Tony Mowbray Discussion

[Darrenbot]

4 minutes ago, Ewood Ace said:

They wouldn't, the bloke is one of the worst if not the worst manager in their entire history.

John Barnes gives him a challenge to be the worst ever.

[Darrenbot]

There's an excellent write up here of his tenure as Celtic player and manager.

http://www.thecelticwiki.com/page/Mowbray%2C+Tony

[oldjamfan1]

6 minutes ago, Darrenbot said:

John Barnes gives him a challenge to be the worst ever.

Barnes' record at Celtic was far from the worst, which is somewhat surprising (albeit he didn't get that many games).

I think Lou Macari and Liam Brady might be more on a par with Mowbray at Celtic if I remember correctly. 

Edited January 19, 2021 by oldjamfan1

[Darrenbot]

Just now, oldjamfan1 said:

Barnes' record at Celtic was far from the worst, which is somewhat surprising (albeit he didn't get that many games).

I think Lou Macari and Liam Brady might be more on a par with Mowbray at Celtic if I remember correctly. T

the infamous  Inverness Caledonian Thistle defeat was when Barnes was manager,thats what i remember most of his time as Celtic boss.

[DE.]

I don't have any issue with Mowbray's performance in his first two and a half seasons. I never blamed him for us being relegated, he got us up at the first attempt from L1 and we consolidated in mid-table the season after that.

The last season and a half have been pretty shit though. Long stretches of really poor football, the famed death spirals, questionable transfers and refusal to address our obvious defensive problems, increasingly stupid quotes in the media and no sense of real direction or purpose. 

TM did a decent job for us initially - better than I would have expected. He's tried to give the club some structure with the scouting network. He's achieved a trust with the owners which has allowed him to keep our better players and have some money to spend on building the squad. There have been positives under his tenure.

Unfortunately as with most managers he's reached the point where he's taken us as far as he can. His limitations as a tactician and a motivator are holding us back. I think some of the comments and criticism towards him are too harsh, but a significant amount of them are completely legitimate and make a very strong case for change.

[JHRover]

13 minutes ago, Darrenbot said:

There's an excellent write up here of his tenure as Celtic player and manager.

http://www.thecelticwiki.com/page/Mowbray%2C+Tony

12 years on from then and pretty much everything can be applied to Rovers

Well backed in the transfer market, liked as a person by most who encounter him, good intentions, yet all the same problems - bizarre tactics and subs, Tinkering Tony, head in hands on the subs bench, unable to handle big pressure games (when we get close to the top.6).

A leopard doesn't change his spots and this is history repeating itself.

[Ewood Ace]

1 hour ago, oldjamfan1 said:

I think Lou Macari and Liam Brady might be more on a par with Mowbray at Celtic if I remember correctly. 

The difference with them though is that they were that they were managing a club on the brink of bankruptcy before Fergus McCann saved them. Mowbray inherited a good side from Strachan and was very well backed financially. To this day there can't have been many if indeed any in Scottish football who have earnt the wages that Celtic were paying for Robbie Keane.

[oldjamfan1]

2 hours ago, Ewood Ace said:

The difference with them though is that they were that they were managing a club on the brink of bankruptcy before Fergus McCann saved them. Mowbray inherited a good side from Strachan and was very well backed financially. To this day there can't have been many if indeed any in Scottish football who have earnt the wages that Celtic were paying for Robbie Keane.

I'm just going off what my Celtic season ticket-holding friends and family say about the various managers they have had during my time in Glasgow, which just about goes back to the managers I have mentioned. Its a fair point about the 'biscuit tin' times, although they were still better off in terms of being able to attract players than all bar one other club up here, just for a bit of perspective.

The other thing about Barnes' tenure at Celtic Park is that Henrik Larsson had that really bad injury. Most teams would struggle when losing their talisman like that. Even Dalglish at Ewood suffered from a slump in results when Newell and then Shearer got injured in 91/2 and 92/3. I think Celtic fans came to realise just how important King Henrik was to them over the following few seasons. 

Edited January 19, 2021 by oldjamfan1

[philipl]

4 hours ago, Ulrich said:

He should have kept us up, we had the opportunites too, Norwich springs to mind. He screwed up our relegation fight as I believe we should have survived, but he cannot shut a team out. 

The one aspect that pisses me off is the fact he is obsessed with us trying to play like Liverpool. Our formation, playing a deep lying forward with wide forwards, possession with no purpose, lack of cohesion, he just cannot coach. So trying to copy seems foolhardy and we clearly need better. We have good players, we should have our own style, developed to suit our strengths, but alas TM seems to lack originality and creative thought. We need better, the table does not lie, we have stagnated, 3 years is a serious time frame in football. Someone call a cab. 

Barnsley home- he got that horribly wrong.

