What Tony Mowbray has brought so far

I was thinking last night how fantastic it is that Tony Mowbray has dealt with this basket case of a club and brought us all back together in such a short period of time.

I didn’t know much about Tony Mowbray when he initially arrived, and while I supported his decision, I had no idea what to anticipate. When you consider the situation of our shattered club when he arrived, it’s clear that he had a monumental task ahead of him.

A squad made up of short-term contracted players, loans, and a mix of older heads, new signings, and kids who had experienced JE’s calm management and togetherness, followed by the total implosion caused by Wayne Rooney’s insane appointment, which was bound to end in tears, you can see what he walked into when he took the job.

The fan base was completely divided, with some supporting the club and Rooney’s appointment and others completely hostile to him, shouting their views on social media and at St Andrews.

The players who had been brought together by JE and were clearly close to him were asked to play in a way that they simply didn’t like/weren’t capable of, and they appeared to drop tools when Rooney began to name and shame them, leaving them in limbo when he was fired.

Enter Tony Mowbray and Mark Venus, who have an unexpected appointment in the main. Some fans were unreasonable in their expectations of who would be selected, and Mowbray would not have been many fans’ first choice, but he was well received by the majority of us.

In a short period of time, his team has left an imprint on the club and its supporters that few of us predicted. He hired Maik Taylor, Pete Shuttleworth, and Ashley Cole as coaches and began selecting the players who would form the core of the club tasked with keeping us up this season.

We now have a rather consistent group of first-team players who will make up the majority of the squad for the remainder of the season. This is a significant success when you consider how difficult it must be to get 100% out of players who know they may not be here next season as loans expire, contracts expire, and new players are brought in.

I, for one, enjoy how TM has used his management and coaching abilities to bring out the best in the players at his disposal, bringing a kind of football to St Andrews that I haven’t seen in many years.

His friendly demeanor and candor in news conferences have impressed everyone, and he has the entire support base behind him.

We sent a collection of get well messages to Tony via the club on Tuesday, and the warmth and love for Tony was clear to everyone; we were flooded with messages and had to close the thread.