining football.

It is safe to assume Mowbray, likely to have added a few thousand to the gate this afternoon, would take that as a starting point too.