[Bbrovers2288]

19 hours ago, JHRover said:

Mowbray's initial target was to keep us up. That's what he was appointed to do, that was the task he was given when he got the job. I am confident that he didn't get the job based on his ability to get us out of League One or because he told them we were doomed but he would sort it out in years to come.

He got it because he told them he would keep us in the Championship and it was all hands to the pump in doing that. It seems one of the reasons he got the gig was because he agreed to work with existing coaching staff in Lowe, Dunn and Benson (always a bad sign that a club would impose coaches on a manager to save a few quid rather than have enough faith in the manager to select his own staff and back him on those decisions).

Mowbray failed to achieve his target, we were relegated. Do I blame him for relegation? Not at all, we were close to staying up, we had decent form over that spell of games and the cause of relegation was what happened before he arrived. Still I expect he told them he could do it and he didn't so target missed.

Something happened in the summer of 2017 where he quickly went off to India, had words with the head honchos and got what he wanted - a long term contract, Paul Senior down the road, Mark Venus in as his assistant and in the process effectively secured complete control over the club on a day to day basis and also a good chunk of backing from the owners. Quite impressive for a handful of meetings. 

The result was that we went into League One with one of the most expensive and talent laden squads that League has ever seen. Promotion was the requirement and it was achieved. Job done. It was a success, but not an overachievement in any measure. Comparisons to Sunderland and Ipswich are no more relevant than comparisons to Wigan, Bolton, Wolves, Norwich and many others who bounced straight back.

Mowbray gets a promotion on his CV, an improved contract and retains control over the club, earning himself bucket loads of respect and patience from the fans to crack on and do it his way. He claims he has advised the owners to not spend heavily in search of promotion and instead follow the slow build approach of assembling a quality laden squad over a few years which will allegedly stand us in better stead.

A couple of mid-table finishes without ever seriously even threatening the top 6 never mind any higher. Not great but not bad.

By now it is clear the slow build isn't delivering, we just limp along going around in circles.

The problem for me isn't so much that we aren't in the top 6 this season. It's that at no point in the last 3 years have we ever gone close to establishing ourselves in there and if anything now we are moving further away from it the longer Mowbray is in charge. Remember previously he relied so heavily on the dressing room he inherited - Graham, Mulgrew, Bennett, Conway, Evans - and the more we move on from such players the further away we seem to get.

I've seen nothing, absolutely nothing, in the last 18 months to make me thing there is any real point in handing him another season to repeat the same mistakes. This isn't a bloke who is going to suddenly change his ways or his habits or his beliefs. 

There is an incredible level of negativity and narrow mindedness knocking about online from people who seem to think Mowbray is some sort of messiah who knows it all and no other manager could ever deliver what he can or that there are scant alternatives out there.

Actually for clued up and ambitious clubs there are many, many, many options out there, more than you could possibly get through discussions with all options, yet the attitude at this club is just 'can't do' rather than 'can do'. Think small rather than think big. Find reasons why we can't do things rather than reasons we can. We can't compete, we can't afford a new pitch, we can't expect better, we can't get a better manager or coaching staff. Repeat endlessly and convince yourselves it is the truth.

Superb post and sums up my feelings to a t

[J*B]

9 hours ago, Paul Mani said:

I think Mowbray is feeling the pressure of his early season eulogising!

Everyday there’s something else now...the pitch, the schedule, COVID, injuries, budget, size of the analyst room etc...when a manager starts to do that it’s because basically they’ve blown their load.

He’s been talking about this journey and our ‘transition’ into this possession based team for 18 months but the end of the road is in his sights now. This is his team, playing his way and sadly it’s not working. That leaves managers in a really tight spot...

I really hope it doesn’t become to painful for him. I genuinely think he’s a good guy who’s done a good job but he’s in danger of ruining all of his own hard work.

Those suggesting he’s immoral and topping up his pension are wrong. By all accounts he’s and absolute gentleman and no one works harder. Spends a lot of time away from his family.

Really hope he can turn it around but it’s starting to feel like the beginning of the end for him. Be nice if he got the Celtic job tbh...then he could leave with his head held high and we can freshen it up. Let’s see.

I’ve never agreed with you so many times before! 
 

I also found Chaddy’s tipping point reference very funny!

[RevidgeBlue]

23 minutes ago, Bbrovers2288 said:

Superb post and sums up my feelings to a t

Indeed.

Without wanting to reproduce JH's excellent post in full again, I think one of Mowbray's main failings ihas been the fact he isn't ruthless enough and relying on people like the ones you quoted - who got us relegated in the first place and who aren't good enough if we're serious about promotion from this division.

Similarly, he isn't ruthless enough with loans that don't work out, seems to think it will affect the player's confidence if we send them back early, Walton, Douglas etc. He's here to act in the best interests of the Club not the players themselves, that's their agents job.

