"HE'S COMING home, he's coming home; Mogga's coming home". Everyone's favourite iconic future-Boro-manager-to-be and the embodiment of the Spirit of '86 looks set for an emotional homecoming when - if! - West Brom come to the Riverside in the fifth round of the FA Cup.
It will be a strange night heavy with symbolism. Tony Mowbray's dugout debut against Boro will generate the loudest, warmest and most sincere reception any opposing boss is ever likely to recieve, unless Juninho ever returns in charge of anyone bar Newcastle or Sunderland. Mogga is unique. He is universally respected by fans as not just a playing legend and one of our own, a passionate Teessider who unequivocally loves the club, but also as the inspirational figure on the pitch as the team, the town, Bruce Rioch and the Steve Gibson consortium pulled together to haul Boro from the brink of oblivion. He is a man who crystalises a moment that many loyalists still regard as their touchstone as Boro fans.
And that stockpile of unconditional affection combined with the widespread unspoken understanding that one day he will be in the Boro dug-out could make the game a political minefield for Gareth Southgate.
Many fans would have chosen Mogga ahead of the Gate as boss in the Summer so the rookie - also a legend for lifting the cup at Cardiff - must win to prove Gibson picked the right former skipper to steer Boro to glory. Defeat and the Mowbray bandwagon may start to roll again.
Mogga's name has been bandied around for years. He was rashly suggested as boss after Bryan Robson left Boro when he was still just a promising young coach at Ipswich, sometimes in conjuction with elder statesman Rioch by sentimental nostalgista and sometimes as a pairing with his then manager George Burley.
His name came back with renewed vigour in the underpasses in January last year when the team were deep in trouble and support for Steve McClaren's regime was evaporating and by then there were strong arguments in his favour: his young Hibs team had been put together for a song and played, attractive attacking football that threatened to break the grip of the Old Firm. He was a man of integrity, a popular media-friendly figure who had the badges, understood the dynamics of the club and who could heal the bitter divisions that had opened up in the Boro crowd while pressing a lot of buttons in the collective psyche.
In so many ways he was perfect but the timing wasn't quite right. Maybe the job was just too soon for him on that occasion. He let it be known he still had a lot to learn in management, that he was ready to leave Hibs but didn't want to sour his relationship with the Boro crowd and that maybe he was better off advancing his career elsewhere. That humility and honesty won him even more credibility and reinforced the perception that next time he would be the one.
Which makes the coming cup clash a tricky one for Southgate. A win is expected. Boro are the Premiership form club at home to a team from a lower league so there is little real kudos to be gained from victory - yet defeat carries with it the disproportionate damaging possibility of a pub-talk political backlash and renewed support for the future claims of Mowbray.
On the plus side for Southgate he has already come through one similar test this season in fine style when Boro went away to then high-flying Aston Villa and took a deserved point in a sparkling second half display that scored tactical and political points against another widely-backed mooted rival for his job, Martin O'Neill. Since that day Villa have unravelled and are now below Boro in the table so one ghost has been laid to rest.
But Mogga's cause will not so easily be dented. His claims are based as much on complex historical and emotional factors that will never go away as on his managerial CV so Boro would have to demolish West Brom in a managerial masterclass with Mowbray left totally exposed for the Gate to take the plaudits - and even then there would be residual sympathy for the fallen hero and even a finger pointed at harm inflicted on a Holgate hero.
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