MOGGA is a Baggy. Middlesbrough's peoples' choice as manager elect has stepped up a level to take over from axed Bryan Robson at Boro-connection junkies West Brom. Oh well, there goes the January safety net.
Boro fans with a soul, an appreciation of history and a keen sense of destiny will keep a very close eye on Tony Mowbray's progress at Albion. It is hugely important for manys fans still emotionally charged by the Brucie babes' bottle blond revival that he does well there and proves himself ready for bigger tasks of historic and spiritual significance back here where he belongs.
Because, make no mistake, Mogga is a future Boro manager.
It is scripted. After two decades of trauma and triumph that have stretched the boundaries of imagination beyond the most fanciful fiction what could be more Hollywood than the Messianic return of the local hero to push the drama on to a Happy Ever After ending?
And if you don't buy into that sentimental guff, well good for you. It is so superficial, American and trite. It lacks substance and value and reduces the game to a scene in sizzling Sky Sport football soap. You probably believe instead in more traditional, earthy notions of football as a game for the ordinary people that allows the concrete expression of unique local identity and pride, something that you can feel part of, something to believe in. Better still.
What is more traditional and part of local identity than a proud Teessider giving his all for the club and knowing exactly what it means to the people who pay? Isn't that the the pure essence of the game? The shirt, the badge, the accent, the pride in knowing that the eleven out there transcend sport and represent the passions and dreams of the crowd?
Powerful cultural symbols - and pie in the sky? Maybe. But you can't help wonder. Mogga ticks a lot of boxes on Teesside. Disgruntled fans are walking away from the game in droves partly because they can't relate to millionaires who do not have the passion for the shirt that they do, that do not appreciate the history of their precious club and who have no engagement with the supporters or the town, driving through it only swiftly on matchdays. We have a dysfunctional relationship with our heroes. They do not understand us.
With Tony Mowbray you would get a man who understood exactly what Boro was about. In an age when the word has been cheapened he truely is a legend. Tony Mowbray is a pivotal figure in the club's history and one of the three men - Gibbo and Brucie are the others - who dragged the club off its deathbead in the summer of 1986 by a combination of talent, vision, unwavering belief and a complete refusal to lie down and die.
Mogga personified on the pitch Boro's defiant return from the abyss of liquidation. A talented player who stayed at a club that could have folded at any moment, who was central to its rejuvenation, the keystone in a team that won successive promotions on a shoestring and galvanised a moribund town into renewed pride, who led out Boro on their first ever Wembley final. It is not possible to do justice to his significance in those watershed years.
That does not mean the clamour for Mogga in recent years - his shadow stalked his antithesis McClaren darkly last season - is based purely on a sentimental yearning for some return to the womb of the Holgate. Most Ayresome regulars still laud Lawsy, Rippers, Pally and Bernie but there is no bandwagon for their return to the dugout.
Mogga also has the CV. He is a bright young boss. He has learned about management the hard way, stabilising a crisis club, building a good, young attacking team from scratch on a shoestring. Success at Albion would add weight to his future claims.
And Steve Gibson has often stressed his committment to producing a club that flourishes through the endeavour and spirit of its young talent. No-one knows more about how that can be blended successfully than Mogga.
Of course it could all be a long way off yet. Mogga has a two or three year project on his hands at Albion while most Boro fans would hope that the Riverside vacancy does not arrive that soon. That would mean Gareth Southgate had failed and no-one wants that.
But if Mogga is a revelation at Albion the consensus will grow that he should be Southgate's successor. You can't escape destiny.
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