All far too cosy and not good enough.

[RoversClitheroe]

If anyone recommends Lampard as a management replacement he's on a par with Mowbray if not worse.

[roversfan99]

Im not sure that anyone in their right mind would recommend that the current Chelsea manager could take the Rovers job.

[simongarnerisgod]

40 minutes ago, RoversClitheroe said:

If anyone recommends Lampard as a management replacement he's on a par with Mowbray if not worse.

franks in over his head,he does have similar qualities to tony in the fact he can make good players look absolutely bang average

[RoversClitheroe]

34 minutes ago, roversfan99 said:

Im not sure that anyone in their right mind would recommend that the current Chelsea manager could take the Rovers job.

People still reckon Mowbray is the man tbf....

[Ulrich]

13 hours ago, philipl said:

Barnsley home- he got that horribly wrong.

You’re right he did, didn't he. 

TM had the opportunities to keep the club up during our relegation season. I know this will sound harsh, but TMs biggest failure is without doubt his intellect, or lack of it. I listen to him talk and he appears to have a magic ability to contradict himself in the same conversation. It's amusing if you are emotionally detached, but I am not. This lack of intelligence transpires in the majority of his responsibilities at rovers. Tactics, team selection, transfers and so on, for me this is the primary reason we must role the dice, he does not appear to have the ability to achieve what we need, as it is beyond his ability. Harsh but I think it is true. 

Edited January 20, 2021 by Ulrich
Grammar

[MarkBRFC]

Like others have said, I first started to have serious reservations about him during that horror run in 2019 when we lost 9 out of 11 games, I think that stands as our worst run of form since the war?

I did initially think after that though that maybe we should give him the benefit of the doubt going into the next season, then we sold our keeper to buy Gallagher, and didn't seem to have any plan in place for a replacement GK at all.

Then we lined up against Charlton at Ewood on the opening day of the season, Rothwell who was our stand out player in the last 6 games or so of the season before was left on the bench to accommodate his mate Downing, Nyambe was left out to accommodate Bennett, Gallagher started over our player of the season from the year before Danny Graham, Mulgrew started in defence as captain despite Mowbray slating him the year before and saying "defenders were coming" (they weren't). We didn't see him again in the first team until the end of June.

To cap it off, we were losing 2-1 in one of the worst opening day performances I have ever seen with 10 minutes left and one sub remaining, he then decides to leave his £7 million man on the bench who was on the back of a really good pre season where he had managed to score a few goals, and bought on John Buckley instead!

Ever since then I have thought Mowbray just isn't going to get this club above lower/mid table in this league, and I haven't seen anything in the 18 months since to change my mind.

 

 

[BlackburnEnd75]

I've known Mowbray isn't an amazing manager since Doncaster at home second game of the league one season. 

Even when he was doing a good job it's always been at the back of my mind.

I mention it on here every now and again but it baffles me to this day.

He basically massively overreacted to the defeat at Southend and set up incredibly negatively with a team full of logical holes. Team that day was:

                                 Raya

Caddis     Nyambe     Ward     Mulgrew       Williams

                  Smallwood      Evans

Whittingham                                Bennett

                          Graham

His time was up when we lost 9 out of 11. games in the second half of 18/19.

 

Edited January 20, 2021 by BlackburnEnd75

[JHRover]

The straw that broke the camel's back for me was the horror show at Preston in October 2019. Our inept management of that game and complete collapse told me all I needed to know about this manager and his team. 

We had something of a recovery after that so the hysteria died down a bit but also numerous other calamitous performances and results including somehow losing to 10 men Birmingham in the Cup in January. 

Then Covid came along and I was content to just leave things stable for the time being, the view being that ensuring survival was the most crucial thing.

We had our usual giddy spell after beating Bristol City after the restart to get people looking at the top 6 followed by the usual collapse back into mid table. 

in the end as more time has passed it has become clear that whilst Mowbray has done good at this club and in many ways is ideal to keep things steady and ticking along he simply doesn't have what it takes to get us out of this league.

You could probably apply that to every element of the football club - not being to the level required to lead us back to the top flight - but management and coaching staff are the central issue and need upgrading for there to be any chance of promotion.

If you are happy to just bobble along and not do anything but watch as the same old mistakes are made every year then we won't ever get promoted. I want promotion and I think the club needs it.

[RoversClitheroe]

15 minutes ago, JHRover said:

The straw that broke the camel's back for me was the horror show at Preston in October 2019. Our inept management of that game and complete collapse told me all I needed to know about this manager and his team. 

We had something of a recovery after that so the hysteria died down a bit but also numerous other calamitous performances and results including somehow losing to 10 men Birmingham in the Cup in January. 

Then Covid came along and I was content to just leave things stable for the time being, the view being that ensuring survival was the most crucial thing.

