Mowbray kicks off his second spell in his home town

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·20 Januari 2025

Mowbray kicks off his second spell in his home town

Middlesbrough v West Bromwich Albion; Riverside Stadium, Tuesday 21st January 2025, 7.45pm

Tony Mowbray’s return to the Hawthorns for his second spell as head coach may not have been universally welcomed, but I feel that the vast majority of Baggies fans are excited to see Mogga return. When he left 16 years ago to take up the reins at Celtic Park, few begrudged him the opportunity but most were sorry to see him go despite him having overseen Albion’s relegation back to the Championship.

Roy Hodgson and Tony Pulis may have achieved more in terms of league finishes at the Hawthorns, but for many Albion fans too young to have witnessed Ron Atkinson’s great side of the late 70s, the 2007/08 campaign under Mowbray was the best they’ve seen in terms of excitement and thrilling football, and his return will undoubtedly raise the prospect of those times returning. He was the last Albion manager to take a side to Wembley, a feat he achieved twice, the last Albion manager to take a side to the FA Cup semi-final and, of course, the last man to guide the club to a league title.

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Of course, there is no guarantee of success and Albion hardly have a good record with returning managers. Ron Atkinson and Johnny Giles failed to repeat the success of their first spells while the only other man to have had two bites of the Albion manager cherry, Ronnie Allen, failed to come close to his success as a player in either period at the helm.

However, hope springs eternal and, perhaps, the one difference with those three returning managers is that club is being much better run now than in was during the decline of the 1980s when they all returned. Furthermore, the club is on an upward trend and very much in the mix at the right end of the table and, as Mowbray said in his interview on the club website, he sees a squad with plenty of good players that perhaps just need to be let off the lease a little.

It is a great press story, of course, with Mowbray having just got the all clear having recovered from bowel cancer, returning to a former club with whom he enjoyed success, with the added twist that his first game is away to Middlesbrough, his home town club for whom he played more than four hundred games and later managed. He remains well loved on Teesside, of course, and I’m sure he will get a fantastic reception.

As it will be his first team selection, it is difficult to predict what it might look like on Tuesday evening, but I doubt it will be markedly different from the side Brunt picked for Saturday’s draw with Stoke. With just one full day’s training to assess the squad, Mowbray is unlikely to have too many dramatic discoveries to act on and, furthermore, it’s unrealistic to expect the team to play massively different in this opening game. Changes will certainly come, but probably gradually.

As for the opposition, much of the talk around Carrick’s team has been regarding striker Emmanuel Latte Lath – the Ivorian has been strongly linked with a moved away from the Riverside but the club’s top scorer remains at the club at the time of writing with no bids accepted and he is expected to feature in the game, as he did on Saturday scoring in the 2-1 defeat at Portsmouth.

That was Boro’s first league defeat since they were beaten at Leeds United in early December but they have drawn too many games recently against sides in the lower reaches of the table included 3-3 results against Plymouth Argyle and Sheffield Wednesday. They currently sit level on points with Albion but outside the top six on goal difference.

It’s an important game in terms of the play-off picture, but with eighteen games still to play after this match, it’s not going to decide anything. While Albion have drawn far too many games this season, I certainly wouldn’t turn down a point in this match.

For the record, Mowbray started his first spell at the club with a 3-0 win over Wolves at the Hawthorns.

History

Tuesday evening’s match will be the 100th league meeting between Middlesbrough and Albion with the hosts leading the head-to-head record with 42 wins to 34. Three of the Baggies’ nine wins on Teesside have come at the Riverside Stadium including, of course, the famous 5-0 win in September 2009 when Albion’s outgoing caretaker head coach, Chris Brunt, scored twice.

New Baggies boss and Boro’ legend, Tony Mowbray, had overseen a Premier League victory at the Riverside the previous year when Jonas Olsson’s goal was enough to secure all three points. The only other time that Mogga has managed either side in this fixture was in the return game at the Hawthorns in January 2009 with Albion running out 3-0 winners.

The Baggies’ most recent win at the Riverside was in October 2019 when Hal Robson-Kanu’s late goal won the match for Slaven Bilić’s team. In the three wins since then, Albion eared a 1-1 draw in July 2022 and lost by the odd goal in both February 2022 and December 2023.

Seven of Albion’s nine wins away to Boro’s have been 1-0. Other than the 5-0 win in 2009, the other win was 2-1 in October 1901 at Linthorpe Road, a cricket ground that was Boro’s home between 1882 and 1903, when they moved to Ayresome Park. Billy Lee and Chippy Simmons scored Albion’s goals that day for Frank Heaven’s team that would go on to win the Division Two title and return to the top flight. It was Middlesbrough’s only home defeat of the campaign and they would finish as runners-up to the Throstles, winning promotion to Division One for the first time in their history.