Tomorrow evening, Tony Mowbray will make his first return to Blackburn Rovers since leaving the club in the summer when he leads his Sunderland side into action at Ewood Park. Had things turned out differently in the spring, however, he might well have been heading to the home dugout rather than the away one.

Mowbray left Rovers at the end of last season after five-and-a-half eventful years in charge, but while the majority of his reign was a thoroughly enjoyable experience, the final six months left something of a bitter taste.

With his contract due to expire in the summer, Mowbray had anticipated being asked to enter into discussions over a new deal once the transfer window closed at the end of January, but as the second half of last season wore on, so it became increasingly clear that a new contract would not be forthcoming.

Things came to a head when, in an impassioned press conference, the 58-year-old revealed he had not been offered anything, and while the Blackburn hierarchy attempted to build bridges with the offer of a post-season invite to India to meet the club’s owners, the Venky’s group, things had already progressed beyond the point of no return.

“They wanted me to go to India to speak to the owners about a new contract, but I didn’t really understand that,” said Mowbray, who replaced Alex Neil as Sunderland head coach at the start of September. “Why would I go?

“I don’t really talk about my contract, it’s not my job to go and talk to people about money. Anyway, it felt as though there was something bigger, and the contract was allowed to run out. That’s fine. I was happy to make the call I did, to go and spend some time through the summer with my family.

“I’d lived away for five-and-a-half years in an apartment in Blackburn. It was an easy call, although if something had been done earlier, and they’d talked about a contract after the turn of the year when the transfer window had shut in January, then it might have been different and I might have still been there, but it wasn’t to be.

“I don’t know what their thinking was. Right at the death when it became an issue and I said in a press conference that they hadn’t even discussed contracts, they then came and said, ‘Well, at the end of the season, you can go to India and talk about a contract with the owners’. That was almost comical to me, but there you go. Maybe that’s the way of things in modern-day football? I’m not sure.”

While the ending might have been somewhat sour, the rest of Mowbray’s spell in Lancashire was a tale of gradual but sustained success. Having inherited a side that was stranded in 23rd position in the Championship when he was appointed in February 2017, Mowbray’s first season as Blackburn boss ended in relegation presiding over a run of just three defeats in 15 matches.

Crucially, unlike Sunderland, Rovers were able to bounce back to the Championship at the first time of asking, and after re-establishing the club as a second-tier force during the next two years, Mowbray’s final season at Ewood Park saw him guide his side into an automatic promotion place at the start of the spring, only for them to eventually fall away and miss out on the play-offs.

“It was really important for that football club to bounce back,” he said. “There’s no guarantee you can come straight back out of League One. Thankfully, for Blackburn, we got out at the first time of asking, and then just tried to build the club after that. We tried to put some assets into the club, tried to recruit well and build without getting carried away. I think that’s what we did.

“In my final year, we threatened promotion. We were second in the league, but (Ben) Brereton Diaz got injured and missed 12 games and we stopped scoring to win games. We fell away and finished eighth, and then my contract expired and I left and was able to spend some time at home. They’re good memories.”

Brereton Diaz was one of Mowbray’s success stories, with the Sunderland boss having help transform the forward from a raw youngster struggling to adapt to life away from his first club, Nottingham Forest, into an established Chile international who might well find himself moving to the Premier League at some stage next year.

“My phone didn’t stop over the summer, talking to lots of really big Premier League managers about Ben Brereton Diaz,” said Mowbray. “There was huge interest in him.

“We signed him at 18 and there was a lot of negativity about him in that first year. He was just a gangly boy who was getting used to using his physicality. We did a lot of work with him, and he goes away on international duty and plays with Chile now."