Reality Check

It’s bad enough trying to catch the eye when you have an Old Firm hegemony to contend with. But now Hearts have messed up the equation. So what exactly does a manager in Scotland have to do to progress his career? Michael Grant hears Tony Mowbray considering life after Hibs

SOMETIMES a manager can lighten a journalist’s mood even before he opens his mouth. When Tony Mowbray came into the press room at Easter Road the other day, his first move was to pour himself a cup of coffee and grab a handful of biscuits. A good sign. The Hibs boss had the unmistakable look of someone preparing to settle down for a long and rewarding discussion. Unlike those football men whose press conferences can be timed with a stopwatch, Mowbray can keep an audience captive for so long it is tempting to turn up with an overnight bag.

This one turned out to be among his best.

As well as generosity with his time Mowbray has intelligence and candour among his characteristics and the overall package makes his briefings an unusually rewarding experience. By the time he was finished with us in the build-up to today’s SPL match against Celtic at Parkhead, he had discussed Hearts’ financial emergence in relation to what it meant for the rest of Scottish football in general and himself in particular.

The conversation was perturbing for Hibs supporters.

Very occasionally a manager decides to unburden himself of some truly significant and revealing opinions, and Mowbray’s use of the word “suffocating” to discuss the football scene in this country fell squarely into that category.

Not every manager in Scotland daydreams of leaving to take charge of a club in England, but the reality is that that is where many bigger and richer clubs may help them realise their ambitions. Getting noticed down south is the difficult part. Jim Jefferies and Bobby Williamson did so largely by winning the Tennent’s Scottish Cup, while for Craig Levein, the trick was establishing Hearts as consistently the “best of the rest” behind the Old Firm.

The probable consequences of Hearts’ dramatically increased budget under Vladimir Romanov will have a profound effect on these traditional escape routes. If Hearts permanently settle into a position of their own in the Old Firm’s slipstream, leaving the rump of SPL clubs unable to compete, then even the likes of Hibs, Kilmarnock and Aberdeen cannot realistically expect to finish better than fourth.

Even winning either of the cups will be a far more difficult proposition if there is a third financial powerhouse in the game, rather than the traditional Glasgow pair.

Mowbray initially described next season as already “mouthwatering” because of Paul Le Guen’s arrival at Rangers and the probability of Hearts’ continued spending, but he could not keep that going for long.

His analysis soon took a darker, more fatalistic tone. “Money matters,” he stated. “We finished 11 points up on Hearts last season and suddenly they’ve had an influx of cash and brought players in. That gap has swung the other way and now we sit more than 10 points behind them. For me that crystallises football.

“We will have to see how long Mr Romanov is around and what his longer term plans are but I’ve no doubt that the more money you spend, the more successful you are. History shows that. It’s why we have had a league of two in Scotland for so long. It’s why Celtic or Rangers win the league every year and win the cups most of the years.

“That’s why clubs like ours have to change our horizons.

“To try to win a cup and qualify for Europe every year is the height of it, I would suggest.

“What is success? Who is punching above their weight? I know Hibs are still punching above our weight even if we finish fourth or fifth, if you look at the levels of investment. Regardless of where we finish I believe this has been a good season.”

Two 3-0 victories at Ibrox and defeating Hearts 2-0 and Livingston 7-0 at Easter Road amounted to “history-making” events and “great days” in a decent season, according to the man who orchestrated them.

Today, though, nearly 60,000 supporters celebrating Celtic’s coronation as champions will underline Mowbray’s frustration over the financial inequalities that undermine the SPL’s competitiveness.

Rangers and Celtic have had to downsize significantly from the free-spending days of Dick Advocaat and even Martin O’Neill, but these things are relative.

Gordon Strachan or Le Guen will never experience the humbling helplessness of watching players at Doncaster Rovers or Northampton Town and knowing that they are on better wages than could be offered to bring them to Scotland. That is Mowbray’s reality.

Most midweeks he travels with John Park, Hibs’ head of youth development, to watch potential targets in England. They are down at League Two level, where the likes of Bury and Macclesfield attract home attendances of around 2,000 mark, before potential recruits come into their price bracket. Even then Mowbray can only afford perhaps a 19-year-old who would command a salary at the top of the Hibs pay scale.

The £1.6 million transfer of Garry O’Connor will release transfer funds for Mowbray, but hold the plans for a ticker-tape parade down Leith Walk: the manager will only be signing those in the £20,000-£50,000 bracket.

Mowbray is 42, just a couple of years younger than a compatriot who is being touted to become the next manager of England. Justifiably or not, Mowbray’s fate has been inextricably linked to Steve McClaren’s since the Middlesbrough manager was first rumoured to be leaving Teesside in January.

Back then McClaren was thought to be facing the sack, with some supporters chanting for Mowbray to be brought back to the club where he spent 12 years as a player, spanning the mid-1980s when they went into liquidation. One fan threw his season-ticket in McClaren’s face after a 4-0 defeat by Aston Villa. Now, in a comical demonstration of the fickleness by which a manager is judged, McClaren could get arguably the most prestigious job in British management.

The resurrection of McClaren and Middlesbrough’s season – they might yet reach both the Uefa and FA Cup finals – could still create a compelling vacancy at the Riverside Stadium.

One day, Mowbray would like to envisage himself as a plausible candidate for the England job, but the path to FA headquarters in Soho Square will require a first step away from Hibs, where he has two years left on his existing contract.

An eventual departure is inevitable. “I wanted to get a chance on the managerial ladder and I am working as hard as I can to be a success at Hibs. But I ain’t going to be here in four years, maybe not in three years, just trying to finish fourth in a league – knowing that’s the best we can do – and putting up with the stuff that goes with the Scottish game, which for me is suffocating at times.

“Whether it’s the officials on a matchday, or even your own profession, the media, it can be suffocating.

“My phone starts to ring at half past seven every morning and doesn’t stop until I turn it off at home when I’m bathing the baby at half past six. That can be suffocating. I’m not going to be a career Scottish manager, moving from Hibs to manage Falkirk or Livingston.

“I ain’t going to do it.

“Middlesbrough? I think the chairman at Middlesbrough, knowing him, won’t go for the romantic choice,” said Mowbray, referring to Steve Gibson. “You go for the choice that is best for the club because he has responsibilities to 40,000 fans.

“He won’t just give it to Tony Mowbray because he’s a good lad and he used to play for Boro in ‘86 when they were on their arse.

“All you can hope is that in the football industry, in the football world, people do know who is doing a good job.

“Agents are on the phone all the time and they all think they can get you the Barcelona job or the Real Madrid job but I have said to them repeatedly that what will get me a job, if that’s what I desire somewhere down the line, is my ability.

“You have to hope and depend on people knowing what you are doing and recognising what kind of budget you are working with, the fact that you train on school fields and parks with dogs running around and kids hanging off crossbars. But I don’t think they do because in England every club has a training ground. They probably couldn’t believe that a club in Edinburgh, a club with a name like Hibs, has to beg, steal and borrow training facilities. Maybe people don’t know.”

Mowbray’s exasperation was obvious. And he had talked for so long his coffee had gone cold.

Taken from the Sunday Herald