Tony Mowbray wants another crack at managing in the Premier League - and believes Sunderland is the ideal stage on which to realise that ambition. Mowbray won the Championship with West Bromwich Albion in 2008 and managed the Baggies in the top flight in the 2008-09 season, although that campaign ultimately ended in relegation.
Since then he has managed in Scotland with Celtic and in the Championship and League One with Middlesbrough, Coventry City, and Blackburn, before taking over on Wearside in August but the 59-year-old still has the hunger to be a Premier League manager once more. "I'm of an age where I would like to manage in the Premier League and test the water again - I've done it before and I'd like to do it again," said Mowbray.
"I read the other day that [ex-Black Cats boss] Martin O'Neill said Sunderland will be in the Champions League one day - well, why not? I know down the road at Middlesbrough Steve Gibson feels that, because I've managed for him.
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"He feels his club should be back in the big time. Sunderland should definitely be back in the big time."
Mowbray has often said that Sunderland provides the perfect 'vehicle' for star striker Ross Stewart to realise his ambitions, as the club tries to tie the Scotland international down to a new contract. And he says the same applies as far as his own ambitions are concerned.
He said: "I wouldn't be here if I didn't think that. I've been a manager for 20 years, I had a 20-year football career, I have three boys and a lovely wife just down the road.
"This isn't just a vehicle for the players or for me, this is Sunderland and this club should be back in the big time."
Sunderland are enjoying an excellent season in their first year back in the Championship after winning promotion from League One via the play-offs last term. The Black Cats currently sit eighth in the table, just a point outside the play-off spots, and they are looking to strengthen during the transfer window this month.
But the club has made it clear that it will stick to its plan of incremental growth rather than risk the kind of financial troubles that have hit other clubs who have broke the bank in an attempt to win immediate promotion, only to fall short. "I understand the project," said Mowbray.
"This club has laid it out, they are going to try do it incrementally, they are not going to throw millions of pounds at this and that and record a £20m loss at the end of the year. That's not going to happen, so we have to accept that.
"There is a bigger plan, really, and I don't think the club is ready to throw the money at it that makes us record the huge losses that a lot of teams do in this league [chasing promotion]. But of course I want to get there quickly. Not necessarily this year, but I want the team to grow and be good.
"I want to enjoy watching the football, and when we play we expect to win, and we know we can cut through teams and create chances. Every now and then, a bad refereeing decision, an individual mistake, and you get beat because the momentum swings the other way, but I'd like to be a really good team that most games, most weeks, we dominate and win."
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