Celts prepare Mowbray move

"My job is to bring better players to the club to help the existing players that we have," said Tony Mowbray towards the end of last season as West Brom manager.

“You can't go and change all ten or eleven players and bring in some world stars, we haven't got the finance to do that but I think that we have some very talented boys at this club.

“If we can keep going and add one or two per season I think that we won't be far away in the end and hopefully have a team that the fans can enjoy watching and be proud of supporting.”

TONY MOWBRAY INTERVIEW

Those words from Tony Mowbray could easily be interpreted as his application for the Celtic job!
Two weeks after the departure of Gordon Strachan it seems very likely that Tony Mowbray will be appointed as Celtic manager.

A discrete process to appoint a new manager has been carried out in a new age where alongside the guesswork of traditional media internet rumours have been appearing daily and sometimes hourly with a Friday frenzy claiming that a new 'dream-ticket' of Mark McGhee and Henrik Larsson were posed for the gig.

A few others would have been looked at but after Davie Moyes ruled himself out it was probably a straight contest between Mowbray, Owen Coyle and Roberto Martinez.

For various reasons I think that Mowbray would have just edged that contest ahead of Coyle, Burnley's promotion and the timing of Strachan's departure (during the match that won Burnley promotion!) ruled Coyle out with Martinez a more interesting and exciting option than media darlings McGhee and Craig Levein.

We were never going to get the perfect manager but only Martin O'Neill has arrived at Celtic with a better pedigree than Mowbray.

He was a shock choice to become Hibs manager in 2004 when Alan Kernaghan was expected, in his first season he took the club to third place in the SPL lifting the hangover of a CIS Cup Final defeat to Livingston whilst developing Derek Riordan, Scott Brown, Gary O'Connor and Gary Caldwell into Scotland players and transferred on to bigger clubs.

Realising the limitations of Hibs he moved to West Brom and stabilised the club after Premiership relegation to win promotion in his first full season in charge playing good passing football that had the West Brom fans excited and enjoying their football.

I have my reservations over being relegated last season sticking to principles, being pragmatic and adapting to circumstances is an essential part of management and possibly with a few adjustments West Brom could have survived alongside Stoke and Hull.

That is now in the past for Mowbray, he's 99% certain to be the new Celtic manager and will hopefully have learned some important lessons to be implemented at Celtic.

As a player Mowbray was at Celtic when the playing style drew praise without winning silverware under Liam Brady and Tommy Burns.

His time at Celtic ended without any medals although a bizarre booking against Partick Thistle, possibly after arguing with Chic Charnley, earned him a suspension and cost him his place in the 1995 Scottish Cup win over Airdrie.

Playing good exciting, entertaining football shouldn't be at the expense of winning matches and trophies in the grim SPL of 2009.

For years we've been buying up the best of the SPL and as recently as January of this year held a seven point lead over Rangers.

Despite winning the SPL Rangers remain in serious financial difficulties with at least six wages to be shed during the summer alongside raising money from the sales of any combination of Kris Boyd, Allan McGregor, Madjid Bougherra, Pedro Mendes and Steve Davis.

Mowbray has a big challenge in lifting players who've taken criticism for almost a whole season and getting them ready for very difficult Champions League qualifiers whilst hitting the ground running in the SPL.

That's part and parcel of the challenge of managing Celtic and everything about Mowbray the manager and person suggests that he is well capable of taking it in his stride.

The Match-of-the-Day critics gave West Brom a pounding last season but Mowbray responded sensibly to their comments while sticking up for the way that he sees how the game should be played.

Answering back at his television studio critics Mowbray added: “I don't let the criticism effect me to be honest, people get paid to give comments and generally they have earned the right to do that.

“They've had fantastic football careers and won lots of trophies, I totally respect their opinions but the bottom line is that I'm the manager of West Bromwich Albion and I'm bringing my own philosophies to the team. That's what football is.

“There are lots of different ways to play the game, some want to keep possession of the ball and move it around and some go back to front asking defenders questions with 6 foot 4 centre forwards coming down on top of them.

“You make choices in this game and live and die by them. What I think is that you make your choice, stick with it and believe that it's right and I'm doing that.

“It would go against the grain for me to just start going direct and getting the ball into the box and fighting for the second ball.

“I feel that I have a responsibility to improve footballers and make them better to give them an opportunity to take their careers as far as they can.

“When I watch football I don't see many top teams hooking the ball over their shoulders and playing long balls into the box and fighting for scraps.

“I see thoughtful, clever, technical, gifted footballers playing, passing and moving and trying to get the ball into the box.”