We had our usual giddy spell after beating Bristol City after the restart to get people looking at the top 6 followed by the usual collapse back into mid table. 

in the end as more time has passed it has become clear that whilst Mowbray has done good at this club and in many ways is ideal to keep things steady and ticking along he simply doesn't have what it takes to get us out of this league.

You could probably apply that to every element of the football club - not being to the level required to lead us back to the top flight - but management and coaching staff are the central issue and need upgrading for there to be any chance of promotion.

If you are happy to just bobble along and not do anything but watch as the same old mistakes are made every year then we won't ever get promoted. I want promotion and I think the club needs it.

Stop speaking so much sense JH! 

I do think this team is good enough to get top 6, just as you say Mowbray isn't the man.

[Gordon Gekko]

1 hour ago, BlackburnEnd75 said:

I've known Mowbray isn't an amazing manager since Doncaster at home second game of the league one season. 

Even when he was doing a good job it's always been at the back of my mind.

I mention it on here every now and again but it baffles me to this day.

He basically massively overreacted to the defeat at Southend and set up incredibly negatively with a team full of logical holes. Team that day was:

                                 Raya

Caddis     Nyambe     Ward     Mulgrew       Williams

                  Smallwood      Evans

Whittingham                                Bennett

                          Graham

His time was up when we lost 9 out of 11. games in the second half of 18/19.

 

OMG! WTF is with that team 😂 I’m probably quicker than the front 5 and haven’t done any exercise for years!

Edited January 20, 2021 by Gordon Gekko

[Mercer]

8 hours ago, Ulrich said:

You’re right he did, didn't he. 

TM had the opportunities to keep the club up during our relegation season. I know this will sound harsh, but TMs biggest failure is without doubt his intellect, or lack of it. I listen to him talk and he appears to have a magic ability to contradict himself in the same conversation. It's amusing if you are emotionally detached, but I am not. This lack of intelligence transpires in the majority of his responsibilities at rovers. Tactics, team selection, transfers and so on, for me this is the primary reason we must role the dice, he does not appear to have the ability to achieve what we need, as it is beyond his ability. Harsh but I think it is true. 

I think Mowbray's game management is very poor.

IMO, he is unable to change the course of a game in the way the good managers do - his substitutions for a start are, IMO, baffling and disruptive.  For example, Rodgers made a couple of tweaks to Leicester last night both at half time and in the last quarter - tweaks enabling them to see off Chelsea.

I recall from our relegation season a number of games where, IMO, we ended up with one point instead of three and losing instead of drawing quite simply due to Mowbray's poor game management.  Yes he improved on Coyle's points / game ratio but he was employed to keep us up and FAILED.  We were relegated on goal difference and, IMO, we were relegated because of both Coyle and Mowbray.

[roversfan99]

3 hours ago, RoversClitheroe said:

Stop speaking so much sense JH! 

I do think this team is good enough to get top 6, just as you say Mowbray isn't the man.

Is the side top 6 material? Of course majorly down to Mowbray and issues in the transfer market, but I dont get how it could be considered top 6.

Armstrongs goal record make him a top 6 striker. Dack probably could be in with a shout too when fully fit. Chuck in Elliott and there may be enough goals there to mount a top 6 run. Looking further back, none of the centre backs are, the left backs are crap, Nyambe is decent but not sure he is top 6 calibre on par with the likes of Max Aarons, Adam Smith, Connor Roberts, Kiko Femenia etc. Kaminski, I think hes been decent but not sure he has been stand out enough to go next to Ben Foster, Tim Krul, Asmir Begovic, Freddie Woodman etc. Travis is decent, but top 6 calibre? Not too sure about that. And then plenty who flatter to deceive 9 times out of 10, Rothwell, Holtby, Johnson, Brereton etc.

I think potentially that a good manager could maybe overachieve and get us in there if the side became well drilled, organised, with clarity and a clear outlook that suited the players here. 

[Ulrich]

42 minutes ago, Mercer said:

I think Mowbray's game management is very poor.

IMO, he is unable to change the course of a game in the way the good managers do - his substitutions for a start are, IMO, baffling and disruptive.  For example, Rodgers made a couple of tweaks to Leicester last night both at half time and in the last quarter - tweaks enabling them to see off Chelsea.

I recall from our relegation season a number of games where, IMO, we ended up with one point instead of three and losing instead of drawing quite simply due to Mowbray's poor game management.  Yes he improved on Coyle's points / game ratio but he was employed to keep us up and FAILED.  We were relegated on goal difference and, IMO, we were relegated because of both Coyle and Mowbray.

Your point reinforces mine, he doesn't quite have the intelligence to achieve what we need. 

I felt we should have stayed up and like yourself feel he had 4-5 good chances to do so. I also believe that TM failed us that season.