I saw Tony Mowbray is the favourite for the Coventry City job and it would be an interesting role.
Coventry is a massive club in League One and has a good fan base. It’s had plenty of issues in the last few years moving out of the stadium and then back in, and I’m not sure what the politics are behind the scenes.
But if they are all sorted out then it’s a really good job for anyone, and I can understand why Tony is being linked to it.
Tony has been favourite for other jobs before, so you can’t ever think anything is done and dusted. But people are aware that he’s looking to get back into work and I think this could be the right job.
It’s a bit of a lottery really. You read articles and see reports that people are nailed on for certain jobs, and then all of a sudden it goes to someone else out of left field.
What I do know about Tony is that he’s very organised, very thorough and has a philosophy of how he wants his teams to play football.
He likes his teams to play in an entertaining way, albeit the bottom line is it’s a results business and it’s all about winning.
But if you can win in style then even better. Football is also an entertainment business, and that’s what Tony wants to achieve. He is renowned for his style of play - he took West Brom up to the Premier League playing some great football.
He started out at Hibernian and finished in the top four in both seasons and won the Scottish Football Writers’ Association manager of the year.
So any Coventry fans that don’t know what Tony is about only need to search for him on the internet and see what he’s achieved.
He likes to be hands-on. He’s a tracksuit manager who is down on the training ground every day working with th players.
He sometimes let myself and Mark Venus run the sessions at Boro but he always liked to be there and watching what was going on.
So I think Tony would possibly be a good fit at Coventry. It’s a club that probably should be competing at the top end of the Championship and pushing to get back into the Premier League.
But there’s so many clubs like that now littered throughout the leagues and looking to get back up there again.
I thoroughly enjoyed my time working with Tony and certainly for the first two years at Boro I felt we were punching above our weight.
We were cutting the wage bill and getting rid of some of the high-earners, but were predominantly in the top six of the division.
Tony obviously took over from Gordon Strachan when the team was struggling at the bottom, but we finished 12th in the table.
Then we spent much of the next season in the top six, and the first half of the 2012/13 campaign too.
I had some good memories working with Tony at Boro. We got to the quarter final of the League Cup but lost to Swansea, and then we had the tussle with the old enemy Sunderland.
We didn’t quite hit the heights that either of us wanted in terms of finishing in the play-off places, but overall it was a great few years at Boro.
Boro head to Sheffield Wednesday this afternoon - a club I know very well from my playing days.
It’s a massive club and I remember playing at Hillsborough between 1987 and 1989 in front of 55,000 fans in the old First Division.
I also played with their manager, Stuart Gray, at Nottingham Forest and I’m sure he’s enjoying the job.
But it’s a difficult role with issues over the club being taken over and working on a restricted budget.
I think it would be interesting if clubs came clear over what budgets they are working with and what resources are available.
Fans don’t often realise what managers are working with - and only when you know that can you truly judge who is over-achieving and who is under-achieving.
That’s what I found during my time in senior management and coaching. People are unaware about the restrictions imposed on you and it’s all a bit cloak and dagger.
Boro will face a really tough test at Hillsborough this afternoon on the back of a crucial mid-week win over Bolton.
I know there was a lot of criticism aimed at the players by fans and Aitor Karanka, but at this stage of the season I think it’s just about winning and grinding out those results.
If you win ugly then fine, as long as you get the three points.
Today’s match will be difficult with a big atmosphere at Hillsborough, but I think Boro fans must be in utopia at the minute.
With the colour, the excitement and the euphoria of winning matches and the possibility of Premier League football, it doesn’t get any better than that.
I’m sure everyone is getting a little anxious at this time of the season, and teams are trying to scramble into the promotion mix.
Boro have a difficult set of fixtures coming up and I think how they fare in those will make or break this season.
I would be disappointed if Boro didn’t finish the job and go up in the automatic promotion places.
If you look at the table, gaps are starting to form at the top and I don’t see any reason why Boro can’t finish in the top two and avoid the play-offs.
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