Tony Mowbray reveals Régis Le Bris meeting and reflects on 'strained' Kyril Louis-Dreyfus relationship

Tony Mowbray has revealed his initial thoughts after meeting Sunderland head coach Règis Le Bris for the first time - and has once again reflected on his exit last season.

The former Middlesbrough, Celtic and West Brom manager took over from Alex Neil during the club’s first season back in the Championship and masterminded Sunderland’s top-six finish and play-off campaign with Mowbray’s Premier League dream ended by eventual promotion-winners Luton Town in the semi-final.

Despite rumours suggesting Sunderland were looking at other managerial options the following summer, Mowbray remained at the Academy of Light and took the team into the new season. However, after 15 months in charge, Mowbray was sacked, with the Black Cats ninth in the Championship.

Mowbray took over at Birmingham City following his Sunderland stint before having to leave his role after receiving a bowel cancer diagnosis. The former defender is now on the mend and has made several appearances in recent months, including one at the Stadium of Light earlier in the season, where he presumably met current head coach Le Bris.

“I think it came as a surprise to me,” Mowbray said when reflecting on his Sunderland exit to Bernie Slaven. “I think things have just become a little bit strained. I need to say this, it is an amazing club. The supporters have been amazing to me. Considering I spent so much of my career playing for Middlesbrough, the people of Sunderland have been very, very supportive. They've really enjoyed the football. To lose my job, I don't think it was about results, because I think we were seventh.

“I think we were on the same points we were in the year we made the playoffs. This was only a year and a half after coming out to League One, so the team were doing pretty well. As I sit there now, it's no surprise to me that they're sitting fourth at the moment in the table, because I think I met Régis. He's the new coach here. He's quite a calm guy. He's quite empathetic to the footballers, I think. When I met him, I felt as if he was a steady Eddie, really. I think that's what them young, talented players at Sunderland needed.

“For me, it was more a relationship issue, I think. The owner was buying a lot of young French players at the time. He'll [Louis-Dreyfus] will be under 30 I would imagine now. He's around 30 years old. His father owned Football Clubs Marseille, I think. Generally, I got on fine with everybody, but I think when you've been a football manager for 20 years, in the olden days when you were the manager, you ran the club almost from top to bottom, because you always respected the owners and the chairman and the CEOs of football clubs, but you didn't have sporting directors and people in between, and layers, really.

“I got on alright with [Kristjaan] Speakman,” Mowbray continued. “He's working for the owner that he works for. He has to do his job, and that's fine. Some aspects of sporting directors are actually quite good for managers or coaches because they take a lot of the burden off them around the recruitment and just planning and organising all the data and the analysts and all of this stuff that is going on in the background that I would deal with people, and yet the data, if it's not quite right, somebody wants to question why this isn't working and why are we 15th in this aspect of the game and second in this aspect of the game.

“They're always driven off data, and that's just a change in modern-day football, and you either grow with it or you get out. I'm happy to grow with it. The issue with me leaving, I feel, was more about the club wanted me to give more opportunity to the young players that had been bought to come to the club, and yet I would only ever pick a team on what I see with my eye, what training was like, how they were working, did they understand the job, could they do the job. I felt as if the ownership model ultimately wanted them to play regardless because they wanted to give them opportunity.

“I wanted to win for the 46,000 fans that were there every game, and that's where it became a bit difficult when I didn't necessarily play the players that they wanted to play, I played the players that I wanted to win the game, and so it became a bit strained. I would get called into hotels and asked why so-and-so wasn't given an opportunity, and this player hasn't scored in so many games or created a chance, and why isn't this one playing instead of him.

“My reaction is always that I see them every day, I watch them on the training ground every day, I talk to them every day, I feel sometimes the other players not having the fact that they're not working hard enough, they're not running back, they're not doing the job. It's very difficult to then put them in the team when the rest of the team are thinking, why is he playing? That was part of it I think, and ultimately the impression I was given is that there wasn't a fairness of selection of the team, and that's fine.”