Tony Mowbray admits he felt 'part of the furniture' after five-and-a-half years at Blackburn Rovers - but his move to Sunderland has provided the new challenge that has 're-energised' him. Mowbray left Blackburn when his contract ran out at the end of last season and took a much-needed break with his family over the summer before the prospect of leading Sunderland in the Championship provided an opportunity he could not pass up when the job became available at the end of August.
The 59-year-old's brief was to re-establish the Black Cats in the second tier after their promotion from League One, but under his tutelage they have exceeded all expectations, finishing sixth and earning a place in the play-offs where they will meet Luton Town in the semi-final first leg at the Stadium of Light later today. Mowbray enjoyed his time at Blackburn and has nothing but good things to say about the club but, with no new contract offer forthcoming, he decided to leave last summer and says it was the right decision.
"I didn't know where my future was going to be but I was confident enough in my ability," said Mowbray, who left Blackburn along with his long-time number two Mark Venus, who moved with him to Wearside. "We had taken Blackburn from League One to a team that was turning down big, huge, sums of millions of pounds for its footballers and that was competing at the top end of the Championship.
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"We had built and grown the football club, we felt, but my contract was expiring, there was no talk [about a new contract], and I with my family decided that we'd go on some nice holidays and relax over the summer, then let's see when the season starts again. If you talk in management about where you think your stock might be, I felt as though we had done a pretty good job at Blackburn and that somewhere along the line, somebody would need a football coach and I'd get back to work.
"You can sometimes take a breather, mentally, which is what we decided to do as a family. I'd been away [working at Blackburn] five-and-a-half years, I'd missed the main years of my children's lives, their educational lives growing up.
"My boys are 18, 16 this week, and 13, and if you take five-and-a-half years off that, my eldest was 13, my middle one was 11 and my youngest was eight when I left to go to Blackburn. Now they are all men, just about, with girlfriends - one of them has got a car!
"They are going out and I'm thinking 'where did my life go?' I missed that crucial part. So I had no problem saying to my wife that we should go on some lovely holidays and that I should spend some time with my kids.
"That summer I went in the cages at the hotel and played football with them, and just was a dad, really. I paraglided with them and had a go at paddle boarding and what have you. But when the opportunity to come to Sunderland arrived, because I'm 30 miles down the road, it allowed me to still be a dad and a husband and yet come to work and do what I love doing.
"I'm enjoying it. It's re-energised me because five-and-a-half years in one job becomes tough; you are part of the furniture. I felt that with the fans more than anything. There was an expectancy that they wanted promotion, we'd been growing the team, but it's never enough.
"Everybody knows the answers, everybody thinks you should be doing better. Somewhere down the line, that will happen here - if I'm here long enough!
"That's just part of the journey I think, unless you're [former Manchester United boss] Sir Alex Ferguson and you get rid of your best players every now and then when they get to an age and keep on reinventing the team - but that's easier to do when you can break world records and sign players from top teams."
Mowbray is under contract for another year and there is no prospect of him being forced out this summer despite rumours that have resurfaced this week claiming the club might make a change. But he accepts that all managers have a shelf-life at a club, and has vowed that when he eventually leaves Sunderland he will hand over a quality team to his successor.
Mowbray said: "I genuinely think that every club I have left, I feel that when I have left I have passed on a good team. Hibernian won the League Cup months after I left. West Brom got promoted the year I left for Celtic.
"I feel we leave good teams, so the day I leave this club, I hope you have a really good team with really good players. If for whatever reason I leave - maybe because we've gone on a five or six-game run where we don't win, and the fans moan, and the owner thinks 'we can get this young guy from so-and-so and he'll be good, so we'll get rid of that old git' - that's just life, isn't it?
"I'm pretty relaxed about it."
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