'Probably the right time': Tony Mowbray's honest verdict on Blackburn Rovers exit ahead of his return with Sunderland

Mowbray spent over five years at the club, overseeing their return to the Championship before consolidating in the second tier.

A tilt at promotion last season fell away when talismanic striker Ben Brereton Diaz suffered an injury in February. Mowbray's contract expired at the end of the campaign and having had no dialogue with the club's ownership, he opted to depart and return to the North East.

"I always go into club hoping to leave them better than we found them, that's always got to be your target," Mowbray said.

"It'd be difficult to say I think that we didn't leave Blackburn Rovers in a much better position than we found them. We left them with a lot of assets, a lot of young players with a lot of potential and actually achieving on the pitch.

"It's not for me to judge, other people will judge on your tenure at any club, but for my mind we left it in a stronger place. I really like the players there, I'm trying to build connections with the players here like I had there, it's a massive part of the job for any football manager in the modern game.

"I made a strong connection with all of those players, though they've added three or four in the summer. I had a wonderful time there, though I sacrificed a lot for my family and that's life I suppose, you make choices."

Blackburn Rovers have started the season strongly under Jon Dahl Tomasson and given his better work/life balance on Wearside, Mowbray feels his departure may have been best for all parties: "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, then it might have been different and I might have still been there. 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.

"But I think it was probably the right time for me, and probably the right time for the club and the players too. Maybe they needed a different voice. Young players coming through probably need a different voice sometimes, with different ideas and thoughts. Jon Dahl’s done a good job with them. While they’ve lost a lot of games, they’ve also won a lot too. I don’t think they’ve drawn yet out of 14 games.

"I like the players there, they want to learn and get better, and they want to try to get to the Premier League. They're good memories for me, it's a wonderful club with a great history."